7/18/17 Just a fast correction… We went through Delta Junction before getting to Tok…and before which we camped on Moon Lake for the night. A long day driving from above the Arctic Circle, through Fairbanks (washed mud off the truck) and resupplied beer. Another correction from last post is I left out Eagle AK. It is a town on the Yukon River north of the Top of the World Highway at the Canadian border.  Eagle is famous for a few things one of which is Jack London stayed here for a number of months writing his stories of the great north. It is a town that saw large population in the gold rush years after being used as a communications line to the northern forts. The area is rich in hardship history. These people, like those that built all the stone walls in New England were hardier than we. We were the only ones there. It is also a ‘dry’ town. Its original purpose gone … The drive to Eagle was great,… we saw 60 Caribou in 3 groups cross the road and run . The camp site up by the fort was wonderful. There is little to do in Eagle. 

But I want to go back for the last few days. We have traveled a large number of miles and in doing so have crossed vast areas of wild, rugged country. It has gone from the hundreds of miles of stunted black and white spruce trees (due to saturated soil or frozen tundra) to 

large forests and over the mountains to tundra that stretches literally hundreds and hundreds of miles, as is, on either side of where you stand. Finally seeing the Brooks Range, the mountains that run east-west in the Arctic are real mountains… massive and sharp rising out of nowhere. The Atigun pass allows the Dalton Highway, a roller coaster, tire puncturing, pothole riddled minefield, that is just nuts (mind you Bolivia and Peru have similar, but not as a highway with gargantuan trucks carrying other gargantuan trucks…fast…), seemingly going on forever. I am carrying 1500 lbs on the truck and maybe a ‘tad’ more and the bounce one gets at 50 mph over a 2 foot “DIP” in the road is something to experience. (once would have been fine but all day for two 8 hour days has one digging the fingernails out of the steering wheel).

The Atigun Pass. It separates two distinct biomes, forest on one side tundra the other. We drove up and over. An insane engineer’s project to get a road and pipeline from one side to the other. Going north was an adventure, following a big, very big tanker truck up and down. We went on for 36 miles into the Tundra to get the feel of the emptiness. We stopped at the Arctic research area… a caribou nestled in the Tundra a few yards off the road. A truck pulled in and we talked to the driver who hauls things to the oil fields in the north. He was gregarious and wanted to talk about the road and how the ‘Ice raid truckers were a bunch of yahoos’ and how the conditions he worked were fine by him. He did talk of things I would not want to do: like chaining up all his drive tires on the truck at minus 40… though he also said the cold and snow smooths out the road…its the thaws and mud season that are the nightmare.  We were still hundreds of miles across the tundra from the Bering Sea. It was not a trip I needed to do  adding nearing 500 miles extra to see the water so to say I ‘swam’ in the Bering sea.  One must stop at the town of Dead Horse and have a 24 hour pre-arranged guided tour thereafter at the Prudhoe Bay. It is an oil town of Temp workers. The lodging is in shipping containers stacked up for a hotel. 

The rig, How is it fairing? Constantly thinking about it…in a good way now that the “proof is in the pudding” run has gone. A month of putting the new truck/camper combo to a rough first trial run. I think the platform overall has been incredible. That is not pride speaking as what I did has faults to be improved but the truck as it was new has done exceptionally well. The mini-max diesel is a keeper. Tons of torque when needed and overall mileage around 22-24 mpg. The Prairie winds did drop the mileage a lot so the overall is low..I think the wind will be at my back on the way home to increase it. 

Most all things made, worked. I brought too much stuff. I could lose a couple hundred pounds. What I did was plan for all contingencies… mathematically stupid. There are things vital in some circumstances with the probability of an occurrence minimal. So the list has been made to reduce the stuff…but there are those things needed to be added. I have really enjoyed the solar shower. Stream water in the pouch and left in the sun for a couple hours makes a fine hot shower, vital to keep spirits high. I have the need to make a lightweight folding aluminum shower holder attached to the jack stand mounts. make a real fridge shelf that won’t bend under the weigh of a 12 pack of beer. 

