We had a very nice visit with our friends in Anchorage, and then visited the Alaska Airmen's Museum.  It is situated on Lake Hood, which is on the International Airport.  It is lined with aircraft. so many I couldn't believe it.

         

                                            Lake Hood and Lake Spenard Seaplane Base

We visited downtown Anchorage and stopped to look across Cook Inlet, and could see Mt. Redoubt, which, as an active volcano, has sprinkled the city many times, with ash.  Also we could see Mt. Illiama, another active volcano.

                                                     Downtown Anchorage Viewing Point

We then drove down to the Turnigan Arm of Cook Inlet.  There is a beautiful view of the mountains across Cook Inlet.  They are 75 to 100 miles away, but look much closer.  They start at sea level, and are 10 to 15,000' high. 

                                                   The Aleutian Range across Turnigan Arm

We departed this morning and headed for Glenallen, AK.  We travelled up the Matanuska
Valley, along the Matanuska River.  The road kept getting narrower and more winding.
Just before one gets to the Tahneta Pass, the Matanuska Glacier comes into view.  It is
in a spectacular valley that runs to the South for many miles.

                                                            Matanuska Glacier

                                                               Tahneta Pass Area

                                          Tahneta Pass Area, Wrangel Mountains in Distance



The Tahneta Pass area is sub Alpine with  lots of muskeg, and mosquitoes and the pass elevation
is about 3300' .   The road improved as we went East.  We are now in a nice RV park in Glenallen,
and are headed to Tok, AK.  The mosquitoes here are big enough to carry you away, and there are swarms of them.

We had an interesting trip to Cantwell, AK.  The wind picked up drastically as we got closer to Denali Park.  It was 25MPH, with gusts to 45MPH.  Needlessly to say, we had to slow down.  When we arrived at the park, it started to rain, and when we woke up in the morning in Cantwell, we had silver dollar snowflakes falling.  We never did see Mt. McKinley, as there was low cloud cover.  This is what we woke up to.

We left Cantwell, and traveled South and crossed Summit Pass, the high point of 2300', between Fairbanks and Anchorage.  We did a side trip to Talkeetna, which I have always wanted to see.  It is the spot where tourists can catch fight to see Mt. McKinley, but not on this day, as the mountain was shrouded in clouds. 

                                                                   Talkeetna Airport

                                              DeHavilland  Beaver Landing at Talkeetna

We crossed the Tannana River South of Fairbanks and crossed an older bridge and took a picture of the the Alaska Railroad river bridge .

                                                         Tannana River at Nenana, AK

                                                    Tannana Bridge at Nenana, AK

                                                      Alaska Railroad Bridge

We are spending several days in Anchorage seeing the sights, and visiting old friends, who flew for ATT Alascom.  They cover all of Alaska, including the Aleutian Chain, with several aircraft, taking technicians to repair the communication systems.

One of the interesting things we saw was at Delta Junction.  The Alaska Pipeline crosses the Tanana river there.  It is an impressive installation.

                                                  Alaska Pipeline Tanana River Crossing

The pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay, AK., on the North Slope to Valdez, AK.  It's over 800 miles long, and the pipe is 4' in diameter, plus it is insulated against the weather.  We arrived in Fairbanks, a bussiling city of about 100,000 people.  We are staying at the Rivers Edge RV park, right on the banks of the Chena River, which runs through the city.  We visited the Pioneer Village, a tourist atraction, which houses the native artifacts building, air museum, a 1899 steam locomotive, the first one in Alaska, and was used in mining.  It wasn't very big, and was narrow gage.  We did the afternoon tour on the Riverboat Discovery, very enjoyable.  It travels down the Chena river to where it meets the Tanana river.  We stopped at a recreated Athabascan village and listened to native people speak about how they survived before the white man came.  There are some beautiful homes along the river, and our commentator mentioned that the land along the river was worth over $100,000 an acre.  We are under the flight pattern of the Fairbanks International Airport, and I can't believe all the aircraft go that go by.  I am including several pictures of our river cruise. 

