I woke up at 6:00 and we got ready to leave. When I went to use the outhouse there was a large moose walking in the parking lot. I quietly took a couple pictures but they did not come out because it was in a wooded area and too dark. The moose walked into the brush as my camera flashed. I had seen some along the road in the Yukon while I was driving in the mornings, but never this close before.
As we left it was cloudy and overcast and looked like it might rain today.
It had only rained twice since we started, that being at Telegraph Creek and Denali. It was going to be a lot of driving for the next three
days as I had reservations to leave Prince Rupert on Wednesday to go to the
Queen Charlotte Islands for a couple days. We went east on highway 1 and then south on 4 as we would go to Valdez today.
This would be a nice scenic trip, we would go over mountains, glaciers,
canyons and also a couple waterfalls. We drove
straight to the city and did not stop until getting there. Valdez was spread
out and had some nice scenery but we did not stay very long as we went to a
couple gift shops and grocery store and left in about an hour.
We went north and turned east to go to McCarthy-Kennecott, a ghost town and
copper mine. This would take us first to a small
town of Chitina which had 2
gift shops, an art store and cafe.
It was a nice small town and had a Bohemenian atmosphere.
We continued to drive for another 60 miles on
wet gravel roads to McCarthy-Kennecott. We passed many lakes, rivers and
one bridge that had just recently had rails put on that would also
be a great sight for bungee jumping above a river. We got to the parking lot about 4:00 and noticed that people
had also camped here overnight and now I know why after driving that road.
We were supposed to pay for parking but was not aware of that until we
came back to the truck. We had not read a sign that said to stop at the desk
before going further. From the parking lot you have to walk across a pedestrian onlly bridge
. It was another 4-7 miles in different directions to the mine and ghost town.
There was also a little town that you can walk across the bridge to get to
where people stay in this secluded area. These people would live here during the summer as it was
obvious that they all knew each other. It was a nice little place but it was
too tourist oriented. They know once you have drove this far that your not
leaving until you see what is here. We decided to leave as I did not expect
this to take all day, that was my fault and we should of researched it a little
further before driving this far.
We started back about 7:30 p.m. and drove to Tok where we arrived at 10:00 and starving. The drive to Tok had the worst stretch of paved area that we drove on, the pavement had expanded I assume because of the tempearature changes they have up here. This is the stretch that someone had warned me about that we met in British Columbia on our second day. I was constantly bouncing up and down and was just lucky not to have any problems with the canopy. It would of been better to be on gravel road as it is softer than pavement and has a softer landing when you wheels land on surface from bouncing. At Tok we ate at a Chinese restaurant where they were nice enough to serve us even thought they were closing in five minutes. After eating we left Tok and parked the truck along a rest area just on the other side of the Alaska/Yukon border. Drove 700 miles today and 5050 total in ten days.