Category: Traveling the hiways and byways

We arrived late in the day after what was a grueling drive from Discovery Lodge, only about 150 miles away. We had thought the previous drive was bad, but today’s section was over the top Bad.  It was starting to seem like the Yukon and Alaska Road departments were having a competition for who could make the worst road conditions.   In my opinion Alaska was orders of magnitude better at making awful roads.

AlaskaRoadWork

We were here for 3 nights and that is definitely too long. There is not much to do in Tok. The RV wash is good and Fast Eddies was great. This was also a good spot to buy fuel as it was a buck more expensive in the western Yukon Canada. There is a grocery in town that  was way better than expected for such a podunk place, so we got to stock up a bit.

It had rained a bit on the road getting here, so the mud was pretty extreme and very difficult to get off even with the power washer they provide at the $25 RV wash.   I was working the brush pretty hard to clean what the power washer couldn’t get off.

We walked over to Fast Eddies the second night and the food was better than I remembered.   The next evening we were sitting outside for happy hour when the campground owner’s wife came by on what resembled an old style Good Humor Trike that used to come around our neighborhood when I was a kid.  But this one looked custom made and as most of us were drinking, beer we did not partake of the ice cream.

We were glad we paid a bit extra here to get the better sites. Last time we were here, they stuck us in the back and it was so tight we could barely get our slides deployed due to all the poorly placed trees.  Even getting into the site and out were difficult as you could easily hit the trees they planted right at the end of the sites on both sides.  What were they folks thinking?….

 

 

 

On the way up the ALCAN, we saw some wild horses on the side of the road.  We had not seen that up here last time.   That was usually a Wyoming and Montana thing.

The road was rough in the extreme, much worse than last time.   We eventually pulled into the campground and were led to our site.  It was right on the highway, and I went back into the office to ask for a spot facing the grass airstrip like we had last time.   They led me to a different site but not on the strip.  We stayed here for 3 nights,  which is WAY to long.  This is a one-night place.  Nothing to do here.

The first morning there was a lot of noise outside and what was happening was pretty odd.  They were using a helicopter as a crane to offload a semi-flatbed full of materials.  As I watched for a bit, that was really odd.  They could easily have gotten most of it off by hand.  Instead it took that thing hovering loudly for hours to do it.   Then after that’s done, it came back a lot to ferry those materials to somewhere else.   All day Sunday and now Monday morning starting at 7am they were doing it.   It would have made a lot more sense to just use the helicopter once to pick it up off the flatbed and ferry it to wherever it needed to be.  But instead they took double the time to unload it fully, then come back to ferry each box to the other place.

A single engine small plane that looked to have been a military spotter plane or similar landed Sunday afternoon.  Kathy went over there to get a picture of it and met with the pilot and his wife.

 

We played a game of Yahtzee inside our bus and it appeared to give me luck as I won the game with a very high score.  I had 5 Yahtzee’s in that game!!!

Fixed the front vent fan lid switch in the kitchen, but the back vent fan only works for inbound air.  Exhaust venting won’t work.  Possibly the rocker switch that controls that has a wire off on the out switch.  But that will require a lot of dismantling, so I am saving that for “some other day”

 

[WARNING Technical  Info Below]   Read at your own risk!

The afternoon before heading out to St. Elias,  I had finally procured all the parts I needed for a modification we really wanted in the coach this cold summer here in Alaska.   When we have 50 amp shore power, I like to run the fireplace and also a second portable electric heater we procured while in Grand Prairie this trip up.   It helps us not to use propane we will need when dry camping, which we are doing quite a bit on this trip, 7 weeks this time up here.

Turns out all the 120v outlets inside our coach are on the inverter, which is great for us.  But there is one drawback.  The inverter is actually on a 30 amp breaker.  So running two 1500 watt heaters (25amps) doesn’t allow much head room, really any headroom, to run a toaster, coffee pot or microwave at the same time as the heaters are on high.   We had to turn one of them off to run any of them, especially the microwave as it draws about 14 amps.

I started thinking about a better way to do this so we didn’t need to remember to turn off one of the heaters first.    50 amp service consists of two 50 amp legs of power.  (L1 & L2) The inverter is on L1 in my bus, so my thought was to tap into L2 for a new outlet in the living room area.  Then I remembered there was a second outlet behind the fridge that wasn’t on the inverter, so I proceeded to make an extension cord to utilize it.

