Dawson Creek, BC to Valdez, AK

OMG, I have two weeks catching up to do.  When we left the Canadian National Park of Jasper we went to Dawson Creek, BC. That was the beginning of the Alaska Hwy 1, Mile 0. We had a great speaker in Joyce from the Visitor's Center. She told the story of the building of the Alaska Hwy and had a very interesting perspective since her father worked on it. We were able to find a Costco in Grand Prairie and bought what we needed to fix the pulled pork that Ken had smoked before we left home. Campground meals are always a hit.  

We have one couple missing from this picture so will try to get another group picture further down the road, thinking about in Homer.  

Fort Nelson took us to the Triple G Hideaway, a great park who loves Fantasy RV Tours. They had a small farmer's market on the grounds and we bought some homemade bread, yummy.  The Fort Nelson Heritage Museum. Very interesting place.

By July 2nd we were at Muncho Lake Campground.  What a beautiful place right on the lake. All the sites were terraced down to the lake. Amazing views !

Watson Lake is always an interesting place.  Too bad it was raining this year for our SignPost Forest visit. We hung the Fantasy RV sign as well as many of our guests brought their own signs to hang. We had a group meeting at the Visitor's Center right outside SignPost Forest where we watched a film of the area. We had nachos and margaritas that night. 

4th of July was at Whitehorse, again in the rain...  Nice that we were able to rent their meeting room to eat our bbq in.  Did traditional 4th food, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, chips and root beer floats ! ! ! We had three nights here and did a City Tour including seeing the SS Klondike, a  fish ladder and the downtown area. The next day we went out to MukTuk Adventures. Was a great presentation by the owner, Jeff. His wife, Manuela oversaw the great lunch of bison burgers. Everyone really enjoyed the talk and seeing all the dogs. Still totally blown away by how quiet these 140 dogs were. We got to see puppies this visit too. So cute ! ! 

All along the roadways we can see any and all animals. Some days are better than others.  I cannot, for the life of me, remember exactly where we saw the following, but they are fun ! ! These goats are licking the salt off the roadway. They blend right into the rocks.

Wouldn't you just love knowing this guy is up on the cliff watching??

 

Dawson City takes you back to the gold rush days. The streets are still dirt and the buildings look as they did way back then. We had a great City Walking Tour where the guide gave us all kinds of history. Then, at night, we went to Diamond Tooth Gerties. Great show. From Dawson City we took the ferry across the Yukon River. It only holds two RV's and maybe two regular cars and/or trucks. 

Then over The Top of the World Highway...  in the rain, we had a muddy mess as well as the fog and clouds made the scenery disappear. Always an experience.

 This is what we looked like as we arrived in Chicken, Alaska ! !  We served all our guests walking taco's. Sure wish it had been a hot meal but....  planning didn't anticipate the rain ! !   LOL.  Mike and Lou served their famous berry cobbler just before our Travel Meeting. Mike also gave us a talk about the history of Chicken. He also led a tour of his gold dredge and allowed gold panning.

Our one night at Tok was July 11th. We will be back there in a couple weeks for a pizza dinner at Fast Eddie's. Tok was a great park for us as they love us and they allow free rig washing if you fill your fuel tanks at Village Gas.  Easy, peasy ! !  AND, they have 50 amps with full hookup.  Nice after 20 amp only at Chicken.  LOL

The following were some of the sites along the way...  Amazing, again ! !

Today, July 12, we arrived in Valdez, Alaska. This is where the big oil spill was in 1998. Amazing that it was so long ago. There is no evidence of it today, however they did move the town afterwards. Tomorrow will be a free day where we went to the Puffin Experience at the Sealife Center and the next day, our all day Prince William Sound boat tour. 

This park loves tour groups. They have the whole middle open for us and so that means a pull through for everyone. 

Also, they have a free fish fry for us all. Traditional pot luck and they supply all the fish!! Yummy, it was soooooo good ! ! 

We went a few miles back to the waterfalls today. First is Horsetail Falls and the second is Bridal Veil Falls.

We went back over to the hatchery area where it is supposed to be bear viewing but in two years, we have not seen bears there.  Only lots of fish trying to get back to the hatchery and the seals and sea lions wasting them. The gulls like that tho. 

That is fish

Our boat trip in Prince William Sound turned out to be a ten hour trip. The Captain was fantastic. He stopped by everything to let us see the best. We spent a lot of time watching and waiting for the glacier to calve!!  Also, we watched a couple of whales and a flock of puffins.