Day 27: Paved road? What paved road?

When you read about people traveling the Alaska Highway years ago, it sounds like quite the adventure. The road was dirt and gravel, with sections that were washed out or covered with rocks from slides.  But today’s Alaska Highway is all paved, right?  Not exactly.

The guidebook had warned that the road from Haines Junction to the Alaska border was rougher, and they weren’t kidding.  We traveled over occasional stretches of pavement, but much of the 180 miles or so were gravel and dirt and lots and lots of dust. Our speed varied from around 25 to 40 mph.  The RV no longer looks white.  There is dust in and on almost everything. Once in Tok, we will have a major cleaning job for ourselves.

However, after 5030 miles of driving, we crossed the border and are now in Alaska! Back to distances in miles rather than kilometers, to using dollars rather than loonies and twonies.

Shortly after going through customs, we stopped at a pull-off above a lake, and Dan got out his spotting scope to view the trumpeter swans.  The road beyond that passes through the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, and at their visitors center we learned about the thousands of birds that pass through this area during migration, as well as their many pairs of trumpeter swans.  We also got information on the wildlife refuges’ two free campgrounds, and we decided to make it a short day of travel, stopping at one of them.

So we are at Deadman’s Lake Campground, a short walk from the lake itself. The campsite is small (15  sites) without electricity or water and there are no flush toilets, but it’s a well-kept area, even having resident campground hosts.  They are a pair of retired science teachers who volunteer for the US National Wildlife Refuges for stints of two to three months in various places around the country.  This summer, they are here at Tetlin, trimming bushes, cleaning bathrooms, and assisting with some research projects.  In the evening, the gentleman conducted an interpretative program about permafrost. It was not the most entertaining of such programs we have attended, but it did go some way in explaining why it is that engineers in this part of the world cannot seem to get a road laid down that does not heave, sink, and crumble.  Most of the other people camping in the campground attended, including someone from Minnesota, a recently-retired couple from Oregon, a young man who was recently discharged from the Army and was heading home to San Francisco on his motorcycle, and a woman who lives up here and works in a remote area with Inuit children.

Cold night---41 degrees!