Day 23
Thursday, June 30
On the Road to Tok (Rhymes with Joke)


It was nice to be able to sleep late and take our time getting around. I got up about 7:00 - thought it was 8:00 - turned on the coffee, took Lucy out to take care of her business and came back in to find the electricity off. Don't know what happened but it was off in the entire park. We got around and went down to the cafe with Dot and Mel to have breakfast. I guess everyone else had the same idea because the place was packed with Adventure Caravan jackets!. Had a nice breakfast and went back to get ready to go.  
 
 

About 9:30 Jenna and I pulled out and drove over to the only gas pump in town. Robert and Bet came shortly after. We checked out the Chicken Mini-Mall one more time before heading out to Tok. I took the lead and promptly turned right instead of left at the end of the road. That meant that we were headed back onto the hell-hole road we took yesterday. Within 1/2 mile Robert called and said, "I think we are going the wrong direction." I had just had the same thought myself so we both turned around (not easy to do on a narrow dirt road) and headed back the right way. The road in that direction was no better. We had been told that we would find a paved road about 2 miles ahead, and we did find a paved road. Paved in places with lots of frost heaves and gravel and mud patches. We could only drive about 24 MPH for the first 40 miles. The next 40 were somewhat better with only occasional dips, bumps, frost heaves, and muddy patches. The entire 80 mile trip to Tok took a little over 3 hours! I enjoyed out trip to Chicken and would encourage anyone coming to Alaska to visit there. However, I don't care to drive on that kind of road again.  
 

As we came into Tok, we had been instructed to stop and the Village Gas Station and get some fuel. The amount didn't matter as long as you had a receipt. The receipt entitled you to a free car/truck/RV wash at the RV park. The only catch was that everyone had to get out and help wash every RV. It was a blast. We had 22 rigs lined up and two by two they pulled into the washing station. We had buckets of water, brushes on long poles, and high pressure waterhoses. We washed 2 rigs at a time - Motorhomes, tow cars, 5th wheels and trucks. About 2/3 of the way through it started to rain pretty hard. We were all pretty wet so we just kept scrubbing and rinsing. After 190 miles of gravel, muddy, dirt roads our vehicles were aweful. When we finally got to out campsites, it was funny seeing everyone out polishing and cleaning. Motorhome owners are fanatics about keeping their rigs clean. They wash them almost every day when we get into the park. Today they got a super wash job. I bet we have the cleanest caravan in Alaska. 

At 5:15 we had a travel briefing for our trip to Fairbanks tomorrow, and following that, we all walked about a block to a very nice restruant for a LEO. LEO means "Let's Eat Out." I'm sure many people standing in line at Fast Eddy's were unhappy to see 42 Adventure Caravan jackets come in the front door and got straight to tables in the back. We had a great dinner and had lots of laughs the Dave, Lynn, Ron, Jackie, Ken and Carole.  
 
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After returning to our rigs I went over to watch Chris replace the spring on his trailer that he replaced last night. He got a new spring to replace the one he borrowed from me and a new one to put on his rig. The one he borrowed from me was not as heavy as the one he broke. I ended up with two springs.

Tomorrow we are heading to Fairbanks. We will be there 4 days and have lots of activities scheduled for the first two days. The next two, July 4 & 5 are free days, so I don't know what we will do, but I bet we do something fun. I'll let you know what we do in the coming blogs. Til then, Happy Trails