Trip log: RV Trip to Alaska 2014 |
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6/24/2014 Day 48 Blueberry Lake Campground to Glennallen It rained steadily most of the night. Even though we’re at 2300 feet and the mountain tops are only about 5000-6000, we couldn’t see the tops this morning. Glimpses of blue, though, and as we drove up the highway it cleared some.
The Richardson Highway from Valdez to the Glennallen Junction is one of the most beautiful we have seen this trip. Certainly in the top 5. We left the Blueberry Lake campground and wound up the grade to the top of Thompson Pass, only 2500 feet but above timberline. Coming down the other side you pass by Worthington Glacier on Girls Mountain, and there’s a parking spot there that allows you to walk up to the glacier. We didn’t stop, but you can easily see it from the road.
We stopped at the Wrangel St. Elias National Park visitors’ center and saw the movie. This park has the highest mountain range in North America with peaks over 16,000 feet. It is 4x the size of Yellowstone.
We stopped briefly in Glennallen to go to the bank for more Canadian money, then to the IGA for a few groceries, down the road a block for gas for both RV and Jeep, then 13 miles east on Glenn Highway, Alaska #1 toward Palmer where we stopped at Tolsona Wilderness Campground. This is privately owned despite what its name implies, and it has either water + electric sites for $35, or dry camp sites for $25. There’s a catch, though: you can’t run the generator at all in the dry sites, so we picked a hookup site with our own personal horde of mosquitoes. Far worse than anything we’ve seen so far, even Blueberry Lake. Opening the door to get in the RV results in 5 or 6 getting in with you. The Electric Paddle of Death works fine, though.
Donna has done laundry, an every two week event, in water that was somewhat brown and a dryer that scorched some clothes and towels, running back and forth between RV and laundry room with her head covered in mosquito netting. Right now it’s not raining, but it’s overcast and tomorrow looks rainy. That’s just the way it is in Alaska most of the time. |
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6/26/2014 50 Nabezna Road Trip into Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve.
It wasn’t a bright sunny day, but it was better than yesterday; no rain, high overcast with some sun and blue sky intermittently showing as we set out on Nabeana Road in the Wrangell-St Elias National Park and Preserve. The road goes 42 miles east from our campground here at Hart D Ranch, paved for the first 15 miles then good dirt and gravel to mile 30, then deteriorating and becoming rougher with several stream crossings out to the end. There are commanding views of the Wrangell mountain range, some peaking to over 16,000 feet. |
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6/25/2014 Day 49 Glennallen to Slana on Tok Cutoff; 90 miles
We were chased out of Tolsona campground by the mosquitoes. We had a number of the little whiners in bed with us last night. Can’t figure out where they are coming in, but some of it has to be that they were trapped in the overhead hatches between the screen and the hatch cover when it was open for ventilation and worked their way out past the crank during the night. The bedroom screen also seems to have a slight opening along the edge when the window is open. Anyway, we slept with the Electric Paddle of Death on top of the covers ready to hand.
It started raining about 4 this morning and has rained steadily since. We lolled about, made a pancake breakfast, did one more load of laundry and decided to move on from this place back to Glennallen where we will find fewer mosquitoes. Although we had paid for two nights ( a mistake we won’t repeat) the management graciously refunded the second night. Got a late start about 11, but we don’t have very far to go, only about 90 road miles.
One little mystery has been solved: for the past several days I have heard some occasional random beeping coming from the back of the RV while driving. By the time I turn around to look, it quits. This morning I caught it. For reasons known only to its befuddled microprocessor brain, the microwave oven turned itself on for 30 seconds then happily beeped when it was done. Then while I watched, it randomly selected 2-1/2 minutes and turned itself on again. It is obviously in a continuing death spiral which began near the beginning of the trip (see Day Five). So far we have managed without it, using the toaster oven we bought in Vancouver when we need an oven and just doing without a microwave, which is sometimes a pain, especially when you just want to warm something up. But to solve that problem Donna bought a cup-sized |
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6/23/2014 Day 47 Whittier to Valdez, Alaska by ferry, then Blueberry Lake Campground; 24 RV miles
The Alaska Marine Highway M/V Chenega brought us across Prince William Sound from Whittier to Valdez. We got the 8:30 AM tunnel from Williwaw Campground into Whittier, then just hung out in the RV doing computer stuff until the ferry gates opened. It left at 11:45 and arrived Valdez 2:45 PM. Nice smooth ride all the way, 80 miles at 32 |
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6/27/2014 Day 51 Nabezna Road to Chicken, AK; 130 miles
The only thing better than going to Chicken is going there again in order to go to Eagle. That’s what we’ve done today. And better yet, we’re staying overnight in Chicken. How good does it get?! Driving up to Chicken we saw 2 cow moose browsing in a small lake.
