Author: Steve

What a difference a day makes.

Last night we were in a gravel parking lot RV Park.  (We’re led to believe gravel parking lot RV parks happen a lot in Alaska.)  The surrounding scenery is glorious, but the RV Park itself is a little rough.

Drive across the orange hose, but don’t park a wheel on it.  It’s the water supply line for all the sites.

Tonight we’re at Riverside Camper Park in Houston.  Another beautiful setting, but with a really nice RV Park as well.

The Great 2019 Alaska Trip map

The Alaska portion of the trip

4,219, 500, 56, 138 update

0, 134, 22, 138

Now it’s July, and we’re at 0 miles to go to get to Fairbanks (been there, done that).

134 birds remaining to get to 500 for the year.  I’ve been grousing about being in a bird desert.  I’ll walk for an hour and only see 5 or 6 species.  Not what we’re used to.  But then I look at the year-list and we’ve been getting really good birds at the rate of about 1 a day still!

22 continuing education hours to go.

And still 115 counties in which to report a bird to have all 254 counties in Texas.  That won’t change for a while.

We’re following the ½ tank rule that we initiated when we got to the Canadian Border.  If we’re anywhere near ½ a tank remaining in the RV when we pass a fuel stop, stop.  No sense taking any chances and finding out the next distant fuel stop is out of service.

Got to be careful buying diesel for the coach here though.  There are options.

There.  Hiding on the right side of pump number 2.  Our diesel.  Normal diesel! src=157617688678.7740.94575423890617344@FeluriaE1780” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

We’ve headed south on the Parks Highway and are at Cantwell for the night.

The Great 2019 Alaska Trip map

The Alaska portion of the trip

Driving through Alaska on (mostly) paved roads is a big loop.  We’re doing it counterclockwise.

4,371 miles to sandpipers.

Driveabout!

Fairbanks is pretty far north, but there is one highway that goes even farther north from here.  It’s the Dalton Highway.  It’s not reputed to be a good road, but it goes all the way up into the Arctic Circle 500 miles to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean.  Prudhoe Bay is not a tourist destination, it’s just an oil handling facility for north slope oil, and the northern end of the Alaska Pipeline that transports oil all the way down to the seaport in Anchorage for transport by tanker.  Rough road, no facilities, a multi-day effort, nothing but oil processing at the destination; not a road we want to take.

We thought it would be a good idea to follow it for a while just to see what it was like and how the terrain changed as we got north out of Fairbanks though.  We headed off with the town of Livengood, two hours away as a possible destination if the road was good enough.  Judy got the wrong word in her head briefly and thought we going to Feelingood, but she couldn’t find it on the map.  Every time she googled it she got pot shops instead.  We got past that disconnect and found surprisingly good road all the way there.

Some construction, lots of gravel, but no problem, and after a while the road went back to pavement again.  That was a surprise.  Altogether an interesting drive.  We watched the Alaska Pipeline zig zag its way across the terrain.  Sometimes it’s below ground, but where there is permafrost, or earthquake risk, the pipeline has to be elevated.  It zig zags to accommodate the expansion and contraction of metal through a 160 range of temperature extremes and is not fastened to the vertical supports, but rides on a Teflon shoe that can slide as needed.

We thought Livengood would be a town because that’s what it looks like on the map but no, we were wrong.  Livengood is a collection of cabins, with all the ones close in, like might be a town, abandoned.  We drove around.  Looked around.  Explored the Manley Highway off toward Manley Hot Springs through some good moose habitat, but didn’t find any moose.

It was only another hour to the Yukon River crossing, so we decided to drive on.  We got to the River about 2pm.

There is a nice modern metal bridge across the Yukon but interestingly, the road surface is made of wooden slats.

Of all the materials they could have paved the bridge with, wooden slats seemed like the best choice.  Whatever they use, it has to withstand temperature extremes of 80 degrees above zero and 80 degrees below.

