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Published: July 11th 2011
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Cannery
Processing salmon I have been making notes for the blog every day, but either we didn’t have internet or, if we did, it was soooooo slow. How we in the Lower 48 take some things for granted…….
Tuesday, July 5th, we drove around Haines. We went west first – to the fish cannery. We got to the cannery at break time. The folks explained that we could take a self-guided walking tour around the cannery for free OR one of the workers would walk us around and talk to us for $20. I think they might have been joshing us; we opted for the self-guided tour. There were explanations at each window explaining what was going on inside. (good choice) We bought some sockeye salmon for $7.99 per pound. Can’t wait to grill it. We may become salmon fans after all.
After the cannery, we took off the other direction and stopped at Chilkoot Lake for a picnic lunch. Some kayakers had just put in and soon disappeared across the lake. Still looking for grizzly bears!
That evening, the RV park managers hosted a crab feed. They bought Dungeness crabs for $6 each at the boat harbor, cooked them and
Cannery
Vacu-sealing the salmon before deep freezing everyone in the park brought a dish. So yummy! Think about how much we pay for crab meat at home.
Wednesday was departure day. We drove to Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, about 250 miles of gorgeous scenery. Jim said he is “prettied out.” This was just a one-night stop before heading back into Alaska at Tok. Tok is the junction of the roads that go north to Fairbanks or south to Glennallen and Anchorage. At Happy Hour, we learned that Ross was held up at the Canadian border for an hour. Evidently, he looked more suspicious than the rest of us. They searched his coach. They took an orange from Jack and Mike. We breezed through and we had a shotgun (which we declared and had a Canadian permit for.)
Thursday, we knew we were going over the worst roads in the Yukon. Since this entire area is built on permafrost, there are frost heaves and many, many patches of loose gravel. Permafrost is frozen ground that lies beneath a thin layer of topsoil. It’s bad in this area because it melts somewhat and the road subsides.
As we were leaving the campground, before we even got
to the BAD road, a car passed us and threw a rock onto the windshield. After 4,223 miles, we got our first big rock chip on the windshield. Never fear, Jim’s rock chip fixing skills will come in handy. When we got to Tok, we stayed at Sourdough RV Park. They were having a pancake toss at 7:00 followed by music. Each person gets 3 chances to toss a really floppy pancake into a bucket. If he succeeds, he wins a free sourdough pancake breakfast. I tried; first pancake, way too short, second pancake, way too long, third pancake rimmed the lip of the bucket and fell outside. Good thing I’m not a fan of pancakes anyway. Kareoke followed, with a Johnny Cash impersonator singing many of Johnny’s greatest hits. He also did some Johnny Horton and Willie Nelson tunes. Naturally, he was originally from Texas!!
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John
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chilkkot Lake
Loved that pic. of camp set up along the lake, reminded me of the time we set camp on the side of the road (somewhere up there) for the night overlooking a lake like that, the mountains edgeing right down into the lake are so awesome, the beauty of is something to behold. again, enjoy it........