What I built is fairly overkill so as not to have an issue.  I used 10/3 SO cord.  I could have used 14/3, but I figured 12/3 would be better, and I ended up with 10/3 as that was all that was available in Kenai at the time.  First I tested the outlet to see what leg it was on, and of course it wasn’t on L2, but was on L1 also.   But when I thought about it, that was fine due to each leg being 50 amps.  The heater I would plug in would be ~13 amps, so that, plus a maxed-out inverter (in pass-thru mode)  would not be a problem at 43 amps max.  It still had some headroom available for something not considered.

I had purchased a second special outlet that fits into a round hole to use for the new heated toilet seat modification, a different project that was a nice to have; but this modification was needed as soon as possible, so I repurposed that Journeyman-Pro 5279 15 Amp 120-125 Volt, NEMA 5-15 Flanged Outlet   for this.   This is the angled plug I used to make it stay plugged in during all the shaking the motorhome goes thru.  Leviton 5266-CA 15 Amp, 125 Volt, Angle Plug

I pulled off the louvered cover that’s to the right of the fridge that gives you access to all the wires behind the circuit breaker panel.  I checked to make sure nothing was in the way of the new cords so I wouldn’t be drilling thru something critical.    I drilled the hole, made sure my outlet fit it, then went back outside and built the cord and put the male end on it.  I then fished it down and under the fridge close to the opening where I had taken the louvers off.  (Come to think of it, I should probably block off those louvers as they are not really needed now that I have a residential fridge instead of the old Propane/Electric Nevercold that was in there when I bought the bus.)   Then I went back inside and pushed the wire thru the newly drilled hole, and then striped the wires and installed it on the new outlet.

Once that was done, I put the outlet into the hole and screwed it in after a short test of the circuit first.

All done!   Now we can run the second portable heater while on 50 amp shore power and not have to play “checkers” with the on/off switches so we could run other things in the mornings.   And it will let us go longer before having to go thru the hassle of getting the propane refilled!

We decided to skip Pine Lake Campground and instead head for Congdon Creek Campground, another Yukon Provincial Park about an hour further along our route toward Alaska.

It turned out it was a great choice!   We got there and what I thought was the best site was in the process of being taken when we arrived.  We had to wait for those folks to detach their car so he could back up and pull into the site as we could not get past them.  If only we hadn’t stopped at a rest area, that coach wouldn’t have passed us and gotten there first.   But later we figured out it really wasn’t the best site.  Turns out we got the best site in the campground (#9)  But I will get to that later on..

I saw Campsite 9 and it looked good to me, so I needed to turn around and pull into it.  But at the end of the sites, the turnaround was about 5 feet short of allowing that, so I had to detach the car to get back out of there.  I then pulled the bus into the site so we were facing the lake.

The folks in the site left us a stack of “split” firewood which was nice of them.  Yukon Government sites offer free firewood in large bins around the campgrounds but they aren’t split yet.

We set up our chairs and reveled in the warmth of the sun right then.  Later on we brought them down to the water’s edge and it wasn’t long before the sun went behind a cloud and it got cold pretty fast!  Luckily the clouds moved and it came back out a little bit later.  The wind here was really icy cold!  But what a beautiful place.  God’s handiwork for sure.

This campground, like most other Provincial parks in Canada, is dry camping.  There were no utilities or dump station at almost all that we have been to in the past.

As we were only here for two nights, the following morning we drove over to the Soldier Summit Trailhead to hike to the original Alcan route where the opening ceremonies occurred on November 20th, 1942.  I cannot imagine how cold it would have been out here on that date.

It was an easy hike, less than a mile and only about 300′ in elevation change, but the mosquitos were horrendous!   There were American and Canadian flags along with a large wooden platform with signs about that historic event and subsequent events, like the 50th anniversary back in ’92.  No mention of the 75th anniversary though.  This is grizzly country, so we all had our bear spray, and all were probably wondering the same thing as I was:  will it help in the event a grizzly wanted to get up close and personal?  And to our surprise there were the classic Parks Canada Red Adirondack chairs at the top! 

Here is a pic of our traveling companions at the top of the hill.   After an uneventful hike, we drove over to the visitor center, which was pretty small.  And while we were there, we watched some Dahl Sheep way up on the mountainside thru telescopes positioned around the building.   As we were heading back to the car, we saw a motorhome stop on the roadway, about half a mile from us, where a bunch of sheep were crossing the highway.   By the time we got over there, the sheep were about 40 feet up the cliff wall, somehow clinging to the side.  It sure would have been nice to see how they got up there, but we missed it.   And my pictures of the cliff face somehow didn’t include the actual sheep of which there were about 8 of, a couple were very young.

