Alaska 2018

SouthWest Roadrunners Montage of an Alaska Adventure - 2018

Courtesy of Dennis Thorig - Rallymaster

Twenty-two LTVs gathered in Bothell, Washington in May of 2018 ready to set off on an epic adventure to the Great White North, the last Frontier, Alaska!  Many of us were strangers to each other, but not for long.  The group was divided into "Pods" of four or five coaches, each pod under a group leader to make sure we all would keep together for the long journey ahead.  If all traveled together for the entire trip, we would have overwhelmed the small settlements where we stopped for gas and provisions, but we gathered together every evening to camp and sit around campfires and tell tall tales.  The Pods became as close as family!  But still, the sight of so many beautiful LTVs traveling together really attracted attention!  "Do you know each other?  Are they rentals?"  Yes sir, we do!  No, they are not."

After a few days of orientation, we hit the road and crossed into Canada, the beautiful province of British Columbia.  It would take us several days to work our way north, sightseeing and touring as we went, chasing reports of beautiful waterfalls, visiting historic sites and learning about the gold mining and railroads that opened the area and later supported settlement.  And then there were the mountains and the never ending vista, little blue glacial mountain lakes, and big skies!  Along the side of the road were carpets of colorful spring wild flowers, and occasionally a flock of wild sheep, deer and elk, the occasional moose or even bear came out to see who was driving by!  In a few days we reached the start of the Alaska Highway in the city of Dawson Creek.  Are we there yet?  No, we are just getting started!

The Alaska Highway was built in just a few sort months during World War II to connect the lower 48 states to the huge territory of Alaska.  It was an amazing feat of engineering, fighting through blizzard and freezes, machine eating mud, heat, cold, mosquitos ... but it was completed in just a few short months and has since been the main and only land route between the lower 48 and the 49th state.  And it's a very long and lonely but spectacular drive.  We were driving it in late spring, just as the world was awakening to spring and the short summer.  The daylight hours were long and the nights were short, and it never really got dark.  There were spaced out settlements for diesel (there was no problem finding diesel) and provisions, and campgrounds where we could stop for a night or two. We headed north, and crossed over into the Yukon Territory.  We spent a few days in Whitehorse, the capital city, and stocked up at Walmart and Canadian Tire.  We enjoyed the local restaurants and breweries, checked out the sites and museums, took the train to Skagway for the day (and it was so foggy that we couldn't see anything) and then it was time to finally drive into Alaska, our goal!

There is only one road that enters Alaska, and we were on it.  On the Canadian side there is the town of Beaver Creek, and the Alaska side is Tok.  Of course there was a pull out by the side of the road for pictures!  We made it!  It was two and a half weeks to get to Alaska.  It is very big country up there!  We could see a difference in the roadside as soon as we left Tok and headed towards Anchorage.  There was many more signs of human habitation ... power lines and old telephone wires, mailboxes, cell towers (but only near the settlements). And still there were the magnificent show covered mountains and little blue lakes and wildflowers and the bears and elk and moose and sheep by the side of the road.  We drove in the direction of Anchorage, spent a couple of days in Wasilla and then drove down the coast on the Kenai Peninsula to Homer.  Here there are glaciers going down to the sea, and fjords, and whales spouting and eagles flying overhead.  Some of us went fishing for Halibut, others took boat rides and tours to experience the wilderness close up.

We returned to Anchorage for a few days to get to know Alaska's largest city.  And yes, it is a big city with all of the amenities and quirks of a large northern city.  There were museums and shopping, a day at the spa for some of the ladies.  Of course, there were city tours as well.  And from Anchorage we headed north to Denali National Park.  Alaska has many national parks and they are all huge and mostly inaccessible except by airplane or on foot.  We camped at the campground near the entrance to the park, but to get to the main Visitor Center and the view of Denali, North America's tallest mountain, it was an 80 mile ride in a school bus.  Private vehicles are not allowed very far into the park.  All along the road (and yes, there were stops to stretch our legs and take pictures) there were river valleys, views of distant snow covered peaks, animals and very few trees.  This is definitely the far north.  We reached the Visitor Center and were lucky enough to be among the only 5% of visitors who could see Denali from bottom to top with no cloud cover!  How great is that!  It made the long bumpy right worth every minute.  We had several days to spend at Denali, and many of the travelers took advantage and took sightseeing airplane or helicopter tours to see the National Park and environs from a different perspective.

Our next destination was a city of Fairbanks, center of the Alaskan goldrush.  We visited old mining sites and panned for gold, and stopped nearby where the modern blackgold rush oil pipeline passes by.  We took a riverboat tour and stopped at a typical native village to see how the local people lived.  Fairbanks is a vibrant exciting city with lots of culture, at least in the summer!

This was as far north as we went.  There are a few roads that head farther north, but they aren't in the best shape, so it was time to head south.  We headed back by way of Teslin to Tok and back to Whitehorse for a couple of days.  Reprovisioned, we hit the road again and drove to Haines.  Haines is at the top of the panhandle of Alaska, and is definitely a fishing/maritime town built on the side of a Fjord.  It is not far from Juneau, Alaska's capitol, but you can't drive to Juneau.  So, we decided to take a fast cat ferry to Juneau for the day.  It was a nice boat trip and the beginning of Salmon fishing season, so there were a lot of fishing boats there (but not many salmon, sadly).  We saw sea mammals and whales on both legs of the trip, and the day in Juneau was fun.  We took the cable car up to the top of the mountain for spectacular views of Juneau and the surrounding bays and inlets, we checked out the tourist shops, dodged all of the cruise ship passengers who were there for the day.  After a nice seafood late lunch, we headed back to the relative calm of Haines.

One can't drive to Juneau, but Skagway is accessible by road, so several of us decided to drive to Skagway and camp at the campground that is by the cruise ship docks.  It was a spectacular drive over the mountains and the tundra and then back down to the sea.  The campground was very nice, and once the three o'clock ships horns sounded and the tourists went into a t-shirt buying frenzy before going back on board, we literally had the whole town to ourselves!  What a difference.

We continued heading south, back in British Columbia.  Our last stop before heading inland was at Stewart, B.C./Hyder, AK.  We camped in Stewart, but Hyder is just down the road, so we crossed the international border several times a day.  Since it was salmon run season, se were hanging out at a boardwalk that was built for tourists and observers who could watch the bears fishing for salmon from above without disturbing the bears.  Trouble is, no salmon and no bears!  The glaciers in the area were melting so fast that the salmon couldn't get upstream to spawn, and of there are no salmon, the bears won't come.

The retreating glaciers were very apparent all over the area of Alaska and BC that we visited.  The changing climate is very apparent in these areas.  The streams and rivers were all running very fast, and the glaciers are losing not feet and yards annually, but miles!

We returned to the Cassier Highway towards Prince George.  Since we were closer to the coast, we were in a different geological area, and the local indigenous people had a different culture from those inland.  We were able to visit some collections of Haida totem poles on several of our stops.  And once we reached Prince George, we were retracing our steps.  By now it was mid summer and the flowers of spring were all going to see because the first frost could happen in just a few short weeks!  Life is fast in the far north!  We stopped in Williams Lake, then Kamloops and Merrit and people started leaving the group and heading to their next destination.  It was a much smaller group that camped in Hope on the way back, but all of us richer for experience and friendships.