The road wasn’t bad.  It was nice there.  The weather was good.  And it was only another 60 miles to the Arctic Circle!  I checked the gas gauge.  We were not yet down to half a tank.  Wherever we were when we hit half a tank had to be our turnaround point.  It looked like we could make it.

We drove on.  The road never got any worse and it was still often even paved!  Piece of cake!  Now we’ve been all the way to the Arctic Circle.

cid157617695145.7740.1065295088297521511@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

We thought about hanging around and photographing the sunset, but quickly dismissed that idea.

There were other people there, excited to be at the Arctic Circle.  In fact, there is a host passing out stamped certificates to document the achievement.

cid157617695145.7740.17341280997009348781@Feluria0” style=”width:6.5in;height:4.85in” width=”624″/>

We met a group of three people that had traveled all the way from Brazil.  They had made it all the way to Canada on their motorcycles then one of the bikes broke down.  Not wanting to split up the group, they left their motorcycles, rented a car, and traveled together the rest of the way.  While we were talking to them, a young couple from Argentina arrived in their VW Bus!  They drove all the way from Argentina!

We saw a few birds, made notes to record them later, and at 4:30pm began the five-hour plus drive home.  Rolling hills.  Tundra.  Boreal forest.

cid157617695145.7740.2633343736816692147@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

Zig zagging pipeline.

cid157617695145.7740.7546981520831893643@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

cid157617695145.7740.7273283464273546130@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

Glorious alpine valleys.  Rivers, lakes, and moose ponds.

cid157617695145.7740.12835515818288025705@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

cid157617695146.7740.15651458022170614299@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

cid157617695146.7740.7647427315292607594@Feluria0” style=”width:5.775in;height:3.8416in” width=”554″/>

No moose.  Forest fire smoke off and on.  A brilliant red setting sun that wasn’t actually going to set.  We ate all the lunch we had brought and most of the granola bars.  We drank our two cups of coffee each.  Our water lasted the entire day.  We made a quick stop at Taco Bell in Fairbanks at 9:30 at night just to get something in our stomachs before bed.  Home by 10pm.

A four-hundred fifty mile drive.  A long day.  Tired butts.  But I got us home before dark!

The Great 2019 Alaska Trip map

Here is how we’re doing on the Alaska county bird map.

cid157617695146.7740.6611479072882415887@Feluria0” style=”width:6.5in;height:4.1in” width=”624″/>

Birch Hill, a nordic ski center.  That made for nice summertime walking trails.  One section was set up as a frisbee golf course.

Efficient.  I don’t think those two uses will conflict.

The hole for disc golf is defined by a chainstar.  Hit the chains with the frisbee and they suck all the momentum out of it and it falls into the tray.

I’ve never played frisbee golf so I thought it would be interesting to take a look.  We ended up walking every hole through the forest and I started playing them in my head.  Most were par 3.  There were four par 4s.  I could see the setup and throws that needed to be made.  I left too long a putt for one and bogeyed the hole.  One I birdied.  Overall, par.  I’d have to say I played one fine round of golf for my first try ever.  Next time I’ll have to try it with a disc!

Brown Creeper.

They can be hard to pick out against the bark.

They fly down to the base of a tree then quietly work their way up until it’s time to fly down to the base of the next tree.  It’s easier when they silhouette against the sky behind.

We asked about recycling.  We’re told it has just begun in Anchorage.  We can expect it to hit Fairbanks in a couple years.  Did we cross a time warp?

We have here an unfamiliar tree.  It’s a key species for the boreal forest; the black spruce.  It’s distinctive and not like anything we see in Colorado.  Normal spruces are pyramidal; shaped like Christmas trees.  The black spruce, by contrast, is very tall and thin.

From a distance, stands of black spruce do look considerably darker than other evergreen forests.

We bought a lot of warm clothes in Colorado to bring to the Yukon and Alaska.  It’s been T-shirt weather since we got here.  I’m getting weather alerts on my phone; excessive heat; highs in the mid-seventies to mid-eighties.  No rain in sight!