Day 47
Sunday, July 24
On the Road to Tok

Today was a travel day. We left Valdez around 8:45 for the 254 mile drive to Tok. We were in Tok about one month ago when we entered Alaska. The only way in or out of Alaska by road is through Tok. The trip today brought us back up the Richardson Highway or Highway to the Tok Cutoff or highway 1. The Richardson Highway goes through Keystone Canyon and begins to climb 7 1/2 miles to Thompson Pass. This pass annually gets over 800 inches of snow. Shortly after you start to parallel the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and the Wrangell Mountains. The Alaska Oil Pipeline parallels the road for a number of miles also.

Shortly after we crossed over Thompson Pass we noticed the tow vehicle for one of our group along side the road. The front two tires were flat. A few miles on down the road we came upon about 6 more of our group pulled over in a large lot. It seems that the car behind George and Winnie's motorhome slipped from Neutral into Park. They drug their "toad" several miles before someone was able to alert them of a problem. It turns out that they had to get a tow truck to take their car back to Valdez where it will be evaluated and hopefully repaired soon. They know they need two new tires, rims, and a rotar for the front brakes. If they cannot get it fixed soon and rejoin us, they will be able to join another caravan that will be in Valdez next Thursday. This caravan is doing the same trip as ours so they won't miss anything. This is the 2nd "toad" to have this same problem.

About 30 miles before reaching the Tok Cutoff we stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor Center. Here we learned that this National Park is the largest National Park in the U.S. and it is also the one with the lowest attendance. Six times the size of Yellowstone, Wrangell-St. Elias boasts four major Mountain Ranges that include 9 of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S. There are also hundreds of glaciers, a volcano, and a huge icefield. We watched a movie about the vastness of the park and looked at a scale model in the Visitor's Center.

After a brief lunch we headed on toward Tok. The road all the way from the Thompson Pass until we reached Tok was very rough. There were many, many frost heaves and at one point the road turned to gravel for about 20 miles. It took us until 4:45 to get to Tok - a very long day on very rough roads. At our travel briefing this evening Ken told us that our trip today was just a warmup for tomorrow. It seems that the road to Destruction Bay is under major construction, includes many frostheaves, and is just plain rough. We talked to several other campers who came in from Destruction Bay today and they confirmed what Ken told us. Tomorrow sounds like "fun." I will say that the roads throughout Canada and Alaska, with the exception of the Top of the World Highway< have been very good up to now. I guess we'll just have to take our time and go slow tomorrow.

After the travel briefing the staff prepared dinner for us - this make 6 or 7 times they have done this. We had ham, salad, and scalloped potatoes with pineapple unside down cake for dessert. Pretty good eatin'.

No pictures today. It was very overcast and we had a lot of rain on the way here today. There was also a lot of fog; consequently, we didn't have much to take pictures of. Maybe tomorrow will bring us more to photograph. Till then - Happy Trails!!