Princess Hotel

We get up late and decide to have breakfast at the hotel.  Most of the tour bus folks have already had breakfast, so not many people left in the restaurant.

This morning we first go to the Large Animal Research Farm to see Musk Ox, Reindeer and Wood Bison. They currently do not have any Caribou. Reindeer are related to Caribou, but are not native to Alaska. They were brought from Europe for  a food source for the native Alaskans since some of their traditional food sources were decimated, seals, Caribou, Bison etc.

Reindeer

Musk Ox

We next head to see a section of the Alaska Pipeline.  I also wanted to see Gold Dredge number 8, but that was a bust since they combine it with a short train ride twice a day and you are not allowed to drive directly to the dredge. It is basically a ½ day tour for the Princess bus tour folks.

After gassing up at Costco in town we head back to the hotel after having a nice warm sunny day. Central Alaska in the summer can be much warmer and drier than the coastal Anchorage area. Folks on my Alaska RV Facebook page are bitching about how cold and rainy it has been. I guess we will be doing the same soon.

We get back to the hotel early and head back to the outdoor restaurant with our iPads and have a drink and get some work done. It is even warmer today. Temperature hit 82 briefly. It is even nicer on the deck today. We eventually order dinner, bowls of Smoked Salmon Chowder, Sourdough Bread and shrimp.  The Dessert again is Rhubarb, Strawberry crisp with Ice Cream. I could repeat this for a week before I would get bored, if ever.

Princess Hotel

It rains hard overnight but is still raining when we wake up.  I am not in a rush to leave in the rain, so we have a leisurely breakfast, hoping the rain will soon stop. It lightens up and I put on my rain jacket and put the power cable and hose away. Since everything is wet, it goes in the bucket and I put it all in the bathroom to dry off. 

I still have to dump the gray and black tanks and fill the water tank. Next I use their wash station to try to get the RV clean or at least the layer of mud off. The mud is off, but it is not fully clean. Finally we leave at noontime as the rain stops.  

Old Car, Old Man

After a quick stop at Fred Myers supermarket, we head to the Automobile Museum. Cars from 1898 to 1925 and almost all them are in operating condition.  Very interesting and it takes about two hours to get through the museum which is also a history of automobiles in Alaska. 

For the next two nights we are staying at the Fairbanks Princess Hotel.  I had not realized that Princess Cruise line has lots of bus and train tours in Alaska and they have a number of hotels to service their tours.  I got a very reasonable price of $150 a day. Most other hotels in the area were starting at $300 a day. Most of the customers at the hotel were there by bus, The parking lot was only ¼ full with cars. This is a very large 4 floor hotel with 3 long wings. The clerk at the counter must of really liked my hat she complimented me on, because we get a 1st floor room on the river, just a short walk from the lobby. I was a little skeptical at first, but the hotel turned out to be very nice, with a couple restaurants. We decide to stay put and have dinner on the outside patio. The sun has come out and it is quite pleasant to be outdoors. We have a very good dinner.  I really like the salmon chowder.

After dinner I have to make a quick visit to ACE hardware to get an odd-ball screw driver to get the back of my HP laptop off. I want to see if I can figure out why I am getting the message “hard drive issues”, even though it has a solid state drive.

Back at the hotel I try to get the blackout curtain tight against the window since we are facing the sun in the west, before we go to bed.

Fairbanks RV Park

Get me the fly swatter

In the morning we drive back into town after I realize that the town of Delta is the official end of the ALCAN. We want to find the official end marker.  We find the Visitor Center, Museum and Farmers market.  Unfortunately the Marker is on vacation as they are making a new cement base for it. 

Missing Marker

We met a bunch of locals at the farmers market. The farms seem as productive in their short season of under 4 months as in Vermont’s 6 month season. Both probably receive the same amount of sunlight in their respective seasons. Anyways I leave with a couple bags of homemade cookies for the road

Again we meet up with our two motorcycle friends from Texas, back at the Visitor Center. They stayed in Tok last night.