                                                         Riverboat Discovery III

The company was started in 1898, hauling freight for the miners, and in 1950 started the excursion business in Fairbanks.  They have done freight all the way to the mouth of the Yukon in the Bering Sea, but just do the passenger business now.  Along the way we stopped at Susan Butcher's dog kennels.  She passed away from cancer, after winning the Iditirod Race four times.  They use a 4 wheeler to train the dogs in the summer time, and on the frozen river in the winter time.  Iditirod winner , Lance Macke,y was greeting people at the landing.

                                                       Original Discovery I Riverboat

                                                              New Log Home

                                                             The Chena River

                                                        Athabascan Woman's Winter Coat

This is a picture of a coat worn by the Athabascan women in the winter,  It is beautiful, with several different furs used in the construction, including wolverine for the inner hood.

                                                              Original Freight Loading Area
This is where the freight was loaded to go down the river to the Yukon and the mines and villages

                                                                   Paddlewheel
    

This picture shows how close the the shore the paddlewheeler works.  It has a draft of 3', and the paddlewheel and rudders only take 24".

This picture is of a 900' Supercub strip along the river, close to where we dock.
We have enjoyed our visit to Fairbanks, but are ready to hit the road again.  Tomorrow, we are off to Cantwell, AK and Denali Park.

We had a good time visiting Whitehorse, but it was time to head down the road.  Our next destination was Destruction Bay on Lake Kluane.  It received its name from a very bad storm in 1942 that caused lots of damage to the ALCAN Highway camp for construction workers.  Kluane Lake is 38 miles long and is famous for its whitefish and lake trout.

                                                            Moose on the roadside

                                                               Mountains at Kluane Lake
                                               

                                                                   RV Park at Kluane Lake

We overnighted, and left the next day for Tok Junction, Alaska,  The first 100 miles took us 3 hours, as the road had so many frost heaves, we could only go less than 40 MPH.  The country is beautiful, and the road dept. was working on it.  The problem is that there is permafrost here, and the ground will thaw in one spot and not in another, so that is what causes the frost heaves.  At the RV park, the permafrost is 160' deep, and his well is 170', and has to circulate all the time to keep from freezing.
One has to be tough to live up here.  As we moved towards Tok, the air became very smoky, as there is a big fire going on the Kenai Peninsula, and the smoke was traveling North.

                                                        Smoky View of Wrangel Mountains

It was sure nice to cross the US border and have the signs in miles and MPH.  I never have been a metric person.  The area around Tok is very flat, with lots of swampy areas.

                       
                                            Mirror Lake and Reflections of the Mountains

After Tok, we are headed for Fairbanks, AK, and do some touristy things.  It is light 20 hrs a day up here, now, and the day's length is 21 1/2 hrs. in June.

Some views of being in Canada.  Now that we are in Whitehorse, I would like to comment on what I see up here.  All of the Canadians we have met, are very nice to visit  with and very helpful.   I feel that they are suffering from too much government, just like we are.  The RV parks are nice, but there are charges for everything; showers, laundry, cable TV and it just goes on and on.  One car wash wanted $1 a minute for the wash.  Restaurant food is very expensive.   The price of gas is between $5 and $6 US, and groceries are at least 20% higher than ours.  I am not going to complain about Glasgow grocery stores, when I get home.  We have visited the Transportation Museum, the McBride Museum, and the stern wheeler, the Klondike.  The TransportationMuseum covered everything from the native boats, dog sleds, trains, trucks, and aviation.  One of the exhibits is a 1920's vintage Fairchild FC-2.  It is being rebuilt, and a Waco EGC-8, several Fokkers, and a good display of a pilot and his lady  passenger  that survived for 49 days, after crashing in a Howard DGA-15, and the weather was as cold as -50.  They also had a US Army tundra buggy for servicing  the Dewline Radar sites.  The tires were about 8' high and 3' across, and it is as long as a big truck.  The airport has a DC-3 for a windsock.  It was used during WWII, and finally ended up being a freighter, and then abandoned.  It was restored and set up on the pole at the airport.

