Alaska/Canada 2022-21: The Final Weeks, Part 1

July 26-August 9, 2022

    After 5 awesome days camped on the Kennicott River across from McCarthy and an overnight at Kenny Lake to do laundry, it was time to head east. First stop: Tok, about 3 hours away. 

    Well, until we were driving over the Little Tok River, about an hour from Tok, and saw that the campsite under the bridge where we'd camped in 2017 was empty. It seemed like we should fill it, so we did and spent another quiet Alaska night by a rippling stream.

Little Tok River, Alaska

Mz Agnes, Little Tok River, 2017.

Uncle Robert, aka Conchita, Little Tok River 2022.

The AlCan

    After breakfast in Tok the next morning, we picked up the AlCan. Its western terminus is at Delta Junction, about 100 miles northwest of Tok. The pavement was horrendous, much worse by far than any stretch of the McCarthy Rd., with large potholes, pavement upheaval due to permafrost, and construction.

Hwy 1, the Alaska Highway, or "AlCan."

We followed many a pilot car on our trip. Where winters are long, a lot of construction is shoved into the short summers.

There was a lot of dirt and gravel and of course...

...dust. We're still not sure we've gotten all the dust out of the van.

Yukon Camping
    Due to the road conditions, we found ourselves traveling rather slowly. At Beaver Creek we crossed the border back into the Yukon Territory. Finally we decided to stop for the night at Discovery Yukon RV Park, which sits between two rivers, the White and Koidern. Campground decor consists of old vehicles, equipment from building the AlCan, and other bits and pieces.

Campsite at Discovery Yukon. The awning adds living space, rain or shine.

Discovery Yukon decor. Logging, anyone?

Should you need a motor to go boating on a nearby river or lake...

Outboard motor display close-up.

AlCan Hwy construction equipment.

The website boasts a "Military Vehicle Collection."

We admired this cycling couple we passed them on the AlCan. They later arrived at the our campground, drenched from the pouring rain and no doubt happy to have a tent cabin to dry out in.

    At Haines Junction the next day we had a decision to make: go south to Haines and from there via ferry to Skagway or go east to Whitehorse. Though the drive to Haines is spectacular and we loved staying there in 2017, it was at least a 3-hour drive. Since the ferry service from Haines to Skagway was currently iffy, we'd more than likely have to drive the 3 hours back to Haines Junction as well. We opted to forego Haines.

    We stopped for the night at Pine Lake Campground, where more flora entertained Marilyn

            

Bog star (Parnassia palustris).           Shark mushroom?

Straight from the Moulin Rouge!

 Mushroom down!

    In the morning, we continued on to Whitehorse.

"The Yukon dedicates this route to the memory of veterans."

    As it had much of the summer, the weather continued to offer a lot of variety of wind, rain, and all kinds of clouds.

As Christopher Robin says, "I don't care what the weather is, as long as I'm out in it."

Whitehorse, Yukon
    A few miles south of Whitehorse, we snuggled back into our favorite site in the woods at Pioneer RV Park & Campground.

In the woods & far from the rows of large RVs.

    Doug found more mushrooms for Marilyn to play in.

Getting just the right angle on a mushroom.

  
Coy.                                                Come on in!

I'm bigger than your foot!              Where's the party?

    We went to our favorite Whitehorse cafe and took another walk along the Yukon River. 

Mural across from our favorite Whitehorse cafe.

A very friendly woman suggested we check out the library. We did, then went to investigate a couple of tents at the far end. We were delighted to discover a Native group carving a canoe from a red cedar log.

Canoe is painstickingly manually carved from red cedar log.

Angles have to be perfect.

One of the project directors was Violet Gatensby, a Tinglit from Carcross, whom we'd met in Carcross in 2019, when she was assisting in similarly discovering the canoe in a red cedar log. We talked with her quite awhile about the process. Marilyn follows her on Instagram. She paints, carves, sculpts, makes masks, and is all around very talented. Below is her "Running to the Rivers Edge" mask on display at Vancouver International Airport. Unfortunately, it was not yet on display when Marilyn flew through there en route to Whitehorse in June. 

Violet Gatensby, Running to the River's Edge. Top to bottom: bear, human, eagle. Of the 3-D mask she writes, "...a piece to embody the excitement that fish returning to the rivers bring to us. A creature so small and vulnerable can make the biggest creatures run with joy just by their presence." 

Carcross, Yukon
    From Whitehorse, we drove to Carcross, which we always enjoy. It sits on Bennett Lake, where Klondikers who made it over the Chilkoot Pass with their ton of supplies required by Canada met their next challenge: building a boat out of anything available to try to get to the Yukon River at Whitehorse.

Doug at Bennett Lake

Another red cedar canoe was underway at the Carcross/Tagish First Nation Learning Center.

Totems of the 6 Carcross/Tagish First Nation clans stand in front of the Learning Center.

L-R: Killer Whale, Raven's Children, Wolf, Wood Worm, Frog, Split Tailed Beaver.

