Today we made it!!!
We are in Alaska!!!
After an all you can eat breakfast at the campground in Teslin, and making full use of the dumping and fresh water facilities, off we went Northwestwards.
Now I have to give a big thank you to the red ninja rubber duck.
As some of you know, we collect rubber ducks, and across the dashboard of the coach sit the ducks who behave themselves the most, so they get to see the sights.
On the extreme left is red ninja, who is actually my left side marker. I line him up with the yellow line in the middle of the road, and I don’t hit anything!
We had to go over the Teslin River bridge, which was under repair, and very tight, so red ninja did his stuff, and Captain Cautious came through, again.
Check out the pix, even the ducks were scared.
We arrived in Whitehorse, which is very RV friendly, causing the unforeseen problem of so many coaches and trailers, the parking lots were jammed and difficult to navigate.
We changed our route, and decided to come to Skagway, down the Klondike Highway.
We stopped at Emerald Lake, which is colored by light reflecting off the bed of the lake, known as marl.
She is everywhere!
We came through a town called Carcross, which boasts the smallest desert in the world.
Sand deposits left by a glacier gazillions of years ago, combined with winds blowing down the valley make it impossible for vegetation to grow, says the book.
There was an area further along which looked like the surface of the moon, hence the name Moonscape. The ground was all rocky, but rounded and smooth, interspersed with lots of small lakes, which apparently freeze to a depth of 3 feet in the winter.
The touristy brochures say that the drive to Skagway across the border is gentle and relaxed.
We came down an 11% descent, the steepest yet on the trip, for 11 ½ miles, through White Pass, very wiggly wiggly, and a lot of it was freshly repaired, so loose gravel and dust everywhere.
It was 20 minutes or so of intense concentration, but no problem, using the gears, brakes and engine brake.
There are several truck runaway ramps, which appear to be at 90 degrees to the road, and some strange colored poles above the road. We found out that these are markers for snow ploughs to find the road during the winter!!
So, into Skagway.
The town is nestled at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by snow capped mountains, with the open sea passage at one end.
Very picturesque and quaint.
On Wednesdays in the summer they have seven cruise ships at once, and 15,000 people descend on the town. Guess who is leaving before Wednesday.
There are only 4 RV parks here, and they are all full coz it’s a holiday weekend, we of course have totally lost track of time, so Marlipops went into the police station, chatted up the chief of police, and got us a pass to stay at the city park, free of charge.
Marla has been incredible with campground finding, she has researched and come up trumps every time.
We were worried originally about whether we should book ahead, but decided not to, which has turned out so well, since we change our itinerary as we go. This is the beauty of this kind of travel.
Today’s beer trial took a new twist. They sell a variety pack, so feeling it would be rude not to buy one, I tested Alaskan Summer Ale, Alaskan ESB, Alaskan Amber, and Alaskan IPA, all brewed in Juneau, AK.
All were good!!!!
We have some kind of internet availability here, so tomorrow we will go into town and see if we can transmit.
Wildlife watch today was a squirrel.
