Exploring Alaska

We spent the next several days visiting with family, touristing, and relaxing. We had a great time!

In Talkeetna...

 

Tok to Wasilla - We arrived!!!

We woke up at the Sourdough RV Campsite and enjoyed their yummy breakfast cafe. I ordered sourdough pancakes (naturally) and reindeer sausage. After walking the dogs and Dustin droning, we hit the road for Wasilla. Meadow drove the truck & trailer for a bit and did a great job! This part of the drive was also very beautiful, especially as we drove through the mountains as we got closer to Wasilla. The Matanuska Glacier was a beautiful quick stop on the way...

Our lovely campsite

Sourdough pancakes, eggs, and reindeer sausage

The Matanuska Glacier

We happily arrived in Wasilla later that evening to see the smiling faces of our relatives. Thank you for having us, guys! 

Whitehorse to Tok

July 9-10: We woke up in Whitehorse to solid rain. We had such nice warm weather until this point! But no matter, we have rain jackets and thankfully weren't in a tent! We got packed up and tried a Tim Horton's fast food for breakfast. Pretty good! Then, we hit the road.
The drive today was long, and the terrain was the most sparse that we'd seen so far. Quite literally, we filled up the gas at Haines Junction, and didn't see another gas station until we were hovering just below 1/16th of a tank. We had beautiful views of mountains and the Kluane River for our drive. The road on this stretch was the worst we had seen so far. Lots of portions were potholed gravel, and we finally ran into the notoroious frost heaves, which are like nature's speed bumps. Driving was slow going, but Dustin did a great job.

We all started feeling a little beat up until.... we finally saw the border between Yukon and Alaska!

After crossing the border, we found a campsite that had a restuarant attached. Sadly, it closed at 7pm, so we headed to "Fast Eddy's" for dinner, which was delicious! We went back to the campsite, enjoyed a comfy evening, and had a delicious sourdough breakfast the next morning.

Meadow even did a bit of driving the trailer and did a great job!

Pink Mountain -> Liard Hot Springs -> Whitehorse

July 8-9: Slept in a bit this morning, after such a late arrival last night. Woke up to a sunny day and fewer bugs – yay! After we got ready, we hit the road, aiming for Liard Hot Springs. The drive was beautiful! Uneventful at first, then we drove through some amazing geological phenomenon that makes up the Northern Rockies. On our drive, we saw a black bear, a caribou, a herd of bison, and some stone sheep (I think). So cute!

We pulled in to the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park a little before 9pm, and set up camp. While the gents started working on making fajitas, Meadow and I trekked to the hot springs. We exited the electric fence that surrounds the campsite (put in to deter bears.. apparently in 1997 the “Worst Bear Attack in North America” occurred – yikes!) and walked the appx. .5 mile boardwalk to the hot springs. After a quick soak, we headed back, ate together, and had a roaring fire before bed. Lovely!

After breaking up camp the next morning, Dustin, Logan and I went to the hot springs for a nice soak while Meadow read and stayed with the dogs. The drive out of the park to our next location was long and dull. Just miles and miles of straight roads with subalpine fir and shrubs. When we made it to Whitehorse, we were hungry, tired, and bored, but we found a really unique restaurant with amazing food, drinks, and hot sauces! By the time we finally got to our campsite, it was close to 11pm, and beautifully bright out still. We stayed at The Caribou RV Park, which was clean and cute. We set up camp, settled in, and slept hard.