21 May – Heading to the Oil Country

Today we’ll head west toward Valdez, and the southern most point of the Alaska Pipeline.

The providential camp (Klondike River) was nice and quite.  I think there were only three of us in there out of maybe 40 spots.  I checked with the ranger about any bear sightings, he said none so far this year, but always take precautions.
Breakfast and coffee in the Toyhouse, broke down camp and hit the road.  The providential campgrounds are very nice, and at $12 a night, can’t beat the price.

There  is no bridge that crosses the Klondike river. The state runs a free ferry back and forth between the north and south shores.  The river is full and moving fast and erodes the shorelines, so they have a full time operator just keeping the river embankments fixed so vehicles can load onto the ferry.

On the other side of the Klondike river, its uphill to the Top of the World Highway.  The name “”Top of the World” is named as the road runs along the top ridge of a long mountain chain. In many locations along the road you have an unobstructed view of almost 360 degrees. The only problem with this, Photos cannot convey what you see in person. I could spend days in one spot just looking out over the thousands of miles of view.

I’m not sure why the word “Highway” is in the name!,  its not really a “Highway” is a good condition dirt road that runs 170 miles between  Dawson City, Yukon and Tok, Alaska. ALSO – The road is only open during the summer months as its to hard to maintain i.e. keep the snow plowed and repair when the road washes out.  We checked last week and it wasn’t open yet (it shuts down during the winter).  A couple checks this week and everyone assured me the road was open and in good shape.

We rejoined the Alaska Highway just outside of Tok, Alaska.  Filled the gas tank at $4.42 a gallon.  It sure beats the $6 and $7 we were paying in Canada. We had lunch in Tok and drove by a Holy Rosary Church, My sisters active perish in Toledo).

Just outside of Tok, we again left the Alaska Highway and headed toward Valdez.

The views are magnificent, and a camera just doesn’t do them justice.  We got into some light rain as we approached the Worthington Glacier (About 40 miles east of Valdez).

I was hoping we’d be able to go out and walk on it, but there was still too much snow on the ground to walk the distance to the glacier, so we’ll just have to make another trip up here :-).

Regardless, the views of the glacier are awesome, and the mountains are magnificent in their snow cover, even though it was 60Deg outside.

Going down the other side of this mountain range and we’re in Valdez. 

This harbor is surrounded by towering mountains.

Jodie and I sat outside for a while and watched some of the locals feed the Eagles. There were about 15 of them and they had obviously done this before.  The person would throw out a piece of fish and the Bald Eagles would swoop down and grab it.

OK – Enough for today –  We’re resting in an RV Park in Valdez for the night, we’ll start heading to Mt McKinley (Denali) tomorrow.

Mileage >> 498  –  14.3 mpg

John & Jodie