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It’s 5am and several diesel trucks already have their engines running in the campground! Turns out that the Excel RV caravan needs to be at the ferry dock by 6am, so 19 diesel trucks are starting up, hooking up to their 5th wheels, and lining up to leave the campground. Very noisy. At 5am it’s already sunny (no clouds, that is very, very good; but not appreciated so much at 5am), so by 6:15 when I still can’t get back to sleep I get up for the day. By 7am the construction workers are knocking down trees and moving dirt next to the campground, but Jere and Joe stay asleep – sure wish I could :-)

This is the nicest day weather-wise that we’ve had in a month, so we take a walk down the visitors center and the small harbor area of Haines.

We drove to the ferry terminal yesterday to get our tickets for Saturday, but they were closed, so we drive back today to pick up our ferry tickets. We want to make sure that everything is set for us taking the RV on the ferry this Saturday and it is, so we go back to have a good lunch before our hike.

The visitors’ center attendant recommended the hike to Mt. Riley summit. It’s supposed to take about 3.5 hours—it takes us about 4.5 hours plus 30 minutes at the top.

I think we may have pushed our physical limits today. The hike is 2.8 miles to the summit, steep, and washed out/eroded many places. We see bear tracks in the mud and do lots of talking or singing during the hike so we don’t surprise any bears on the trail.

We also see moose tracks and droppings high up in the mountain – what is a moose doing way up here?!

We have good hiking boots on and Joe is fine, but Jere & I are exhausted by the time we make it to the top. HOWEVER, the view at the top is absolutely awesome! We can see the Lynn Canal in both directions, plus the rivers and glaciers in the area.

We spend about 30 minutes at the top having snacks and taking pictures.

The hike down is easier than the hike up, but still slow. It’s steep and slippery at places with lots of exposed tree roots where the dirt has eroded away from.

By the time we get to the truck, we (that would be Jere & I, not Joe—Joe has lots of energy left and seemed to be dancing/jumping down the mountain) practically crawl into the truck. Jere drives back to the campground and we all head for the showers – we (again, that would be ‘Jere & I’) were sweating like pigs for the last half of the hike up the mountain, plus we’re coated with insect repellent.

We have a late dinner and don’t move the rest of the evening.

We have beautiful, blue skies this morning. Great day for our scenic drive between Haines Junction and Haines!

We make lots of stops today. There are lots of snow-covered mountains and beautiful scenery to look at, PLUS IT IS NOT CLOUDY OR RAINING!!!

Joe sees snow along the road and asks to stop to play in the snow, so we make a stop for a few quick snowballs.

Before we get to the Canadian/US border, we see bears walking along the road at 3 different places. This is supposed to be a great road to see bears and eagles.

This is the 3rd time we’re crossing into Alaska on the trip, but the first time we’ve had good weather for the crossing.

We arrive at Haines HitchUp RV Park. This place is almost full, mostly due to an Excel 5th wheel caravan, but we have a spot reserved. So we set up, get some groceries, have dinner, and then take a drive to Chilkoot Lake. Pretty area. We see several eagles, along with some unusual ducks.

The Chilkoot Lake empties into the Chilkoot River and they (the state fish and wildlife management?) actually count the number of salmon that travel up the river. There’s a guy sitting on a platform in the middle of the river counting them as they travel through the opening. I’m not sure why he’s counting them, but that is certainly a unique job.

Here's a nice photo of Haines, Alaska that I took on the way back to the trailer:

We drive back to the trailer, but it is so nice out (and of course still light out at 9pm) that I take a walk into town and to the small boat harbor. Hopefully it will be a nice day out tomorrow, but you never know…

We wake up and it is still raining! Ugghhh. We have a big breakfast and pack up in the rain. We don't get very far down the road when we hit road construction. We stop in the line of traffic and a few minutes later the flaggirl starts walking towards us. We've been through enough road construction in the north to know that this is not a good sign. We roll down the window and she tells us that it will be at least another 30 minutes before we can go through. Jere smiles and says "We were hoping that you would take the day off since it was raining." She says that she was hoping that also, but they're blasting rock today so the rain doesn't matter. So we wait. We're all reading a book when we jump from a boom and the truck shakes--the blasting is over so hopefully we can go soon. After about 30 minutes we follow the line of traffic behind the pilot car. We have also learned that when a pilot car is used to guide us through construction that the road may be very bad. Today it is very bad. They've had a lot of rain and the road is muddy and in bad shape. We put it in 4-wheel drive going up the hill and make it through the construction.

