Day Twenty-Eight - Tok, AK to Haines Junction, YT

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Today was a long road day and we'd be heading back into wildfire smokey skies. I could smell a hint of it when I stepped out of the trailer this morning. It was all around us the moment we got on the highway.

Back in our first week when we drove to Tok from Dawson City, Yukon we came down on Alaska Highway 5 (a.k.a. the Top of the World or Taylor Highway). When we reached the official end of the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction, AK we hadn't driven the entirety of the highway. We deviated in Watson Lake and drove north. Not far out of Tok we continued on Alaska Highway 2 (the Alaska Highway). Today's leg was part of the section of the Alaska Highway we missed on the way up.

Have I mentioned the dragonflies? Alaska may be known for its overabundance of mosquitos (to which I can attest), but it has a healthy dragonfly population as well. And of course they're Alaska-sized. We've had several hit the truck over the past couple weeks. One time I swear I saw one dragonfly's eyes bulge just before it ricocheted off the windshield.

We've heard other people on the same walkie-talkie channel as the one we use, but today the conversation between the other vehicles was really clear. I quickly realized it was between a couple of cars that came up behind us. Here's their conversation:

Woman: There's a whole fleet of RVs ahead of us.

(There were three of us. They got around Mike and me, but didn't have time to pass everyone. Eventually we all caught up with a big motorhome so that made a total of four in the "fleet.")

Woman: This guy's break lights are broken or something. They're always on.

(It's a state law in Alaska to drive with your lights on at all times.)

Man: Let's get around these f***ers.

They moved out from behind the smaller RV between Dave and Teri and us. As they passed Dave and Teri and the motorhome I pressed the Talk button and said, "See ya! And those are running lights, not brake lights." Some people ... sheesh!

Alaska Highway 2 South found a few areas of blue skies and sunshine for us. That was a nice treat.

About 20 miles from the Alaska-Yukon border we arrived at a construction flagger. As we approached, we crossed a creek with a large tube coming up out of it. They were pumping water from the creek to fill water trucks. Our pilot car led us through a very long stretch of dirty, muddy, road construction. Roughly ten miles later we found the flagger at the other end. It was slow and bumpy, we needed to find a rest area!

We pulled into a pullout, I grabbed the trailer keys and headed to the trailer. As I walked back I noticed the extra layer of dust and dirt on the tires, mud flaps and front corner of the trailer. I snapped a few pictures with my phone then went and unlocked the trailer door. I reached down to pull out the steps and got a handful of mud the color of potter's clay! Great!! Now I had to clean my hand before I could use the bathroom. It's a good thing I had baby wipes in the cabinet above the toilet.

While I was in the trailer I looked back to Day 1 of my blog to remind myself what fruits were not allowed into Canada. I remembered the whole bit about the apples and had packed my remaining one into the snack cooler. By this time I had already eaten it. Plums were on the list. I had plums in the fridge, so I grabbed them and brought them with me back to the truck. We were five miles from the Canadian border and I had four plums. If we were traveling at an average of 35 mph ... no, sorry. If I bit into 3/4 of the plums and they tasted watery with no flavor, or sour with very little flavor, how many plums did I actually consume in that five-mile stretch? As it turned out I had plenty of time to consume my illegal produce. The customs office was 20 miles into Canada! And to top it off, when we finally arrived the officer never asked about the food we may or may not have. I was so disappointed. She did ask if there were any people in the rig. That was new. We could have had crates of apples and plums and all she cared about was whether or not we were into human trafficking.

It was a little more scenic on this side of the border. There were several small lakes near the road that broke up the endless view of trees.

The roads weren't any better down here than when we last drove through Yukon. The surface alternated between pavement and chewed up pavement with gravel thrown over it to smooth it out. How could I have forgotten just how bad the Yukon's roads were? There were some parts where we had to slow to a crawl to get through because there was no line that was free of deep craters that wouldn't create turmoil inside the trailer. In our talks with other RVers we were warned about the road conditions from Destruction Bay to Haines Junction. If that section of road is what we were warned about it must be nearly impassable!

As the road wound around the hills above Destruction Bay we saw something light brown moving in the grass and bushes off to the right. Grizzly! It was dining away on the leaves and maybe berries of the bushes it was in. We stopped a safe distance away so we wouldn't disturb it. I must have taken 20 pictures as well as a short video. I just kept clicking away until we started moving again. That was amazing! Our first grizzly sighting and it wasn't a brief one. We probably could have stayed there taking picture after picture for a long time, but we still had a way to go before we stopped for the night.

The road the rest of the way to the campground was nothing compared to what we dealt with between Tok and Destruction Bay. We must have misunderstood the warning. So glad it wasn't worse!

We pulled into camp about 8:00. Camp tonight was at a gas station. One-stop shopping; there was a gas station, an RV park, and a little grocery store ... and zero wifi. When I got out of the truck to do my part of setting up I took a look at the truck. It finally looks (close up) like it's been to Alaska and back.

Once again, the slides didn't want to cooperate. Mike pushed the reset button and I pushed the slide button. It slid. Whew! About halfway out it stopped. !wehW We tried for several minutes to get the reset button to stay pushed in, but it didn't want to. Dave and Mike had to crank it out the rest of the way by hand. It required both of them because it was difficult to get the notched end of the long crank handle where it needed to be in order to move the slide. One person could do it, but it would have taken longer. We were NOT looking forward to fighting with the bed slide again. I pushed the bed slide button and the slide moved! It didn't stop until it was fully extended. No idea what made it work, but it did. I tried the dining room slide again and it worked, too. We were all confused. Hopefully they'll still cooperate in the morning after they've had a good night's sleep.

It's been a long day. As I said, there's no wifi. No blog posting tonight. We'll talk again soon.

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