Drive over TOW and Dawson City

OK. Another day and the host said the road would get better. He was right. The road widened, no more driving on the edge of a mountain. We arrived at the "Y" and went right. Someone had paved the road, relatively recently. Glorius, smooth pavement. 

We drove to the border, passed into Canada and back to a dirt road. What a waste of money to pave the road for a bit in the middle of the wilderness. 

The Top of the World Highway is a ridge road that has been significantly improved since we drove it in 2002. At that time the road was dirt, not even gravel, rocks and potholes all over the road, very narrow. I remember pulling over many times to let someone pass coming at us. Now the road is wide, graveled and smooth. Canada has numerous graveled roads and part of the road. Whatever the Canadians do the composition of their gravel roads are excellent, almost as good as asphalt. The TOW is a ridge road that allows you to see forever.

At the end of the road is the Yukon River. The state provides a free ferry to cross to Dawson City, YT. The Yukon is a fast flowing river so the ferry needs to go upstream, turn, then steer into the landing. The ferry does not have a formal dock, just drops its ramp on to the shore and you drive on to the ferry.

In 2002 we glfed this course at 12M. Still daylight

Ferry heading toward the landing

Our dock!

Waiting on the other side

Dawson City is a fun town. They embrace their heritage by having dirt roads, wood sidewalk. Their stores have names like Klondike Kates, Sourdough Joe, etc. We really enjoy this town.

We are spending 2-3 days here. We are having a little break. When we checked into the campground we asked if there was a place in town to get hair cuts. He said yes, proceeded to call the hairdresser and we have an appt. Great service. We found the hairdresser, she didn't even have our names, just "couple from campground".  She gave us both good cuts. Always a challenge on the road.

We were filthy coming off of the TOW.

He was waiting in ine for the car wash

We drove to the "Dome" the next day and did some food shopping, lazy day. 

Views from the Dome Road

Our next drive was out to the dredge and the gold panning creek. There were half a dozen people panning. Gold panning is fun, we did it in 2002 and panned gold. Easy to do. 

Typical Road

Inactive Dredge

Old time equipment

For the next few weeks, we will be flip-flopping between the US and Canada. Alaska has a thin tail that comes down along the coast of Canada. We just keep our passports handy.

Drive from Tok to Top of the World Highway

Yesterday was a miserable, rainy day. We drove 20 miles and decided to go to a campground. By 10 AM we were in camp and happy.

Today is the day for Chicken Alaska and the beginning of the TOW(Top of the World Highway).Started out fine, down the Alaska Hwy 12 miles to Taylor Hwy to Chicken. A lot of gravel spots and some horrendous washer board spots. 

Made it to Chicken and had planned to stop for the day at West Fork BLM campground. GPS was pointing to the campground. After Chicken, the road became dirt, narrow and very rough. We hoped we didn’t meet another  MH but only had 7 miles to go, lots of twisty 180-degree switchbacks, no guardrails, big drops(500'+).  We passed where the GPS told us to turn, no road and no campground, kept going. About 15 miles further we pulled over(there have been no pullouts to this point) at a wider spot and put on our 4-ways. Had only seen 4-5 cars but one never knows. 
 

We had no idea where we were, pulled out the maps(GPS useless) and concluded we had made a wrong turn someplace. Hard to believe, no place to make any wrong turns. The only choice was to continue until we could turn around, not happy about going back over the road we had just transversed. We thought we were on the road to Eagle, this is a definite no-no with our rig. We had no choice but to drive until we found a turnaround spot, luckily, the missing campground showed up, 10-15 miles from where the GPS said it would be. We pulled in since we knew we had been planning to stay the night. Site 1, the traditional host site, was occupied. He was outside so we asked where we were and were we on the correct road? He assured us all was well, in 13 miles we would see a “Y”, go right(left is the famous Eagle Road) and that was the TOW. He also assured us the road gets better, I sure hope so. 

I give our campground host credit for being at this campground. He has a 2-hour drive to get to Dawson City where there is a general store. He must like isolation because there is no TV or internet either. 

By now I am exhausted stressed and many other words. Tomorrow is another day.

In hindsight is we had looked at our topo map book we would have been fine and understood where we were. Some signage would have helped, all we had were mileage markers every 5 miles and knew we were on the Taylor Hwy(a big stretch of the imagination). The famous Milepost, which has excruciating detail, in the index never mentions the Taylor Hwy. After we stopped for the day we figured out it was under Klondike Loop.$^%^(&(

My sense of adventure was severely stretched today, a story for around the campfire. 

We were so anxious on this road we didn't take any pictures.  