If that wasn’t enough animal sightings for the day, about 8 miles down the road toward our campground we spotted a grizzly on the side of the road eating the shrubs.  Turned out it was a mamma and a cub.  As we watched, they wandered down the road toward us.  To our excitement, they crossed the road right in front of our car!!  I got a great shot of the cub looking at us, but the mamma bear never looked our way.   It was funny, no one got out of their cars to get a closer look :).  Apparently, not everyone is stupid…

After the bears crossed and headed into the tall stuff, we drove the couple miles to our campground,    I know I was thinking how wonderful it was we hadn’t encountered them on the trail a few minutes prior.

The following morning as we got ready to move a guy walked up and asked if we were leaving.  I told him yes.  He then told me this was the best site in the campground and that he lives in Whitehorse and comes here many times a year.

A bit later we drove to Discovery Yukon Lodgings less than two hours away according to google maps, but the drive was so rough it took us 4 hours to get there.  Yikes!

The drive from Teslin to Whitehorse was pretty nice, and the roads were especially good once we hit the Whitehorse Highway maintenance sign.  You could see and feel the difference!  At the Hi Country RV Park, we got the exact same site as last time we were here.  Coincidence?

Mexican for dinner at Sanchez Cantina Saturday night.   As we drove up, we realized Kathy and I had been here last time for lunch.  And it didn’t disappoint!  The food was very good.  Hard to imagine getting great Mexican food way up here.

We headed out to Miles Canyon for a hike.  It was quite a nice hike in the woods.  There was even a small wooden suspension bridge on the trail.   Later that evening we headed to Boston Pizza for dinner.  Wasn’t anywhere near as good as the pizza we had back in Edmonton at their Boston Pizza.   We also went to a Canadian Tire store.  Kind of seemed more like a big box store – huge.  I never actually saw tires in there.

 

 

 

We drove to Teslin just so we didn’t have to drive all the way to Whitehorse in one day.   There isn’t much to say about the drive or the stay, other than the campground is a dust bowl when it’s windy.

 

We drove west of town to stop for a few nights at Baby Nugget and StarLink saved us from being Internetless.  There’s no cell service once you get outside any of the small towns along the highway, and Watson Lake was just like the others.  We got there and realized there were no sewers at the campsites, any of them, so we headed over to the dump station to unload the tanks from 5 days of dry camping.

The next morning we headed into town to refill the fridge as Dawson Creek was the last place we picked up groceries.  We stopped by the Sign Forest to see if we could find our sign from last time, and we were able to find it almost immediately.  Took a few pic’s, then headed over to the grocery store.  It was much nicer than the last time we stopped there, well stocked with most foods,  and we even got to pick up fresh cinnamon rolls (which seems to be some sort of competition along the Alcan!)

The following morning Larry and I checked out the liquor store in town and picked up some Yukon Gold, one of our favorites from up north.  It was the first time we had seen it on this trip.  While we were there, we noticed a lot of Fantasy Tour folks driving into the Downtown RV campground, so we drove over to check it out.   Kathy and I had stayed there once and it was a place I would never go again.  But it was the only campground with sewers for a long way in any direction, and you are squeezed in like sardines.  We have never seen anywhere else that you are so close to the RV in the next site.  Folks with slides practically touch the next coach’s slides.

That evening Larry and Sue told us just how pitiful their Fantasy Tour experience had been when they attended the Balloon Fiesta with Fantasy.  That sealed it for me, I will never use them, but I probably wouldn’t have anyway.

We didn’t do much else in Watson Lake, and we probably should have only stayed 2 nights instead of the three we booked.

The next morning we headed out for Teslin Lake, the halfway point to Whitehorse.

 

 

The road from Ft. Nelson was OK till we hit Tacna Lodge where it turned to a couple miles of potholed washboard dirt.  It seemed like 50 miles!   Further on we entered a pretty long canyon where I received a phone call.  It was my Cuz and we got to talk a bit and only a few minutes into the call I realized there was no way I could be getting this call.  Apparently WiFi calling via Starlink was working in this canyon!  That was pretty cool.

We arrived not long after midday on a Thursday and there were still a few sites available as we drove in, but it wasn’t long before the 15 sites right on the lake were taken.  We lucked out and got to reserve our sites.  Neither Larry nor I knew they changed the rules for this summer’s dates and allowed about 1/2 the sites to be reserved.  My buddy Scott figured it out and told me just a few days prior to it opening up for reservations on the dates we wanted.

