Alaska Highway, Day 4

July 2nd

Whitehorse, Yukon Territories to Tok, AK, mile 1258

Welcome back Lords and Ladies….set down….buckle up…..and read on…..

Today was a day for glaciers, huge lakes and roller coaster roads! We drove alongside the Kluane National Park & Reserve. (Kluane Park info) (Pronounced Clue – a – ni) all the way to the Canadian – US border. The Kluane Lake is huge and there are many more lakes and rivers along the way. The roads deteriorated quickly, with lots of frost heaving, loose gravel and even some roadwork….imagine that. The frost heaving results from the frozen roads twisting and sinking when the ice thaws. Some of the heaving is so extreme the guardrails twist also. You really have to slow down when you come to a bad section and a lot of the highway has a continuous border of orange flags and cones.  Driving this portion of the highway is like one continuous replay of speed bumps and dips, sometimes on the diagonal. The way they repair the damage is by using a seal coat which consists of layers of loose gravel and tar applied over the damaged road bed. Kinda like the chip sealing you see in the states, only on steroids. Mile after mile of speeds under 40 mph with more dust than a dry country road and hopefully…fingers and toes all crossed….no windshield damage.

Crossing the border was a piece of cake. US Customs seemed to welcome us back. The roads were asphalt on the US side and we were enjoying a smoother ride but they soon started to deteriorate again. 

We have been seeing the strangest trees in addition to big, beautiful trees. We found out they are not diseased & dying but they are supposed to look that way. They are called black spruce. Gnarled and twisted, the exact opposite of the perfect Christmas tree, the black spruce is a tough little tree.  They grow in swampy permafrost soil, and are relatively old for their size. They have a symbiotic relationship with forest fires. Only after a wildfire do their cones open to drop seeds on the ground. So the   areas where they grow have been destroyed previously by fire.

Whitehorse, YT to Tok, AK

We made it to Tok  (Tok, AK information, pictures and history) and had cell phone coverage again and gas was around $4 a gallon….hallelujah….. gas in Canada was as much as $1.84 Canadian per liter…..that converts roughly to somewhere around $7.00 a gallon U.S….. and of course we drive such a fuel efficient vehicle, LOL. So let’s do the math….55 gallons times $7.00 per gallon at 8 miles a gallon average and we’ve got …...how far left to go?….OMG!  (link for pix)