As we're driving out of the mess the tractor trailer that was driving behind us passes us, rolls down his window and yells to us that we have a blow out on one of our trailer tires. The road is so bad we never had a clue that our tire blew out.

We're on a narrow 2-lane road with no shoulders, so we drive til we find a section with a little bit of a shoulder. We're still on the road but thankfully there's not much traffic here. An hour later our tire is changed and we're on our way again.

One good thing -- the rain stopped soon after we pulled over to fix the tire.

We drive up the road and stop at a rest stop with one last view of Kluane Lake. It's still very overcast, so the lake still isn't the shimmering blue-green lake that we were hoping to see.

We were planning an early stop today and are glad that we did. We only drive 60 miles to Haines Junction and stop at the Kluane RV Park. We have a late lunch and then drive over to the Kluane National Park Visitor Center. It's a nice visitors center with a movie, but the most interesting thing there is an antique car in the parking lot from Texas:

As we're driving back to the campground, we see about a dozen antique cars parked at one of the motels in town. I didn't realize that there are antique car caravans to Alaska.

We spend the rest of the day doing chores except for a short hike behind the campground after dinner.

We pack up and leave the Sourdough Campground in Tok, Alaska. Our first stop is at the gas station to fill up with diesel. A busdriver who is also filling his tank starts up a conversation with Jere and tells him that he's glad that he's not driving a large trailer to Destruction Bay -- the road is horrible! He came from that direction. He says to go slow and wishes us luck.

The road is terrible! There are many dips, bumps and potholes! They're due to the permafrost. Many are marked with flags, but many are not. We probably average 25 mph.

The scenery is pretty boring for the first few hours except for the fireweed. There are sections where the fireweed covers the countryside for acres and acres. It is really pretty. There is no place to stop to take pictures, but I try to take one through the front windshield:

We see several moose when we cross into Canada, but most are too far away for pictures. We see a large bull moose near the road but he turns away as I try to take a picture:

Then it starts to rain. At first it just drizzles but eventually it is pouring rain. We decide to stop sooner than planned but the RV park is closed, so we keep going.

The drive near Kluane Lake/Destruction Bay is supposed to be very scenic, but it is raining too hard and too many clouds to see the mountains. We can tell that the Kluane Lake is a pretty blue-green glacial lake, but the rain makes it hard to see.

We finally make it to Destruction Bay, about 2 hours later than expected, but glad to be here. The first RV park is full with a caravan so we continue down the road and stop at a provincial park, Congdon Creek. It's on the shore of the Kluane Lake. We set up camp in the rain, have dinner, play monopoly and then around 8pm there is a break in the rain, so we take a short walk around the campground (before it starts raining again).

We wake up to beautiful blue skies! I make some coffee and head outside to enjoy the great scenery here in Valdez. No church service on TV, so I spend some time talking with God while I'm enjoying His beautiful scenery.

The tide is extremely low this morning and the water is far from the trailer, with millions of little black mussels on the shore. I see a few others walk out over the mussels, so I decide to do the same -- very different walking across tiny mussels and seaweed. After breakfast Joe and Jere decide to also walk out to the water.

This has been an interesting stop. Before this I always associated Valdez with the Alaskan Pipeline and the oil spill, but after this visit I now associate Valdez with fishing. It seems like there are fisherman everywhere in Valdez: in boats, on the shore, on the pier. Nothing wrong with that, but not what I expected. However, I did feel guilty when someone would ask me how many fish I caught, and I'd have to admit that I wasn't a fisherman: They would look at me with the expression " Why not?" :-)

Anyway, after taking our time getting ready and packing up, we leave Valdez and start the scenic drive out of town. It was cloudy when we drove this road coming into Valdez, so this is a treat to have blue skies. Our first stop is a few miles outside of Valdez at Horsetail Falls.

Beautiful scenery, but also an interesting "Alaskan Artist" has set up her van and artwork. What is interesting is that she appears to have a hunting knife and a pistol strapped to her belt.

Our next stop is at Thompson Pass.

We make several more stops during the day, including a picnic by the creek, but the mountains are surrounded by clouds in the afternoon, so we don't get the wonderful view of the Wrangell Mountain range that we were hoping for.

We stop at Tok, Alaska by dinnertime.