July 30 – Towards Canada

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We liked to stay at the viewpoint so much we decided to try another.

First we drove for an hour up the rest of the Tok Cutoff Highway to Tok. No mountains but still a nice drive.

A long straight stretch into Tok

We stopped in Tok for gas and groceries. I hadn’t told Jennie how many days we would be away from any stores so we were running short on some of the basics. Since we also had been without internet for 3 days I tried to find a hotspot to update the blog and get the weather but the only place I could find was very slow.

Onward from Tok, back on the Alaska Highway, the views were OK as we followed some rivers and lakes.

Always some construction.

I had used our guidebook again to pick out a likely viewpoint however it turned out the entrance looked like a driveway and the viewpoint sign from our direction was missing. Therefore I went right by it and then saw the sign on the north bound side. Since there was nowhere large enough for me to turn around we stopped and used the book to find a plan B.

I am really glad we missed the first one. This one is called Highway Lake Viewpoint.

I was a little more worried about the traffic noise at this one since it is right next to the Alaska Highway just a few miles from the border crossing back into Canada. Other than the tiny crossing that we used to enter Alaska on the dirt Top of the World Highway, this is the only way in or out of Alaska for all vehicle traffic.

Again we were amazed at how little traffic there was. We got there about 3 pm and during the afternoon there might be one vehicle, usually an RV of some kind, every 15 minutes. In the evening it went way down from that. During our stay we also only heard about 6 trucks go by. I guess everything comes by ship into the state.

There was a pair of trumpeter swans in the lake. They never did come very close.

The view was pleasant but got better and better as the evening went on.

First it clouded over with rain showers to the south and east of us but still sunshine in a band to the west.

We got a very strong short rainbow in the east. I haven’t seen one where I could see all the colours in a long time.

We could see just a hint of the other end at the top of the hill in the south.

Then it faded a bit but expanded in the east. You can just see at the left, below.

The actual sunset got better and better.

A close up of the trees on the far shore reflecting in the calm water. One of my favourite pictures of the trip.

All these were taken from the RV windows. I spent the entire time staring and snapping pictures.

We had another 5th wheel trailer join us for the night. They must have been in a hurry. They arrived at 9 pm and left at 6:30 am.

I think we have a new winner as best campsite.

July 29 – Towards Tok

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We had had several busy days in a row and it was time for a break. The scenery at the campground was very boring so we moved on a short way.

I had read in many other people’s blogs about them just pulling off the highway and spending the night at one of the scenic viewpoints. As long as it is not signed as no camping you can stay for free. Since we are soon leaving Alaska I decided that today was the day. I used our guide book called The Milepost, which lists every attraction on every highway in Alaska and the Yukon, down to every pull out and viewpoint scenic or not. I found one about 100 km from where we were.

As I said in the previous post the weather was kind of gloomy this morning. The highway goes along the edge of Wrangell St Elias National Park but the clouds obscured most of the mountains. It did improve through the day.

We first stopped at another viewpoint of the Copper River.

There is a mountain behind the clouds in the distance.

Jennie is always checking out the local flower population.

We moved on and here is our “campsite”.

I love the view through these huge side windows. While trying to work on the blog or read, I mostly just turned and stared out.

Through the day it got clearer and clearer. Three mountains revealed themselves.

They look kind of small when I zoom out to get them all in one picture but in person they seemed much larger and closer. I climbed up on the RV roof to get this shot without the trees in front.

Mount Drum to the west.

16000 foot Mount Sanford looming over the smaller foreground mountain in the center.

And the moon over 1000 foot Tanada Peak to the east. If you use your imagination, you can just see its top through the two cloud layers. We could see bits of it in and out of the clouds all day.

Later the moon moved nearer Mount Sanford.

I think it is the best site we have ever had, certainly better than any campground.  The pictures just don’t do it justice.

We should have done this more often. Though I am only comfortable doing this when we are in transit and aren’t going to leave the RV alone for a day trip but I am not sure the RV is any safer in a real campground.

Obviously we are right next to the highway but there is very little traffic. During the day we got about 1 car every 10 or 15 minutes. Right now at 10 pm we haven’t heard one for over an hour.