Biker gang from Texas and babe from Vermont

We only have a two hour drive to Fairbanks and the day turns mostly sunny and we have a nice ride. We head to the Fairbanks Visitor Center which is park visitor center part museum, a very worthwhile stop. At the center RV parking lot we run into the couple that we briefly met at the above the treeline parking lot we stayed overnight at on the Top of the World Highway.  (They had briefly stopped to check out the view before moving on. I told them their mud flaps were dragging.  They removed them and stored them in the trailer they were pulling.) We were both heading to the same campground, Rivers Edge, for the evening. Kim and Neil mentioned that they planned to go to Salmon Bake for dinner at Pioneer Park, close to the campground which sounds like a good idea for us, too.

As I am heading to the showers at the RV Park, Kim and Neil are just pulling in.  After I finish and am walking back to our site I see Neil and and their teenage guest, Milo struggling to take their jeep out of the trailer, just to drive a couple miles to dinner.  I tell Neil they can ride with us and save the hassle of unloading and reloading their vehicle.

We have a good time at the outdoor dinner at Salmon Bake in Pioneer Park. After dinner we visit their site and the 5 of us play cards at the picnic table until 11:00PM. The sun still has not set and I have to remind Linda of the fact that it is really time for bed.

Playing Cards in the midnight sun

Delta Junction

We had a nice nights sleep in a large gravel pull out area above the treeline.  This is an area frequented by a herd of Caribou. They like to graze above the treeline on the alpine grasses, where the annoying bugs are few due to the wind and elevation.

We leave and drive above the tree line for about 20 minutes to the Customs Station at the border and no luck spotting any Caribou. The customs agent is only interested if we are carrying firewood or have fireworks.  He is the first customs agent to notice we have never signed our passports. 

The most northern US/Canada Customs border crossing

My 50th state, Linda has been to Alaska before me.

The road from Dawson City to the border is dirt and gravel, but is relatively smooth. Once we cross the border the road is paved for the next 12 miles or so. What a relief, from dodging potholes and rough spots. After the pavement ends it is payback time.  In many places the road is severely wash boarded, which almost brings us to a halt when we get bouncing so badly. We drove 30 miles and 10,000 steps on my Fit Bit, it was slow going to the town of Chicken, Alaska

We stop at the RV park at Chicken, mistaking it for the Chicken Cafe.  We run into the Texans on the motorcycles we met yesterday. Their bikes are almost as muddy as our RV.  Last night I had to clean off an area on our running board to be able to step into the RV side door without tracking in additional dirt.  We do find the Chicken Cafe and have lunch.

Dirty Texans and Vermonters

I looked all over Dawson City for a “Klondike Bar”, I guess this is the closest I going to get

The next 50 miles or so is paved with “sealcoat & gravel”.  It is a hard surface, but much noisier than Asphalt roads, because of the rough surface from all the gravel embedded in it and much thinner, so they quickly develop potholes.  We can drive much faster, but have to slow down for the potholes and repaired sections. We finally get back on the west bound asphalt paved ALCAN highway and start driving the speed limit. Cell reception is still sparce and we continue on to the Town of Delta Junction before we find good reception with a campground, 

Top of the World Highway

I plan to leave Dawson City around noon, taking the ferry across the Yukon to head towards Alaska. In the morning we have two more things to see in Dawson. It rained pretty hard last night and everything is still very wet. I still have to pump out the holding tanks and fill the water tank.  With 20-20 hindsight I should have done that last evening, but was too lazy.

Dawson City

Yukon river flowing north to the Bering Sea

The first thing I wanted to do was to drive up to the “Dome”, a mountain top with a view of Dawson City and the Yukon River.  There are still low clouds and the “Dome” is in the clouds, but I hope it will clear as we drive up. The view is somewhat obscured when we arrive but gradually starts to clear as we walk around.  We get talking with two motorcyclists from Texas that plan to ride to Prudhoe Bay. A tough ride in a 4 wheel drive vehicle, even tougher on a bike with trucks blowing by you. One of the fellows shows me near live pictures of Hurricane Beryl overflowing his swimming pool back in Huston. His wife has lost power and is not happy he is off heading to Alaska.  It finally clears and we get some fabulous views.

