Leaving Chicken, AK and stopping at Delta Junction then onto Tok, Alaska
 |
| Traffic on the Taylor Highway |
With Chicken, AK behind us, we are travelling on the fairly
isolated Taylor Highway, the stretch of road from where we crossed into Alaska until we
arrive back on the Alaska Highway. There
were several miles of dirt roads and many locals were motoring on quads on this road, we saw several of these.
 |
| Peaceful drive through the countryside |
The weather was great and we had some beautiful scenery with
very little traffic to share the road with. This is Highway 5 and it is closed in
the winter due to no road maintenance being done then.
 |
| Tanana River |
This calm water looks more like a lake and not the normal
river water we see but a nice change from the many rivers we cross on our
travels. We travel alongside the Tanana
River for several miles as we complete our journey on the Alaska Highway, also called the Alcan.
 |
| Tok RV Village |
We arrive in the small town of Tok, AK to spend the night at
the Tok RV Village. The spaces are large
and they have several amenities available.
We arrived early afternoon so there were not many in there but more RV’ers
arrived as the day went on. We enjoyed
warm summer weather and some local entertainment that evening.
 |
| Tok Visitor's Center and gift store |
Tok meaning “peaceful crossing” considers itself the
goodwill ambassador of Alaska. When highway travelling to and from Canada, you
pass through Tok which is called the “Gateway to Alaska”. We visited the Visitor’s Center and a local
gift store full of Alaska souvenirs. We
see a display of animals of Alaska at most stops we make. We’d prefer to see live animals but those
viewings are rather limited in this big country.
 |
| Crossing the bridge over the Gerstle River |
We cross the Johnson River then the Gerstle River on our
last miles of the Alcan Highway. There
are so many rivers that we cross but the Gerstle was another great example of
the rivers we saw during our travels.
There was very little water but small rivulets running down the braided riverbed
on this July day.
 |
| Very BIG mosquito in Delta Jumction, Alaska |
We are now at Delta Junction, AK and see these huge mosquito
sculptures at the tourist centre. We had
been warned by everyone who has travelled Alaska in the past that we were to
expect to see lots of bugs, mosquitoes being one of them. We only saw a troublesome swarm once on our
travels and we were able to avoid them by moving on.
 |
| Termperature records |
We were travelling in the summer months and enjoying
sunshine and warm temperatures on most days but this photo shows what kinds of
temperatures the other months have brought in the past. We’ve definitely chosen the right time of
year to visit.
 |
| End of the Alaska Highway |
We have now reached the end of the Alcan Highway that began
in Dawson Creek, BC at Mile 0 and was built to connect Alaska to BC by road. This project employed 15,000 men and 11,000
pieces of equipment. The price at
completion in 1942 was 115 million dollars but in today’s money would be almost
1.7 billion dollars. The highway has
been altered over the years with improvements etc. so the mileage can vary from
this original number.
We are onto Fairbanks from here to spend a couple of days to enjoy
what the area has to offer. The adventure continues,
click here.
