Right now we are near Port Hardy, BC, Canada on the Northern end of Vancouver Island. We are hopelessly behind on our blog. We have spent days without Internet access and and were getting low on our monthly Internet data allotment, and frankly when we did have Internet access we were tired and wanted to relax and when we felt like working on the blog we didn’t have Internet access. We finally rolled over into a new monthly allocation of Internet data and can now try to catch the blog up to date with our adventures.
Since Homer was our turn around point, we are now homeward bound and a long way from home. So, much of our recent time has been spent just driving on highways. After our banner day of seeing not only the bore tide in the Turnagain Arm, but also seeing Denali in all its glory, we have been in driving mode.
From Cantwell we headed North. We made our third trip up the 15 public miles of the Denali Park Road in the rain, and as usual saw several moose. We heard that three days later 300 park visitors got stranded in the park’s buses on the Denali Park Road. Apparently heavy rain runoff closed the road at around milepost 30. They managed to get them out the next day. We bet they are telling some great stories about spending the night in buses, in the rain, at rest stops.
We were in a driving mood and just drove through Fairbanks, Delta Junction and had our sights on the Paxson Lake Campground, where we had enjoyed staying before. After the long drive we flaked out and stayed there a couple of nights. Our major goal for the trip was to drive as many miles on rural highways as we could, while avoiding as many tourists, and tourist traps, as possible. So, by going South and catching the Tok Cutoff we were able to complete the Richardson Highway as well as the Tok Cutoff highway.
We drove through Gakona and Tok and wound up spending the night in the gorgeous, free Lake View Campground, right on Yarger Lake in the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge. This got us within 20 miles of the Alaska/Canada border. But, for all the miles covered we saw very little wildlife. We did see a moose trying to get out of Fort Greely Army Base.
After crossing into Canada we made it as far as Haines Junction, where we took a day off and spent two nights in the Pine Lake Campground. Still seeing little wildlife.
When we finally got to Haines the first thing we did was go make reservations for the next days ferry to Skagway. We then spent an hour or so just driving around so Laura could see the houses and get oriented. We had a late lunch at a restaurant on the waterfront and spent the night in the Oceanfront RV Park, which was really just a parking lot right on the water.
The next day was our first experience on this trip of getting us and VanGo on a ferry. It was kinda fun as it gave us an hour or so to people watch. The ferry ride was only an hour long to Skagway. We did see another species of wildlife on the ferry trip as there were mountain goats on the hills overlooking the fjord. They weren’t too hard to spot in their bright white coats. We splurged on a pair of high end binoculars for each of us just before the trip. We are sure that we will get many years of enjoyment out of them. What a difference a good pair of binoculars make.
Upon arriving in Skagway we were greeted by four huge cruise ships anchored in the small port, and the ferry just added to the throngs of people and vehicles in the very small town. We did our usual cruising around the neighborhoods looky-looing at houses, but didn’t want to have anything to do with the mad house and moved on down the road to Canada.
VanGo.blog 