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Teslin, YT to Tok, AK
Today we made plenty of progress—enough to bring us into comfortable striking distance of the end of the car journey and the beginning of the day-by-day relaxed adventuring in the Alaska interior. We set out from our fun little motel/grocery store/RV park in Teslin at about 8:30, after a pair of "Klondike Breakfast Sandwiches"—ham, egg, & cheddar on a sourdough muffin. Really rich for my tastes, but it filled us both up. We followed the Teslin lake north through pretty but unremarkable country (more of the usual spindly spruces) for an easy two hours until we reached the outskirts of Whitehorse; then, since it was only 11:00, we drove into town to absorb some local color.
Whitehorse is located on a flat shoulder of land next to the Yukon River down inside the Yukon's sunken gorge, with steep beige gravel canyon walls hemming it in; to get into the city you have to take an exit from the Alaska Highway (after the airport, which is on high ground) and head down into the canyon on one of the broad streets leading into the street grid, past McDonald's and the Yukon Honda dealership, among other elements of modernity in this outpost of civilization. We parked at the town's hip urban promenade, the Qwanlin Mall—which is really just a shabby indoor structure with a Shopper's Drug Mart, an Extra Foods, a Coffee Tea & Spice, a sporting goods store, a luggage store, and about six vacant spots with gratings over them, as well as doorless one-stall restrooms in the entryway. A big sign on the wall there, warning against stuff like public drunkenness and spitting, confirmed the disappointing feeling I was getting, that Whitehorse was like Watson Lake all over again—high in crime, low in glamour, and full of signs of social dysfunction. Getting panhandled by a group of native guys on Second Avenue (one of whom we ran into again halfway around the block) only deepened this suspicion, and the drizzly sky didn't help either. We enjoyed the little walking tour of downtown, but I felt very out-of-place there with my expensive camera, and I was all too glad to get back to the car in the mall parking lot and find it intact. Despite Yukon's high gas prices ($1.13/liter, or about $3.42/gallon), we tanked up with our sights set on reaching the Alaska border for our next gas stop. The Husky station, interestingly, had a stack of "The Men of Whitehorse Fire Department" male cheesecake calendars for sale right on the main counter, which was like seeing Confederate flags for sale on Castro Street. Weird. I didn't buy one, but in retrospect now I sort of regret it.
Anyway, we pressed on northwards after stopping at a downtown bank where Paul confirmed that his paycheck had been deposited and withdrew a bunch of cash. North of Whitehorse, the speed limit on the Highway throughout the Yukon changed from 100 to 90 km/h, but even so it was only an hour and a half from there to Haines Junction. A few miles before we got there, however, we were stopped for some major construction—a theme that would pervade the rest of the day. I saw a bear cross the road behind us—about a quarter mile back—as we waited for the flagmen (who, throughout Yukon, seem to be pretty young women). Haines Junction, when we reached it, boasted a sense of humor lacking in Whitehorse or Watson Lake—there was what appeared to be an RCMP interceptor poised just over a rise on the way into town, right after a 70 km/h sign, waiting to lay the smack down on those who were hesitant to slow down; but on closer inspection it was just a life-sized wooden cutout of a police car. Cute. And it worked! We stopped at the Haines Junction General Store to get some drinks to go with our leftover chips (we'd decided on a non-lunch lunch, after that breakfast which sat like lead in our stomachs) and observed that the hornets were again feasting delightedly on the bugs caked on the front of the car; one reason among several that I'll get a car wash as soon as we get into Fairbanks.