We have decided that we might want to go over the “Top of the World Highway” from here to Dawson City, Yukon. We had previously discarded that idea because Milepost scared us with the road description. However, after dropping the RV at Chicken Gold Camp & Outpost RV Park (no hookups, $14) we decided to do a reconnaissance mission in the Jeep out to the Canadian border and see first hand what the road was like. |
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See day22 for pictures of chicken.
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immersion heater that takes the place of the microwave for heating coffee. We stopped for the night just a half-mile down Nabezna Road at Hart D Campground. Again, we’re the only ones here that we can see. Full hookups, $38, the most we’ve paid since we left except for Three Island Crossing in Idaho. It’s a nice big fairly level back-in site. Mary D. Hart who runs it is a bronze sculptor with a studio here and also manages the Post Office adjoining the property, open Mon-Wed-Fri. Far fewer mosquitoes here, but still some. Still raining. |
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knots, and the captain diverted slightly to go past Columbia Glacier where we actually could see the face of the glacier and the ice field in front of it. Distant, but still impressive. On the way into Valdez you also go past Bligh Reef where the Exxon Valdez wrecked.
We didn’t spend any time in Valdez, though the part near the ferry terminal seems pretty nice. We just disembarked from the ferry and hooked up the car in the parking lot to drive 24 miles north on the Richardson Highway to Blueberry Lake Campground where we stayed for the night. No hookups, $15. There are 15 small back-in sites, but there’s nobody here except the camp host and hordes of mosquitoes. |
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The Ferry Chenega at Whittier |
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Yesterday we saw a moose alongside the highway just a few miles in; today, 6 or 8 Dall sheep on the mountainside out around mile 30. There are a number of really small, really primitive campgrounds along this road, small being from one to 10 sites, primitive meaning nothing here but mosquitoes.
At the end of the road there’s a hunting/fishing “resort” with a landing strip and a few disconsolate looking airplanes scattered among the abandoned trucks. The only thing that identifies the landing strip is a wind sock. One thing about Alaska that has become painfully apparent is, every manufactured thing that has ever been brought into the state is still here, piling up in people’s front yards. Old pickup trucks in particular come here to die, as well as sofas, refrigerators, furniture of all types and the remnants of buildings. Sometimes the remnants were only dreams to begin with, never completed skeletons or hulks with no windows or roofs, many with optimistic FOR SALE signs fluttering from their carcasses.
And there’s a FOR SALE sign on the front gate here as well. Our proprietress here at the Hart D is a widow woman of grandmotherly mien who is gamely trying to keep this place going. She was out all day today with the weed whacker and the place is nicely maintained, but she does most of the work herself. We’re the only ones here—there was one other camper last night—and at $38/night it won’t pay the bills for long. She has a day job running the Post Office next door three days a week, and she is an accomplished sculptor. |
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Well, it ain’t no petunia, that’s for sure. The first 15 miles from Chicken headed east are sort of white knuckled with nearly vertical drop-offs of about 1000 feet, narrow, no shoulder and soft shoulders, no guardrail, rough, twisty, steep—but other than that it’s fine. The locals call this part the “goat trail” which is probably giving too much credit to goats. After that, the road widens out some and there are no more heart-stopping plunges. At one point it was flooded to about hub deep with a creek that has overflowed due to the rain, and there are a couple of spine-compressing trenches across the road that you don’t see until you hit them. It’s a pretty good Jeep trail. Too bad we have to drive an RV over it. The good part is there’s hardly any traffic. The bad part is that some of the traffic is double tractor-trailer combos and buses. We heard that last week a large Prevost motor home towing a car went over the edge somewhere along here. It didn’t roll far; it was caught by the trees and nobody was hurt.
The road from Tok to Eagle is the Taylor Highway, Alaska #5. It’s about 30 miles from Chicken to the Jack Wade turnoff, then 65 miles to Eagle. From Jack Wade to the border, about 13 miles, it’s called the Boundary Spur. The Boundary Spur is being worked on. It is quite wide but really rough with large sharp pointy stones and lots of gravel. It’s also pretty steep; about 12% by my estimation. They are going to ruin it by paving this stretch. It won’t be near as much fun.
After coming back to the RV park I gassed up the Jeep at $4.79/gallon—not too bad considering the distance it has to be trucked in. It was $4.19 in Tok. Water also has to be trucked into Chicken and processed. They have dump stations here, separate ones for gray and black water, and they do allow you to fill with fresh water. Even though we haven’t actually completed the trip, I optimistically bought the T-shirt, “Top of the World Highway” at the mercantile in “downtown” Chicken. |
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Splashing through the creek on Nabeezna Road |
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Sign entering Chicken |
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Columbia Glacier on the way to Valdez |