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Small House, Big Yard. John O'Neal
Читать онлайн.Название Small House, Big Yard
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781456622879
Автор произведения John O'Neal
Жанр Учебная литература
Издательство Ingram
Anchorage was established in 1914 as a railroad construction port for the Alaska Railroad, which was built between 1915 and 1923. Today the city has a population of 360,000. The city is on a strip of coastal lowland and extends up the lower alpine slopes of the Chugach Mountains. To the south is Turnagain Arm, a fiord that has some of the world's highest tides. Knik Arm, another fiord, lies to the west and north. All this water and topography makes for a beautiful setting for the city. Anchorage and the surrounding area have a lot for tourists to see and do. Most of it has to do with glaciers, water, and boats. The Alaska Railroad is still an important part of the Alaska infrastructure. The first time we were here, on a guided land tour from a cruise ship, we rode the train between Fairbanks and Anchorage. We were happy to get to Anchorage for all the things that a city has to offer, like an RV repair place. Our brand new RV has been holding together extremely well, but the ABS brake light on the dash had been coming on so we wanted to have that looked at by a factory certified dealer. It turned out to be a faulty indicator.
After a few days of resting up and seeing the city, it was on to Denali National Park, located about halfway to Fairbanks. We were looking forward to stopping at the park because last time we were there, on the train, it was so hot that none of the critters the park is famous for were out and about. And we didn't get to see Mount McKinley last time because the weather was so bad on the mountain that it was blocked from view. Denali turned out to be a bust this time around too for the same reason, way too hot. And the mountain was shrouded in weather again. Didn't see squat. So after spending the night boon docking in one of the hotel parking lots, it was on to Fairbanks.
Fairbanks is a hardscrabble city of 82,000 hardy souls in the interior of the state. Everything about the city speaks to being an island in the middle of a vast wilderness. The winters are so harsh that the city never fully recovers before the next winter comes around.
We couldn’t help but notice that every vehicle has an electric extension cord sticking out of the grill so they can keep their engines from freezing overnight. Winters are very long, lasting from mid-October to mid-April. They are bitterly cold and dry, with temperatures sometimes dipping down to -65 °F. The average January low is -19 °F and the average January high is -2 °F. (Remember, water freezes at +32 °F.) Winter snowfall averages around 65 inches per year. And as you might not expect, it gets hot there in the summer. It was in the 90s when we came here off that cruise a few years ago and in the 90s again when we came back in the RV. The locals told us that temps that high were not common, but not rare either.
We learned a lot about the Alaska pipeline, gold mining, and dog sled racing in Fairbanks. Susan Butcher, winner of four Iditarod dogsled races lives just outside of town. We took a riverboat cruise/tour that went past her house and training camp. She happened to be out in her yard so the riverboat stopped and she came out to speak with everyone.
Fairbanks has never been a shopping Mecca, it's about as far out in the boondocks as I ever expect to be. The people in Fairbanks were all excited about the Wal-Mart that just opened last month. Being so far north, the sun is up for 21 hours and 49 minutes on the 21st of June with 24 hours of usable daylight. Conversely, the sun is up for 3 hours and 42 minutes on the 21st of December with 6 hours and 33 minutes of usable daylight. We were there in mid-June. I went out to play golf at 8:00 p.m. and the course was fairly crowded. We finished at 11:30 p.m. and there was still plenty of daylight left. Oddly enough, I ended up playing with a guy up there on business, who lives in San Diego, and is the cousin of John Thom who worked used to work for me down there. Small world.
The first stop after leaving Fairbanks was Delta Junction. That's where the end of the Alaska Highway (Mile marker 1422) is. We stayed long enough to have lunch, take some pictures, and buy some tee shirts. Then it was back on the road to Tok for dinner and an overnight stay. This time instead of turning southwest to Anchorage, we turned northeast toward the Top of the World Highway and Dawson City.
While we were in Alaska, the Yukon Territory had 5,000 lightning strikes that started 380 fires. Twice the normal amount. The locals are calling this the year that the Yukon burned. And burn it did. Fire departments are far and few between and they only fight fires in towns ...never in the wilderness. When we arrived in Tok in preparation for crossing the border we drove into the smoke. We were in a lot of smoke for the next 10 days. The Alaska Highway, in the Yukon, was closed a number of times, at a number of places, for a number of days. Considering that the Alaska Highway is the only road for nearly 1,500 miles, a lot of people got stuck all over the place. When we eventually got back to Whitehorse after leaving Dawson City we heard all kinds of stories. We spent the night in the Whitehorse Wal-Mart parking lot along with dozens of other RVers because the two RV Parks in town were full. The parking lot looked like an RV Dealership.
But back to Tok... When we left Tok it was a short drive to the cutoff for the Top of the World Highway. When we got there, there was a saw horse across the road with a big sign on it saying "Highway Closed Due To Fire." While we guys were standing there scratching our heads (and other body parts) and discussing what to do, an RV drove up from the opposite direction. The driver told us the fire wasn't so bad... so we moved the saw horse out of the way, told the girls it was clear ahead, and started off for Dawson City, 180 miles away. It didn't take long before we were driving through burnt forest. An hour later we were driving through the fire. Cindi, who was driving, was NOT a happy camper. I, on the other hand, got some great pictures. :) After a half hour of fire on both sides of the road we were past it and back into burnt forest again. Shortly after that the road turned from pavement to dirt. And it was worse than dirt; the road was like a washboard. We had to slow down to 15 MPH or the RV would have been shaken apart. We were the third RV in line and drove the whole way in a dust cloud. It was slow going for a long time before we arrived at the halfway point, Chicken, Alaska.
http://www.nebraskaweatherphotos.org/Top-of-the-World-Highway.html
Chicken, Alaska was settled by gold miners in the late 1800s. In 1902 the local post office was established so the community needed a name. Due to the prevalence of Ptarmigan in the area that name was suggested as the official name for the new community. However, the miners could not agree on how to spell the bird's name so they decided to call the town Chicken instead. We would have stayed to do some sightseeing in town but we were running out of daytime, not daylight, so we decided to push on. Not to mention the smoke was almost as thick as fog.
After lunch at Chicken, it was back on that washboard dirt road again. The scenery is supposed to be spectacular on the Top of the World Highway but there was so much smoke that we couldn't see much. And we ate so much dust on that road that it's going to take months to get it all cleaned out of the nooks and crannies of our brand new RV.
Hours later, having crossed into the Yukon, we arrived on a hill overlooking Dawson City located at the confluence of the Klondike River and Yukon River. At the bottom of the hill we didn't find a bridge across the mighty Yukon River. Instead, a tiny ferry boat was chugging toward our four RVs. It turns out that Canada provides free ferry boats to the cities that are located on rivers that cannot be bridged. Being the trooper that she is, Cindi drove right on to that little ferry with no problem. We didn't even unhook the car.
Dawson City got its start during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896. It was a thriving community of 40,000 people in its heyday. Today the population is 2,000. Dawson City and the surrounding gold fields were far and away the highlight of the month for us. Dawson City is a wonderful tourist town for seeing what the Yukon was like, and is still like. The locals have retained the spirit of the original mining camp. The challenges of living in such a harsh environment in the middle of nowhere are mind boggling. Because the whole town is built on permafrost, none of the roads in town are paved and the buildings are on shims. Even the runway, at the little airport, is gravel. The place is like going back in time a hundred years. And like everywhere we went in Alaska, the people in the Yukon were very friendly to tourists.
We stayed at the one and only RV Park, located downtown. Actually,