Killer Whale, Raven's Children, Wolf, Frog, Split Tailed Beaver.

We camped 2 nights at the Tagish First Nation Campground across from the Carcross airport.

Carcross Airport.

Marilyn's fav pic of herself. Shows off garage drawers, back mosquito screen that rolls all the way down, door pockets she made for shoes & gear. 

 In the camground, there were more mushrooms for Marilyn!

    

All aflutter.                                      Just hangin'.

   

Life is better together.                      Mushroom Venus Fly Trap?

Skagway & Dyea, Alaska   

    After 2 days in Carcross we headed further south and back into Alaska, to Skagway and nearby Dyea. 

Klondike Hwy to Skagway. Remains of wood mine shaft on left.

    Skagway is on the Alaska Panhandle, as are Haines and Hyder, the only 3 towns on the panhandle that you can drive to, and then only by going through Canada. All the other towns on the panhandle and its islands, e.g., Ketchican, Angoon, Petersburg, Yakutat, Sitka, and even the capital, Juneau, can be reached only by boat or plane. A 2022 bill in the state legislature was the latest attempt to move the capital off the Panhandle to Willow, the favored compromise between Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Most of the Alaska Panhandle can only be accessed by boat or plane. The drive between Haines & Skagway is at least 7 hours but beautiful. If you can catch the ferry, it's only 75 minutes, or 40 for the pedestrian-only fast ferry.

    The drive from Carcross to Skagway is stunning, with lakes, rivers, waterfalls, ponds, glaciers, and flowered valleys, but the clouds, rain, and fog made for limited vistas this time. 

Klondike Hwy, 2022.

Klondike Hwy, 2019.

    We arrived in Skagway by 11:00 AM. The usual cruise ships loomed over the town, and their passengers flocked like a giant amoeba to all the shops and restaurants set up just for them. We never have figured out why folks take a cruise to name-a-destination and buy jewelry there. 

State Street, Skagway.

Okay, we confess, we did a little shopping, too. 

Who doesn't need a bear hat from Alaska for themselves—and all their friends?

Marilyn bought more quilt fabric, though we'd already sent home 2 large flat rate USPS boxes of fabric. 

Mural of downtown Skagway & Klondikers climbing Chilkoot Trail out of Dyea.

    After a couple of hours in Skagway, we took the Dyea R along the Taiya River the 10 mi/30 min to Dyea. 

Rain had beaten up Dyea Rd—it was more mud than gravel in places.

Logs & debris in the flooding river.

    The Dyea Flats Municipal Recreation Area campground had also had a rough time. With all the rain and flooding this year, the river had carved large chunks off its banks. We didn't find our 2019 site on the river because it no longer existed!

Our Dyea campsite on the Taiya River in 2019—visiting with fellow campers from Quebec.

Same site in 2023.

Even on previous trips you could tell the Taiya River has no hesitation to erode its banks—trees clung by their roots. Luckily, we found another site close to the river. 

Looking from our site toward river bank where sites were washed away.

Marilyn did not even attempt her usual of finding a way to the river, filling a bucket with water and pouring it over her head.

Looking toward Lynn Canal (actually a fjord). Klondikers had to debark about 2 miles from land & slog through the mud flats. 

Stubs of pilings, all that remains of the 2-mile-long wharf Klondiker's built to cross the mudflats to Dyea.

Looking toward Dyea townsite & the Chilkoot Pass. 

It was rainy & chilly while we were there & impossible to even imagine climbing the steep pass in snow once, let alone the multiple times it took to get your ton of provisions required by Canada to the top.

This is much easier to imagine: Doug reading out of the wind in the gorgeous handmade wool sweater a fellow camper & former Navy nurse gave him in Valdez.

        

And we spotted a couple of mushrooms enjoying life under the trees.

Wood bridge over neraby West Creek, also running very high. Exploring by vehicle in the area is limited. 

Heading back to Skagway on Dyea Rd. one last time.

The road was nearly on the water in places.

Beautiful dyke in rock alongside road.

    We spent our final night in Skagway camped in the airport parking lot, as the next morning Marilyn had a 6:00 AM flight to Juneau.

From the airport parking lot our last evening, we watched tour helicopters come in to land like dragonflies alighting one-by-one.

   Marilyn taking off from Skagway.

    For the young pilot, the flight in a small plane from Skagway to Juneau was a routine short hop. For Marilyn, it was an amazing birds-eye view of Alaska's topography: peaks, valleys, snow, rivers, glaciers.

    From Juneau, Marilyn flew to Seattle, then Fresno, then rode home with a friend to Visalia. 

    It was August 9. We'd been on the road together and living in Uncle Robert, aka Conchita, our 17.5-foot Promaster van, for 7 weeks and 3,300 miles. Of those, 1,400 were on dirt roads. It was 50°F when Marilyn left Alaska and 100°F when she got home.

    And Doug? He had more places to go, people to meet, and adventures to be had—it's all in our next post.

Marilyn flew home 8/9 & Doug went on a long meander...