Dawson City to Tōk, ALASKA

We are finally in Alaska, yeah!

We set our alarm for 5:30 this morning. We wanted to beat the crowd to the free ferry across tbe Yukon River. We were on the road by six, and in no time, second in line at the ferry. We crossed the Yukon River and headed for the most Northern USA border crossing. With our early start and the time change between the Yukon and Alaska we arrived at the border a half hour before their 9 am opening time.

Today was a pretty grueling drive. Of the 5.5 hours and 185 miles we traveled today, we spent probably four hours and well over a hundred miles on dirt roads. It shook the devil out of our poor VanGo. It shook so bad that some where, some how our water pump quit working. The road is called “The Top of the World Road”. Not only is it very far North, but it seemed to follow the ridges instead of the valleys. There were lots of narrow dirt road sections with multi-thousand foot drop-offs with no guard rails. DR and Laura both got a chance to exercise their very healthy fears of heights.

Our critter count was surprising low again. We saw a porcupine, a rabbit, a ptarmigan and one raven.

Once we arrived in Tōk, Alaska, DR diagnosed the water pump problem and traced it down to the water bay which required that we dismount the entire galley and move it a couple of feet out of the way. Fortunately the problem was easy to find as the hot lead was just dangling there. The hot spade lug had some how broken. DR found a larger, but functional replacement in his hardware bin. Problem solved.

Laura finally got a chance to do our laundry, and met a couple from Florida who had already spent 2.5 months traveling where we were heading. They had driven their Winnebago Travato, which is based on the Ram Pronaster like ours, North all the way to Prudhoe Bay. They had many tips for us and eased our minds that the drive to the Arctic Circle was no worse than what we had endured today.

Tomorrow we head for Fairbanks, where we hope to pick up the replacement antenna that was sent to us “general delivery” in Fairbanks, assuming we can figure out which post office it went to. DR dialed the main Fairbanks post office 111 times today and it was always busy. DR is thinking the postal workers just leave the pesky thing off the hook.