Report Two
North To Alaska, report No. 2
Dateline: Fairbanks, AK
Greetings from Fairbanks and welcome to report No. 2
Well, been a busy week.
6/22 - Takini Hot Springs, North of Whitehorse
We drove down to Skagway for the day - it's not a huge drive by today's standards,
but since the road more or less follows the Chilkoot route, you can see just how
brutal that trip must have been when you were hauling the required 1,000+ Lbs. of
supplies required by the Mounties to cross into Canada in those days.
Skagway is an interesting town in that much of the center of town is very old-school
and looks much like it did during the gold rush days. However, there are more jewelry
stores than there are on 5th Ave in NYC. Still a good visit as the Park Service has
lots of the buildings restored and with good displays.
6/23 and 24 - Haines AK
Another border crossing. Haines is a more authentic Alaska seacoast town, not as 'scenic'
in the tourist sense but much more interesting as a living community. The drive again was
dramatic. We camped in town - the RV park was decent and with great location but the bugs
are still thick.
There are several good sights to see including a native arts center where they carve totem
poles - they had a good 40'er going when we were there. There's also a Hammer Museum with
no kidding, about 1,500 hammers - for things you never would have thought of - it was worth
the $3 admission.
Mosey's Cantina had excellent mexican food and was just enough off the beaten path that we
were glad for the recommendation. It was a very local place.
6/25 - Kluane Lake, Yukon
This is a huge lake between Haines Junction and the Alaska border - we camped right on the
edge of the lake at the Cottonwood RV park - good location and great views but the wind came
up during the night and was blowing so hard we could not cook breakfast - we hit the road early
and headed west to Alaska.
6/26 - Eagle Trails Campground - 12 miles south of Tok [pronounced TOKE, not Tock]
This state campground was secluded and featured the worst water we have seen - brown out of the
hand pump. But was a good spot to camp away from it all.
Ernie's Roadhouse in Tok is was a good place for lunch but the supermarket in Tok leaves much to
be desired. The best thing I can say is that they had Johnsonville Brats.
We decided to continue on to Valdez and finish off the lower coastal towns. Another nice driving
day but the scenery is not that dramatic compared to the last few days.
6/27 - Valdez, AK
We camped in the city campground out by the airport - we were two camps from the local nesting pair
of Eagles.
Valdez has little to recommend it except as a place to get on the water for either Glacier tours or
sea kayaking. The city itself is all new since the 1964 earthquake which more or less demolished the
old town. They have a decent museum but apart from the physical location - spectacular, there is little
to recommend the town of Valdez as an attraction. And it rained.
They get so much snow here it's amazing - pics of the city in winter show snowbanks 6' tall and more in places.
I did some radio work but it's so far down in the hills that contacts were difficult at best.
I was able to check into the Sniper's net and made my only Field Day contact here.
Drove past the HAARP project [you all remember their moonbounce experiment earlier this year?] but you could
not see anything from the road and the gates were locked. Pity. It's just outside Gakona and they do have
an open house towards the end of summer every year.
6/28 - 50 miles south of Delta Junction - BLM campground
Another remote camp and a nice one indeed - lots of trees and I managed to rig up my 80 meter dipole to try a few
more field-day contacts but no one was listening hard enough for me to make contacts and calling CQ was no help.
Bought myself a nice new knife though - found a local who makes his own damascus steel and bought myself a souviner
my second knife from Alaska - I bought one on my first vacation up here 10 years ago. This one cost more but is
very nice with unique scales on the handle.
Had a Wolf sighting today - a brown coated wolf crossed the road about 100 yard in front of our car
6/29 - Fairbanks, AK
Drove up past Delta Junction today saw Ft. Greely where they are building StarWars missle launchers - nothing visible
from the road but they have re-paved their old runway since I was there last. Wonder if they still have the portable
atomic power plant there?
This road parallels the pipeline and we got lots of views of that plus some nice mountain views.
Our camp tonight is the Chena RV park south of town on the float plane lake - we have small planes coming and going
at all hours now. The service buildings here are all salvaged pipeline construction camp buildings, which I find
amusing.
We are going to stock up here to go north. I don't know if we will go all the way up, depends on the road, but we
are going to try and get to where the sun won't set for at least one night - I have to see that at least once.
Sorry there are no pics posted, this connection is not that good and I'm running out of time, it's almost 2300 local
and the sun is about to set as I sit outside smoking cigars and drinking Mt. Dew.
Hope you enjoy the report and I'll post again next week or so when we are a bit farther along.
The trailer and car are doing fine as are we.
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