We head back down to Dawson to our second stop, The Dawson City Museum.  We leave there and gas up. Driving back through town we see that the bakery is open and stop in. We should have been here 3 hours ago, not much left, we get a scone and a sticky bun and order a sandwich to go. Seeing the empty bins and the labels, it probably is a good thing we arrived late, saved us a mess of calories.  

Dawson city Museum

We drive down to the ferry which is run by the government.  It runs 24/7 and is free.  Runs from mid-May to mid-October. Most winters the government maintains an Ice Road across the river. When they put a closed sign up prior to ice out in the Spring the locals still drive across, pushing their luck. There are a number of residents who live on the other side of the river. During freeze up and ice out they have to find a bed in town if they have a job there or stock up on food for a month or two.

We are lucky, must be a slow tourist day. We are the first vehicle in line and the ferry is currently on the other shore.  I am told the wait can be a couple hours at times.  The ferry can hold maybe 8 cars, but RV’s, trailers, 5th wheels take up a lot of space, slowing the process down.  There is at least a 5 mile anhour current here and it makes for an interesting crossing.

Ferry coming in

Ferry dropping us off, kind of like a landing craft dropping us at the beach

One of my RV apps shows a couple very interesting free boondocking sights on the far end of the Top of the World highway. We stop at one of them for the night about 20 minutes east of the border with Alaska. We parked at the highest point on the highway above the tree line with fabulous 360 degree views.  Herds of Caribou do wander through above the tree line tundra here, so we are hoping to get lucky and see some tonight or tomorrow morning as we head to Alaska.  Our first stop after Customs is the town of “Chicken” and then on to “Tok”. 

Parked for the night

Sunset is now around Midnight.  I was hoping for clear skies tonight, being high up with a clear view to the western horizon. We have had rain and sun today, but now at 10:00PM, as I write this, it is cloudy so you can’t really discern sunset, its just a long gradual slide into dusk and twilight.  Even down in the valley in Dawson City it doesn’t get fully dark at the maximum around 2:00AM. Sunrise is around 4:00AM.  On the other hand it does make it easier to go to sleep.  When the sky is clear you have no idea how late it really is

Dawson City

Slow day, enjoying not having to travel today. We are staying at the “Gold Rush CampGround” for two nights. We made a reservation yesterday at the Visitors Center to tour the SS Keno the dry docked steam ship at Dawson City. Some south bound travelers tipped us off to making reservations a day a head for this tour.

I again try to find out why our thermostatic mixer for our bathroom sink and shower is not working correctly. Water gets too hot and can not be adjusted.  I finally decide to remove the recommended check valves and the system now works as it is suppose to.  Set the temperature you want and no more fiddling the the hot and cold, wasting water trying to get it adjusted,

At 12:45 we head to the Visitors Center and people without reservations were out of luck,  This was one of the last paddle wheel steamer ships which was mainly used to ship silver ore. It did have passenger cabins, but not as fancy as some of the larger steam ships on the Yukon. Many of the steamers were built in Whitehorse, but early in the Gold rush some came from elsewhere all the way up the Yukon River from the Bering Sea.  I would imagine taking one of these flat bottom paddle wheelers out in the open ocean was rather risky.  The SS Klondike, being restored at Whitehorse is much bigger.

After the tour we have a late lunch and split an ice cream cone. We call this a Dave & Joan, after our good friends. You get an ice cream cone and a cup and scoop some of the ice cream in to the cup, which I get.

A “Dave & Joan”

We head back to the RV and the sun comes out and it gets comfortably warm. I put out our ground mat and chairs and we sit in the sun with the awning out. As soon as we get comfortable it clouds over and it’s cold again. We spend some time cleaning carpets, sweeping out the RV and  the front passenger areas. We have been picking up a lot of dirt, mud and dust.

We are not quite this dirty