I told Larry and we were both able to get the sites we wanted on the BC Parks reservation site.   Last time we were there, it was only First Come, First Served.

Our site was beautiful and right at the water overlooking the beautiful blue- green lake out our windshield.  Larry and Sue were just to our left so their motorhome is pointing at the lake too.  (these are back-in sites)

 

 

 

We headed out for the drive to Laird Hot Springs which was 45 minutes away.  On the way we drove past some sort of shrine on the side of the highway and I wondered if it was for the folks that got killed near there while we were going to Alaska last time.  Turns out it was as we stopped and looked at it when going home.  2019 Canadian Killing Spree

On the way back from Laird there was a large Bison walking down the middle of the bridge.  We waited till he got to the end of the bridge and walked off the side of the road, allowing us to pass.

That evening we had reservations for dinner at the Northern Rockies Lodge.  It seemed odd to need reservations at such an out-of-the-way place but they were required.    I had the Goulash, Kathy the steak, Larry the Schnitzel, and Sue had the beef stew special.   The food was ok.   We decided not to come back for dinner Monday evening.

After dinner we walked outside to see smoke had rolled in, which was not a great sign.  We had to go back to the motorhome to see if we could figure out where it was coming from.  Turns out the fire was quite a ways away, north and east of us.  By the following morning the smoke was gone and didn’t come back.

It rained most of the day on Sunday, but the nice weather came back on Monday and we drove back to Laird Hot Springs for another dip.  We saw many caribou, bear, and many bison along the way back.   That night we ordered takeout from the lodge:  three Schnitzel dinners..  and a burger for Kathy.

Tuesday morning drive to the Yukon

 

 

 

The drive to Fort Nelson started out on a very smooth road till we got to Profit River where it became the Alcan road I remembered, lots of potholes to dodge and a few frost heaves to boot most of the way into Ft. Nelson.

My plan was to fuel up some in Ft. Nelson all along; but when I checked that afternoon, I noticed that fuel was almost exactly the same price in Whitehorse as Ft. Nelson, so I put in as much as it would take.  It was about $5 a gallon there,  quite a difference from the $3.50 diesel @ Costco in Grand Prairie!

We had another one-night stay at the Triple G Hideaway, a very nice place considering all the others on the Alcan highway.   We didn’t do much there, although the ladies found a gift shop to drop some coin.  We now have a couple new pillows with bears on them.

We headed out in the morning for a leisurely drive to Muncho Lake.

 

This campground was Larry and Sue’s go-to overnight between Dawson Creek and Ft. Nelson.  Last time we had stayed at Charlie Lake Provincial Park as we hadn’t stayed in Dawson Creek.   We had stopped in Ft. St. John to get Dusty into the vet to get some medicine to fix his loose bowels from the night before.  None of the home remedies had worked this time.  He will turn 16 years old in Alaska this summer.

We got to Pink Mountain a couple hours after our traveling companions and when we pulled in, there were no signs indicating where to park the rig to register.   I pulled over toward the front of the store and the worker bee came out saying we couldn’t park there.  He pointed where we should park, and I suggested they put up a sign to indicate that… He laughed.   With that I knew this was going to be a fiasco.  And I was correct.

As we drove in to find our pull-thru site, we encountered freshly created washboard roads.   It seems they just graded the roads with a bulldozer and it was a tracked one so it created washboard as it graded the road.  (that is probably why you never see a tracked dozer grading roads.)

We made it to our site and hooked up the electric and started to deploy when I noticed we were inverting and not on shore power.   When I looked at my Power Watchdog EPO Surge Protector, I saw it was blocking the 94 volt power they were trying to supply to us.  Yikes, that is lower than I have ever seen, Anywhere.   I immediately called the office and told them what I found.  The same guy said they only have 30 amp power.  I explained that doesn’t matter, all the different  amperage’s outlets should have 120 volts.   Then he said they were working on the generator.  Oh Boy.   By about 7pm the power was up to 115 volts, which is good enough.

But of course it didn’t stay that way.  All night it was dropping below 100 volts if you tried to pull just 10 amps from that 30 amp supply.  I finally just pulled the plug and used our batteries to run anything that draws any power like the coffee pot, microwave or toaster.

That place was a bad joke.  Never again…

I have never been happier to leave a campground than I was that morning.