Alaska 2015 - Day 16 Whitehorse - Tok AK

Day 16 – 5-27-15 Wednesday It was drizzling rain when we got up. They sure need some rain here because it is really dry. We ate breakfast and departed the CG at 6:55AM PST and drove a few miles and fueled up the MH, then drove out of Whitehorse down the Alaska Highway. We know today we will be driving over the worst roads on the trip.

The frost heaves in the road began a few miles out of Whitehorse. A frost heave is where the ground freezes during the Winter and distorts the ground under the pavement. Some places sink down and some raise up causing for much damage to the pavement and some bad driving. The road department does a pretty good job of marking the bad places with orange flags so you really have to be alert and drive slow in these areas or you can cause lots of damage to your vehicle. We have heard stories of people bending axles and other bad things, usually because they are driving to fast for the conditions. They have not found a way to prevent the damage to the roads from frost heaves. They just keep repairing the worst areas a section at a time. A car can handle the frost heaves much better than a large motor home.

The scenery we were driving through was pretty spectacular and would have been more so if it had not of been raining and overcast. We were not able to get but just a few good photos through the windshield due to the rain. The dash cam captured some of it but of course the windshield wipers are also in the video. There were mountains on both side of us and some of the mountain top were covered in snow and the clouds were down below the peaks of the mountains making for some really nice views.

We stopped at a pull off after driving a couple of hours at the location of an old bridge named Canyon Creek Bridge that was originally built during the Gold Rush. It has been rebuilt over the years and is now just a historic bridge. It was about 44 degrees, drizzling rain and overcast so we went back to the MH, cranked the generator and made a cup of coffee and some hot chocolate and I ate my cinnamon bun that we purchased a couple of days ago. Lena had already ate hers.

We were not sure how far we could get today. Tok Alaska is about 350 miles from Whitehorse and with the bad roads we were not sure we could make it to Tok today. 350 miles is about our normal daily average miles on good roads. About 50 miles past Whitehorse the roads got better and were good through Haines Junction all the way to Destruction Bay. But just past Destruction Bay is a tiny place called Burwash Landing. From there all the way to Beaver Creek the frost heave were one after another. We really had to slow down and watch the road for the flags. There was about 50 miles of so of this stretch that was just gravel and dirt where the road crews had torn the bad pavement up and was preparing to repave the road. Actually the gravel/dirt sections were a much better ride than the paved sections but the road was wet from the rain this morning and it was really making a mess of all the vehicles. Most of the people wanted to drive faster than we did so they blew by us. One motor home came barreling by us and threw rocks up on our windshield as he blew by. I let him hear how my air horns sounded. The services along this 100 miles or so of road are almost now existent. We saw one pickup truck that was sitting beside the road with his flashers on and the hood up. We found out later from some other travelers that he had blown by them in a hurry but they passed him a few mile later as he was sitting beside the road broke down. Sometimes the turtle get to the finish before the rabbit.

We finally made it to Beaver Creek and stopped at Buckshot Betty's for a much needed rest and something to eat. As we were going in we met two couples that was in the same campground with us at Tetsa River CG. They were planning to make it to Tok today. We had a good lunch and decided we could make the 100 miles to Tok because the road was reported to be much better from here to Tok. We crossed into Alaska in about 40 miles. While we were in line at the border crossing we got to watch a helicopter take off just a few yards in front of us. It had landed in a spot where the two lanes of road splits around the border office building. The agent checked our passports, asked a few questions and sent us on our way.

We arrived at the Sourdough Campground in Tok about 4PM Alaska time, which is 4 hours behind time on the East Coast. The temperature had got up to almost 70 degrees and the sun was shining. We checked in and drove to their car/RV wash station and spent about an hour washing the mud off both the MH and the car. There were lots of RV'ers coming to the wash to clean their vehicles and RVs. The campgrounds here make money with their car/RV wash stations when the roads are bad. We had already checked into the CG and was washing our vehicles when we noticed several of the RVs that had blown by us on the gravel/dirt sections coming down the road. So with all their rushing we still got to out CG and was washing our vehicles before they were. We got the vehicles fairly clean and pulled into site 13. After 10 hours of driving over some really bad roads we were ready to settle down for the evening.

Hey I am supposed to be RED.

Rock Guard

When we start making our way back to the lower 48 we will have to travel the same bad section of road again. We are hoping some of the construction is completed by that time. There is no other way to Alaska by road except by the Alaska Highway. So we will backtrack on the same road almost to Watson Lake before turning onto the Cassier Highway to go to Hyder Alaska and other parts of Canada on the return trip.