                                                               Whitehorse Windsock
                   

                                                        Waco at the Transportation Museum

The McBride Museum had exhibits about the native population, from when they crossed the Bering Straits, and the wildlife here, and an exhibit called "From Gold to Government".  It was about the early days of Whitehorse to modern days.  They had a gold exhibit, showing the different golds from different regions, with the golds having different colors, due to other metals in them. An early printing press, barber shop, radio equipment, and other  exhibits.  They had on of the first steam engines to operate on the Whitepass and Yukon Railroad.  It was built in 1899, and operated until 1940.
 The Klondike paddlewheeler was very impressive.  It was 240' long and only drew 40"  of water.  The accommodations for the first class passengers were top notch, and second class couldn't come up on that deck.

  

                                    
                                                                 The Klondike
The boat sits on the Yukon Rive in downtown Whitehorse.

Our trailer has been doing well, with lots of space for kitty, Roberta, and I. The only problems we have had is a broken screen door latch, which we will have to order, because the trailer is too new, and our Dometic 300 toilet, which had an internal leak, and smelled like an outhouse.  I called the company and the expedited a toilet to Whitehorse, and I installed the new one in a half an hour.  Tomorrow, we are on our way to Destruction Bay, YT and the next day to Tok Junction, Alaska ,
and on to Fairbanks for a few days.

From Muncho Lake , we traveled to Watson Lake, YT.   We crossed the Continental Divide, where the waters go East into the MacKenzie River and into the Arctic Ocean, and just yards from that stream is the Swift River that runs into the Yukon and the Bering Sea, (Pacific Ocean).  The divide is about 3500' high.

                                                                   Continental Divide

                                                                     Continental Divide




 Along the way, we ran into Caribou and Wood Buffalo.  The buffalo were on the road and you had to wait for them to move.  The roads here would remind one of Yellowstone Park, with lots of curves and turns.

                                                                 Caribou
                                                                      

                                                                       Wood Buffalo

We stopped at the world famous Laird Hot Springs.  The water from them runs int the Laird  River, which runs into the Arctic Ocean.

                                                                     Laird Hot Springs
We arrived at Watson Lake and had heard of the Sign Post City, but were surprised ant how big it was.  There were signs from all over the world.  It takes up several acres of land on the West edge of the city.

                                                              Sign Post City
We stayed at the Baby Nugget RV park west of the city.  All the parks we have stayed in have been very good, but some of the internet connections were not good.  We are now off to Whitehorse, YT.

                                                                   


                                       
                                    

From Dawson Creek, we made our way to Fort Nelson, which is at an elevation of 1300', the lowest elevation, at the Fort Nelson bridge.  Within 100 miles, we would go over a pass at 4250', the highest point on the ALCAN. 

   This was a pass that we had to cross after leaving Fort Nelson on our way to Muncho Lake for an overnight at the Northern Rockies RV Park.  It was a long climb.

                                                           

This is a picture of the first bear we saw.  Roberta figured we had traveled 1625 miles before we saw
one.  Since then we have seen many more.
                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                             
  











This is a picture of Summit Lake, the high point of the ALCAN.  It was still partially frozen, as was Muncho Lake, where we stayed

                                                                      Stone Sheep
We came upon these Stone Sheep along the road, and I took one picture of a moose, that didn't want to be photographed.

                                                                        Moose Butt
 This is my moose picture.

                                                                        Muncho Lake RV Park.
This lodge and RV park was a nice place to stay.  They are off the grid and use generators to operate the camp.  In the summer, there is a turbine Otter and a Cessna 206 on floats that operate flight seeing trips from here.