Around dinner time we had another couple in a 5th wheel trailer join us for the night.

A wonderfully relaxing day, staring at the mountains.

July 28 – Back to Denali Highway

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The Denali Highway is a road between Cantwell on the Parks Highway and Paxson on the Richardson Highway. Of the 135 miles, 115 is dirt although it is in pretty good shape.

After we had visited Denali National Park we stopped in Cantwell and drove in about 80 miles of the western side of the highway. The view were amazing and from the description of the eastern side I knew we would want to see it.

So we drove up the Richardson Highway and planted the RV at the Sourdough Campground.

It’s not much to look at. All short pine tree and after we setup I looked around our site and it was all water. Needless to say the bugs were bad and Jennie kept indoors as much as possible.

I had originally planned to drive up here today, just hang out and drive the Denali Highway tomorrow but I looked at the weather forecast this morning and the outlook was not good. So, we got here about 11:30, had lunch and headed off in the CRV 40 miles farther up the Richardson Highway to Paxson. It was good thing we switched to the CRV because about 1 mile north of the campground turnoff we encountered 11 miles of road construction and torn up dirt road.

The Richardson Highway was not very scenic. It it actually quite rough with lots of dips that really made the RV bounce around and even got the CRV jumping.

Once we got on the Denali Highway we gradually climbed up about 1000 feet and the tree disappeared to give us more very open long distance views.

We stopped at a viewpoint with a bus load of people on a Princess tour. We always check out the info boards even though they are getting kind of repetitive.

More glaciers way off in the distance.

On to the dirt section. Personally I like the partly cloudy days because the sky is so much more interesting.

A view through a gap in the mountains to the north to the lower country.

As you can tell I love these pictures of things and people silhouetted against the sky.

We stopped about 40 miles in, at 4000 foot Maclaren Summit for a hike. We checked later with the GPS and the valley floor is about 1000 feet below us. It is very hard to judge distances without any references.

The hike run along the ridge top first for about 1.5 miles on a chewed up ATV trail.

The guide book said the trail continued on a foot path for a total of about 2 miles one way. The point was to get a view of the glaciers in the mountain valleys behind Jennie. We assumed that the trail went to that point of land about dead center in the picture above. Nope. When we drove to the valley floor later, it turned out that it was at least 6 miles away, if not more.

On to the footpath.

Even though we were in sunshine, across the valley to the west this was looming.

We checked the wind direction and it seemed that it should miss us but we packed our rain gear anyway.

The trail kept going down into little valleys so we lost track of our supposed target. We thought it was the second hill in the distance below.

This guy was really moving when he passed us. When he got to our “destination” he disappeared as he kept going. Bad sign.

Once we got there we figured we had gone about 3 miles based on the 1.5 mile distance to the start of the footpath section. It started to sprinkle a bit here. Time for us and another group already there to break out the rain gear.

Below was the somewhat depressing view forward to what we think was the actual end.

By now it was shrouded in rain and at the time, I looked at it and then back to the car and said “Man (or words to that effect), that is still a long way off”. As I wrote it was about 3 miles away.

With the zoom on Jennie’s camera we took some shots of the glaciers anyway.

Then we headed back.

The rain soon started in earnest. Not really hard but constant enough that I learned that my jacket is water resistant and not water proof.

The other group had continued and when we looked back all I could say was that I hoped they had very good rain gear.

After we got back to the car and warmed up a bit, we drove down into the valley to see what the hike looked like from down there.

The arrow on the right is where we started. The middle arrow is where we think we got to, although the bumps on the ridge look very much alike from down here, and you now what the arrow on the left is.

By now it was 5 o’clock and we were tired so we headed back towards the RV into the sunshine.

As we were heading back through the construction we realized we had missed some views this morning of the north side of 14000 foot Mount Drum to the south. We could also see it in the north from our previous campsite in Kenny Lake.

We finally got back at about 7 pm. It was a day of great scenery but a long one. Two hours of driving the RV, 4 hours driving the CRV and the hike.

The CRV got a bit dirty.

Later that night it got a lot darker and cloudier.

As I am writing this the next day, during the night it rained a bit and the next morning was very gloomy so I am glad we went when we did.