Alaska - Day 4

It rained during the night but was dry (still cloudy and chilly) this morning as we left Whitehorse. We had a full day of driving the Alaska Highway, complete with frost heaves and stretches of construction with lengthy waits for a pilot car before we could continue. With just one road through the wilderness, there are no possible detours. You just wait. But today we actually saw a "Detour" sign and got to drive for a short distance on the original Alaska Highway. The highway has been straightened and widened that not very many original miles remain. As we traveled today we saw WW II quonset huts which have become tiny churches, enjoyed wonderful bakery goods in a beautiful log building in Haines Junction and walked across an old original log bridge alongside today's highway. At Sheep Mountain, a park ranger gave us a most interesting talk on Dall sheep and taught us how to tell the age of the sheep by counting the rings on their horns. The closer we got to Tok, the warmer and
sunnier it got. There were trumpeter swans (one pair had nine babies) swimming in small ponds alongside the highway, and way across one small lake we caught sight of a female moose and her baby. Just a few seconds later they had gone into the trees and were immediately out of sight.

Tonight at Tok we stopped at the Public Lands Building to pick up Alaska maps and to look at displays of baleen and ptarmigan. (You'll have to ask people who are on the tour to explain all of these things to you when we get back home!) - Laurel Johnson, Tour Director