On the road to Chicken from Tok. One has time to ponder things when traveling. A great opportunity to get philosophical as there is time to do so. One thought that has come up a bunch lately is the  retrospection of the years. It seems clear there is a tipping scale in life… when young, you experience new things and personally important people and accumulate much but after a smooth sail of years that seem to come and go without thought of …..wait a minute….. I am mortal…. shit….what?!…. and then the value of things grows greater…the reverse then starts in a slow turn around of the burn engine, like the SpaceX landing.  It then becomes now more the loss of both of those, weathered away bit by bit.. it is how it goes. We come….and we go. I am trying to enjoy each of these stages as best as my ability to adapt continues… that is the fun of it too…. a new challenge to parse out instead of dread and refusal to keep current in society’s culture. Keep the old but select the new. Stay on the front of the train, not in one of the cars dragged behind.

July 17

Tok… home of Alaska’s cleanest vehicles…That is right…. they are known for it…a free carwash with fill up…and who doesn’t need both of those?… In the middle of nowhere where mud clad cars and trucks are the norm…. everybody is sparkling clean…even the ATV’s!

On top of that I see a real well run town.

We left this morning just north of Tok, AK and had a good time in Tok itself. A very interesting place who’s people are very proud of their history, as it is pretty recent, and pretty spectacular. A base camp for those that made these roads through these miles that we whisk through. Get out of the car and walk a mile of the same road and look where it went and why as one walks, what they had to cut through in wood or blast and dig in the rock, It is an incredible engineered job in wicked nasty conditions. The bugs alone would drive you crazy. I talked to a man who was half Athabaskan and half Irish. He loved to tell stories and told me about his time working on the pipeline as a welder. He said the bugs were so bad that as a man walked there was a tear drop shadow that followed him…the clouds of black fly and mosquito. He said he learned quite quickly of how to rid himself of the cloud…by walking fast, then stepping in front of another man…leaving your cloud with him for at least a few minutes reprieve. Every aspect of the day seemed a lot of work. This is a tough place and makes tough folk. 

We went up the Taylor Highway. A dirt road which goes up to a remote American border crossing at the end of the Top of the World Highway, with which it connects.. I will see that tomorrow but if it is a 10th of what I saw today I will be overwhelmed (again). The Road to Eagle is as the owner of the dry (no booze) town’s cafe says: on average 1 or 2 people out of one hundred that pass the 65 mile “ride” to the town of Eagle turn north to Eagle. Arriving at Chicken is enough of a hoot to do the day with the dredging machine that sat in a pond of its own creation and scooped ground with 32 metal scoops, 700 pounds a piece, on a massive and complex, heavy machine that sought gold. Crazy in weight and design it was all brought up these roads at the turn of the century … tons and tons of metal machines and pipe hundreds of miles. Like cutting up a steamship, hauling it up over a mountain range then reassembling it…. nuts amazing.

The road to Eagle was also incredible. After the Dalton it was work but not as nerve wracking… but the drop offs were like both of our experiences in Bolivia and Peru… bus rides across the Andes where the rear 5 seats of the bus actually do air time over the cliff edge hundreds of times… thousand feet down. 

It was a photo road but at many times a single lane road on a ledge …no turn off for some time… no stopping…. too dangerous. So photos came out the window or on straightaways.

A long first 40 miles… then the turn off for 65 miles at 30 MPH….eyes on the road surface 75 feet ahead. The sway bar paid for itself as did the shocks. I have come to a conclusion that the add-a-leaf was a bad idea..too much of a patch when a better thing was out there. I will most likely get a progressive spring pack at the Boise Spring works on the way through. Mind, the truck has done great with very rough road but I just think the progressive will make the truck last longer with less shock from rough road.

We came finally to Eagle. A town on the Yukon. Too much history to explain why it is here and more importantly why it is here now. That is the tougher part. It is here because of the past… still holding on; but as a place far removed struggling to be, not sure what it is. But man… what a view.!

I am here too, to drop into the Yukon River a rock brought with me from Massachusetts. A friend and co-teacher for a long time and with shared ideals and projects… passed. A science teacher and geologist. He would have loved to have thought that one of his specimens was coursing its way to the Bering Sea carried by the Yukon River. So I brought one of his to do so tomorrow…and being luckily Irish I just happen to have a shot of fine, single malt Irish Whiskey to salute him and his travels.

This will be on our way to Dawson City, also on the Yukon in Canada. We will make the border tomorrow at the end of the “Top of the World Highway”.