The road from Whitehorse to Tok was very bad. It had lots of permafrost heaves & dips as well as long stretches of gravel. If you try to drive fast over the frost heaves, your front wheels could leave the ground.
This is the large Kluane Icefield Range. There are many mountains here in this range with glaciers.
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While driving down the road, we saw, from a long way off, dust or smoke in a large area ahead. We did not know whether it was a forest fire or not but kept going. This is what we found as we got closer to the bridge, which is in a construction area. The dust was so thick you could hardly see and the winds where very high coming down a mountain & across the bridge. The wind hit our coach so hard from the left side, it sounded like the fiberglass on the roof was rippling. After we cleared the area by about 1/4 mile, Jim got out and climbed onto the roof to see if something had been ripped loose. All was well. The road was equally as bad, limiting us to about 20 mph.
We stopped for the night at a government campground on the edge of Lake Kluane, just a few miles past the high wind area. From here you can look across to the far mountain & see it is still obliterated by the dust from the high winds. That's the area we drove through.
This is burwash Landing where they have a small museum and some artists who work with burls found in the Black Spruce trees around this area. We now wish we had stopped.
These are the icefields of the St Elias Mountain Range. They are taller than the Kluane Mountains and may be the tallest in the Alaska-Yukon Area.
We finally made it!- Alaska! We had driven over 5,000 miles at this point. Corny, eh? See our coach in the corner? By the way, 2009 is their 50th anniversary of statehood!
This is the Tanana River bridge about 15 miles south of Tok. We had to wait for a "follow me truck" since it was a single lane dirt stretch of road.
This is the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge just before Tok, Alaska.
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While driving down the road, we saw, from a long way off, dust or smoke in a large area ahead. We did not know whether it was a forest fire or not but kept going. This is what we found as we got closer to the bridge, which is in a construction area. The dust was so thick you could hardly see and the winds where very high coming down a mountain & across the bridge. The wind hit our coach so hard from the left side, it sounded like the fiberglass on the roof was rippling. After we cleared the area by about 1/4 mile, Jim got out and climbed onto the roof to see if something had been ripped loose. All was well. The road was equally as bad, limiting us to about 20 mph.
We stopped for the night at a government campground on the edge of Lake Kluane, just a few miles past the high wind area. From here you can look across to the far mountain & see it is still obliterated by the dust from the high winds. That's the area we drove through.
This is burwash Landing where they have a small museum and some artists who work with burls found in the Black Spruce trees around this area. We now wish we had stopped.
These are the icefields of the St Elias Mountain Range. They are taller than the Kluane Mountains and may be the tallest in the Alaska-Yukon Area.
We finally made it!- Alaska! We had driven over 5,000 miles at this point. Corny, eh? See our coach in the corner? By the way, 2009 is their 50th anniversary of statehood!
This is the Tanana River bridge about 15 miles south of Tok. We had to wait for a "follow me truck" since it was a single lane dirt stretch of road.
This is the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge just before Tok, Alaska.
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