We continued west out of Haines Junction (after picking up a couple of souvenir hats) and into the shadow of the towering St. Elias Mountains, which followed us on our left all the way to the border. Kluane Lake was cold, beautiful, and geologically fascinating, having been the subject of glacial reshapings within human memory. Stopped for stone-skipping and photos on the southern beach; then we crossed the bridge and were immediately treated to about ten miles of construction along the lake's edge, as the road was being widened and straightened. The frequent stops and slow progress were discouraging (and the gloomy tone of this portion of Mom & Dad's journal from here into Fairbanks didn't cheer us much), but we pressed on with the iPod and its On-the-Go playlist keeping our spirits up. Got good views of the top peaks of the St. Elias Range during a stretch of road at the north end of the lake; Mt. Logan was wreathed in clouds, but it was clearly visible, and clearly huge. We pressed on. Between the White River crossing (a huge gravel wash bigger than any we'd seen to date, about a quarter-mile across) and Beaver Creek, the road conditions were really terrible, with many gravel patches (some quite long), and what pavement there was was pitted with so many potholes that driving was like a video game, where I made common practice of swerving across both lanes to pick out a clear path. (Traffic was so sparse that the risk of meeting another vehicle was far lower than the risk of damage from a pothole.) Finally, in the high tundra plateau beyond Beaver Creek, we crossed the Alaska border against a backdrop of trees that barely deserved the name—ten feet tall at most and spindly, like used toilet brushes. Got photos at the crossing sign; a German couple in a giant tank-like vehicle in which they've apparently been circumnavigating the globe (according to the maps on its side) was there sharing the experience. Just around the bend from there, Customs took us all of two minutes; I think the officer saw the Germans pull up behind us in their Panzerarcticwagen and waved us through so as to give them his full attention, but we saw them again a few miles later at a rest stop, so I guess they had all their papers in order.
Gas prices right over the border were—surprisingly—about the same as at home, $2.59 or so for regular unleaded; however, these stations only had "regular" (the OLD kind of regular) and "unleaded"—no premium. I got four gallons—$10 worth—to see us through to Tok. The cruise control went out mysteriously as we crossed the border; it came back after a shutdown and restart. Let's hope that isn't a recurring theme; fun as backwater roads are to drive in full manual mode, I'd hate to do these hundred-mile wilderness stretches without cruise control. From here the road descended steadily through the taiga (with more gravel patches than pavement, it seemed, and way more mud in the cuttings than in the gravelly Yukon), with rain-swept panoramic views of the Wrangell Mountains southward across the expanse of stunted trees. (Northward was the ridgeline above us; we couldn't see beyond it. But we will, when we do the Top of the World Highway on the way back.) We set our clocks back an hour (God only knows how the GPS/photo linking process will deal with time zones), and reached Tok—after a barren 100 miles of nothing at all—at about 7:30. Got the last available room at the Snowshoe Motel, with a queen bed AND two single beds in another room. Same price as a regular room, though—$77. The office was in a large and lavish gift shop full of Alaska souvenirs.
We got set up in our weird family-suite room and headed to Fast Eddy's for dinner—about the only game in town, restaurant-wise, and really big-time in presentation (everybody in town was packed in there, it seemed). We got cheeseburgers, preceded by an appetizer order of breaded mushrooms that turned out to be sized for a party of four or more—enormous. Unnecessarily so. We had to box it up after only making it a third of the way through when our meals came. Good service, except that the waitress was flummoxed by Paul's Canadian money and harried by other staff members dropping large trays of dishes on the floor, and seemed as confused as we were about the giant tray of mushrooms she'd handed us. Although we spent dinner deep in conversation with a globetrotting couple from Alberta at the next table who had just done the Dempster Highway (Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk) and were about to head to Dawson City the next day, and who were full of tips and suggestions to make the logistics of our own journey in that direction more feasible and make the most of our time in Fairbanks and so on, we were happy to make our escape from that rather chaotic place. Ate the rest of the mushrooms in the room watching Futurama DVDs (they'd burned my gums earlier when they were hot, but now they were soggy and lukewarm, as breaded mushrooms will tend to be—you only get a window of about ten minutes in which to eat them without ill effects) and waited for the sun to gradually go down, around midnight.
Tomorrow we head for Fairbanks, but it's only about 200 miles away, so we aren't even setting our alarm this time. We made it—all that's left is the victory lap!