Driving from Glenallen to Tok

The weather looked good today so we decided to take the Glennallen-Tok shortcut. We had been hearing horror stories about the state of the road but generally, this is overblown by people driving too fast for the road conditions.

If we took the long way around the time would have been 100+ miles and 3 hours.

There was nothing major wrong with the road. The first 20 miles or so there were many frost heaves, generally marked. Around mile 30-35 we encountered the construction zone, 12 miles long. We waited for our pilot car and the caravan started off. Yes, it was rough, yes, we had plenty of stops for construction vehicles. Most of us kept 500+ feet between ourselves so we wouldn’t get a rock chips or broken windshields. Took a while but we made it through. After that, the road varied from exceptional(newly paved) to feeling every crack to gravel and numerous potholes. All part of the adventure.

Our Construction Caravan

The Spectacular Scenery Continues

While driving the Tok cutoff the wrench light came on in the MH. When Tom checked it with our engine scanner a general error was indicated. All was well the next morning and we haven't seen the engine light again.

We parked along the road for the night. We find this generally easier than finding a campground and needing to unhook the toad.

Drive back to Glenallen and construction zones

Today we leave Valdez. I am mentally preparing myself for this drive after the horrible drive from Glennallen.

Thompson pass was lightly socked in with fog/clouds but no real problem. The long pilot car detour was still there so we slowly made our way through that. Of the 2 other construction zones where we had to go off-road in the MH. One had totally disappeared and the other we no longer had to go off-road. Life is good. The construction crews work long days and long weeks since there is a minimal amount of time to get the roads fixed. I guess they worked all weekend.

Package arrived, trip to Post Office

Our package arrived and we went to the Post Office. I was embarrassed to be picking up one little package. Most everybody there were picking up dozens of packages, the Post Office had large hand carts(4 of them) so people could get their packages to the cars and trucks.

Driving around Valdez

As usual, we are waiting for a package, this time our safety cables. Amazon 2 day shipping doesn’t work in AK. Closer to 4 days and longer.

We went to Worthington Glacier and though it was hazy we had a great view. On the way to the glacier we saw an eagle, just posing in a tree for us. Stopped by Horsetail Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. Found a tunnel that had been hand-cut(not sure what that really means) for a project and then abandoned.

Watched the fishermen catch fish along the shore of Prince William Sound. Visited Valdez Glacier Lake and saw mini icebergs floating along and on the way back saw 2 bear cubs. All-in-all a very good day.

Pictures are in a slightly random order.

Bridal Veil Falls

Hand-Cut Tunnel

Our Posing Eagle

Talk about going cross-country

Nice View along the River

Nice Fish!!!

Valdez Glacier Lake and mini-icebergs

Young Bears at a Campsite

Horsetail Falls

Worthington Glacier

Drive from Glennallen to Valdez, Bad Day

Today we drove from Glennallen to Valdez. This was a drive to remember. First, the road was in so-so shape. We felt every joint and every patch. We encountered 3 construction zones, all with a pilot car. In two of the zones we had to go on a temporary “road”. This was down a steep incline to about 12’ below the road surface and then immediately up the other side, dirt, mud, not paved. I really wasn’t sure we were going to make it and could hear the hitch towing the car dragging. I never thought I would off-road with the MH!

Another construction zone went on for many miles with stops here and there to let construction vehicle through.

The following are pictures of our day on the road.....

Sometimes you felt you were driving off the end of the road

Glaciers pretty much are all over

I breathed a sigh of relief when we were through all the construction until we went up to Thompson Pass, only 2800 feet but socked in with clouds. I don't think we could see 50’ in front of us, we had no knowledge of the road as to where we could pull off. We dropped to 20 MPH and put on our 4-way flashers. Then to top it all off we had a 10 mile downhill before getting to Valdez.

By the time we got to Valdez we had driven about 100 miles but I felt like it was 1000 miles.

The bad day wasn’t over. We went to unhitch the car and discovered a part of our hitch had broken off somewhere along the way and the toad had no brake lights or brakes for however long.

No rest for the weary, I found a picture of the missing part and we went off to the hardware store. Luckily they knew what it was and had one in stock. 

That morning noticed our heater(propane, blue flame, uses minimal propane and efficient) was shutting down by itself. This usually happens if you are about 8000-9000 feet due to lack of oxygen We were at sea level. Did some research and the orifice needs maintenance. Will work on that later. 
 

I had done some research on the internet regarding the propane heater and we needed to clean the orifice. Needed a pipe cleaner and a can of air. Back to the hardware store to buy a can of air. George(cat) loves pipe cleaners so we took one from his collection. He was not a happy cat. We thought he was going to be a problem when we cleaned the orifice and all he did was watch the pipe cleaner. We gave him his pipe cleaner back and he was happy.

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