Day 10

Here we are at North Pole, Alaska

Wildlife we saw along the way.

Musk Ox at the Wildlife Refuge

Day 10 Sunday

Slept in a bit, went to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and visited the museum, saw lots of Alaska history and some art. Visited the large animal center and saw some Caribou and Musk ox. Thought about fishing, but it started raining pretty hard. Mosquitoes seem to like rain more than sun. Bob took Matt, Logan and Aaron on a tour of Fort Wainwright to visit his fire station as he is fire captain.

View point along the road to Fairbanks

Viewpoint of Alaskan Range to Fairbanks

Which one is the knot head?

Construction (a common sight) along the Alaskan Highway

Day 9 Saturday On to Fairbanks
We left Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory at about 930 am. Shortly after crossing into Alaska, we got slowed down by over 20 miles of major road construction with long waits, pilot cars, and lots of rough road. We went through Tok around 130 and stopped and explored a couple of gift shops, paid around $5.45 a gallon for Diesel. Went on to Fairbanks, arrived at Tucker’s house in North Pole, Alaska around 530 pm, and had a nice steak barbeque. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 80 degrees. The mosquitoes enjoyed the weather too. It did not get dark, we slept anyway.

Haines

Scenery along the Alaskan Highway

Entering the Yukon

Mr. Bear

Largest Gold Pan in the world

Lake Kluane - largest in the Yukon

some strange monument in Haines Junction

Scenery on Haines highway

Scenery along Alaskan Highway

Picture taken from the ferry, this is a view coming into Haines

Day 8 Friday

Ate Breakfast while waiting in line for the Ferry to Haines. Just a 2 hour and 15 minute ride. Heading out of Haines towards Haines Junction then to Fairbanks, will be in Fairbanks tomorrow afternoon. Ate lunch at mile post 33. This was the first time we have actually eaten a meal out. We had burgers, they were really good. A friend of David’s recommended we stop there so we thought it would be worth checking out. Was well worth it. It was very busy too. The restaurant was made out of logs. Cool place. Drove many miles again we are now 1,930 miles from home and will be adding on to that tomorrow. We are staying in Beaver Creek for the night, in the Yukon not far from the US border – finally a place we camp at that had Internet available so I was able to catch up on my blogging. It was a beautiful drive but the Alaskan Highway is in desperate need of work - frost heaves all over the place. Had to drive most of it at 40 mph. Today’s wild life consisted of this bear eating bear grass along side the road. We stopped and rolled down the truck window and even backed up to take his picture, he was probably less then 30 feet from us, he didn’t seem to care at all. It made our day. And our other big highlight of the day was finding a brand new tire in the middle of the road that had bounced off of someone’s vehicle – “Freebie!!” Matt likes to run into those sort of things – oh, reminds me – he also found a leatherman in our campground in Juneau. BONUS!! Believe it or not we are all still getting along well, Aaron did have a moment today but got over it – Too much sitting in the truck waiting for the Ferry. But that part of the journey is over and after today we should not have to have such long days of driving. Once we are on our way home we hope to spend more time in campgrounds fishing and exploring then driving.

On to Juneau

Fishing in Eagle River

View from campground

some of the wooded area where the bears like to play

lots of mountains like these all around

Aaron the mosquito slayer

Picture from the ferry heading towards Juneau

Day 7 Thursday

Took a highspeed Ferry boat to Juneau. It was about a 4 and a half hour ride. The ride was pretty peaceful, it had a quiet group of people aboard. We taught Aaron to play cribbage and Logan slept most of the way. We have been staying up pretty late at night as it doesn’t get dark until after midnight. Two whales gave us a show as we got into port. We arrived in Juneau in the evening and found a pretty nice camp sight about 20 miles out of town, Eagle Creek Camp Ground. We wet up camp and made dinner – we had to work fast as the mosquitos were trying to carry us away. The host to the camp ground, Joy, came over and gave us a ride on her Polaris Ranger all around the camp ground. She showed us all the places the bears like to “play” at. We camped on the mouth of river. We tried some fishing but there wasn’t any running yet. We stayed up late again as we were still playing by the river and didn’t realize it was 11:00 already. We had to be up at 5:00am to catch the Ferry to Haines. I think Juneau so far, has been the most beautiful place I have seen.

Cruis ship coming into Sitka

Sunset from the Ferry ride

One of the harbors in Sitka.

The 4 of us on David's boat heading out to fish.
David is looking more and more like a fisherman everytime I see him. I hardly recogonized him when he found us in the store.

Day 6 Wednesday

We spent all day fishing with David. I was really glad we were able to go with him and watch how he fishes. Unfortunately fishing was not so good. We caught 1 ling cod and 1 salmon. The experience was incredible though and well worth it. How often do you get to fish on a boat built in 1948 in the Sitka sound for King Salmon. We got to see whales and sea otters on our little fishing adventure too and there is a blonde colored sea lion that lives in the harbor that everyone calls blondie, we got to meet him too. We are all pretty beat by the end of the day, the evening was topped off with a wonderful dinner of fresh cod and salmon.