Entering Alaska!
Tuesday june 26.
Our alarm went at 8, but it was raining pretty hard and we were tired, so we went back to sleep until 9, then got up, despite the continuing rain.
Julie folded the laundry we'd washed the day before, then we looked around site together, because the rain had slowed to a slow sprinkle. They had quite a few army vehicles and some road equipment the army had used to build the road. When we had arrived at the site they said it was a certain price for an unserviced site and an extra $10/ night for power. We thought that was a little much but they are 'off-grid' here. There is a big diesel generator that runs all night to power the RV's.
We have no idea what this was, anyone know?
The generator is inside the sea container
We got out of the RV park around noon and came to the snag road junction. We had considered taking a quick drive up to Snag just to say we had been there because it had the coldest recorded temperature in Canada at -63c (-81.4f) back in 1947 but then we saw this sign and changed our minds.
This is the terrain in the area: swamp and mountains. If you aren't on a mountain you are in a swamp.
Beaver Creek is the most western community in Canada and we drove around town a little. There was a church very similar to the one from Haynes Junction there.
We got to the American boarder fairly quickly after that, took a few photos and then went through the boarder crossing. The boarder guard asked me a few questions about the car and trailer and let us through. He thought it was a diesel car and was quite surprised a gas car could pull the trailer, I don't think he had seen a festiva before either.
standing in 2 countries at once.
Once we were in Alaska the road go quite a bit bumpier for a while and then the road followed the side of a mountain to get out of the swamp/permafrost.
We made it to Tok, Alaska and had a look around. I went to the bank or some foreign money and thought this sign was amusing for a bank...
some of the locals vehicles i suppose
It was raining hard when we left town and some sections of the road from Tok to Glennallen were incredibly rough. There was one 20km section where we couldn't do more than 60kmh and even slowing down from that speed for the larger bumps it was very rough. The dips in the road weren't the easiest to judge what speed I needed to go either and I was wishing for stiffer rear springs fairly quickly.
Tok to Glenallen is only 140 miles but it was really slow going so we started to look for a camping spot along the road. The first place we weren't comfortable with and the government campground down the road was built on the worst section of swamp along the whole highway and you nearly had to strain the air with your teeth to keep the mosquitoes out of your mouth while you breathed. The road into it was even covered in 6 inches of standing water. The next RV park was a little too weird as well so we ended up driving all the way to Glennallen anyway, getting the second last site at the downtown RV park a few minutes before they closed and trying to set up pretty late. Then our trailer top wouldn't lift because the leaks in the air cylinders had gotten too bad so we had to get some bikers to help us lift it up.
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