Alaska 2008

This may rank as one of the worst driving days of the trip... it may actually eclipse the Cassiar Highway and that takes some doing. The only way I can put it is that the Alaska Highway runs through some beautiful scenery but this stretch of the road can only be called BAD!!! (I'm trying to use a word that won't be rated "R").

The day started well enough. We had mostly sunny skies with the temperature when we departed Haines Junction at a balmy 44° F. The first hour or so we drove on a relatively smooth pavement with only occasional frost heave bumps. As we rounded the bottom of Kluane Lake, Yukon's largest lake, we hit our first construction area. We had to wait for a pilot car to escort us through a muddy, rough 4.5 miles. We had encountered construction around this area in 2005 and the flag person advised us that this is the final stretch of construction around the lake. The scenery around the lake is beautiful, but it's tough to look at the scenery when you are trying to avoid pot holes.

After passing the Kluane Lake construction area I thought we would have a ride similar to what we had prior to hitting the work zone. I was wrong! Boy, was I wrong!! The condition of the Alaska Highway from Kluane Lake through the US border was one series of frost heave bumps after another (I got to calling them nature's speed bumps) and stretches of gravel patches. There were also a few more construction sites with pilot car escorts. In summary, we had 150 miles of road conditions that did not allow consistent speed... every time I got close to the speed limit I would see a red flag or sign indicating frost heave damage or loose gravel and we had to reduce our speed. The gravel patches were frequently smoother than the paved road. In one long stretch of gravel, I got a bit complacent and hit the "speed bumps" at about 45 MPH and almost sent us airborne. We were concerned that the rest of our dishes had committed suicide by jumping out of the cabinet. At the next rest area, I looked inside the trailer expecting the worst, but the dishes and almost everything else were still in place and in one piece.

And then we got to Alaska. I had hoped that road conditions in Alaska might be better, but... The first thing that the we saw as we rounded a bend in the highway was the sign welcoming us to Alaska and next to it a sign that told us to stop and wait for an escort vehicle. The escort vehicle took us about a half mile to the US Border station. After clearing customs, we drove 100 yards to the next sign that told us to wait for an escort vehicle. The next 80 miles to Tok consisted of miles of loose gravel and mud. To complicate matters further, it started to rain, heavily at times. This turned the work zones and the gravel patches into mud.

I could complain about the road conditions, but that would be unrealistic. Winter does a lot of damage to the roads in Alaska and northern Canada. The construction season here is very short and they have to do a lot in just a few months. When the snow falls and the temperatures are in the -40° range, you can't do much road work than some patching. Let's see if I still have the same realistic outlook when I have to do this stretch of road all over again in a few weeks. The other unknown is the road condition on the other highways we have to drive in Alaska. The bright side of all of this is that by driving slowly, we have gotten some of the best fuel consumption rates on the trip.

The campground has a high pressure wash station and I had planned to use it to remove a ton of mud that had accumulated on the truck and trailer since we left Kitwanga, BC. It was raining so hard that I decided to drop the idea of washing the vehicles. We set up trailer in a downpour with the temperature at 44°. The weather forecast for the next two days is for more rain and cold temperatures... not good for sightseeing in Denali National Park.

The Mountains of Kluane National Park