Westlake

Drive....every day, a little bit at least. And on July 10 we reentered the USA! Its seems so odd to think we drove all the way through Canada to get here. It looked so far on the map and day by day we inched closer. And the exciting part is that now we get time in Alaska, and then drive all the way back!

So this day was just one long, slow, DUSTY drive. Top of the World highway is all gravel, but pretty well graded. The drive is pretty cool, 80 miles of ridge top driving, but the smoke from the fires really obscured the views. Just a LOT of gray sky....and DUST!

Crossing the border went smoothly. After I was mildly chastised for taking pictures instead of being part of "inspection" process; we spent some time chatting with the border agent. He asked if we had seen any caribou and was shocked when he heard we had seen (of course) NONE! Apparently the various parts of the herd have been seen around the border quite a bit. In fact a week or so ago the border was closed for over 3 hours because they were hanging out and grazing at the crossing! The overall herd is sized at approximately 72,000!! And we didnt see even 1! (Although Tom thinks he saw a hoof print at a rest stop)
Well we found out the road beyond the border was not only DUSTY, but had that awful "washboard" texture that Tom just hates! He kept turning to me and asking "did you know it was going to be like this?" 40 miles later he was happy to find pavement!

We stopped at Chicken, AK for a chicken sandwich. This little town is all about chickens...and has no water system, sewer system or power source! And the name Chicken came about because they wanted to name the town Ptarmigan (state bird) but couldn't spell it....hmmmm? Finished the day with more driving, this time it was a mixture of patches, gravel heaved pavement, but no "washboard" and finally arrived at Tok, AK.

We pulled into an RV park for the night a little weary, and a little dusty! Inside and outside....you could write your name on some of the surfaces, check out our stove top picture!Read more