Today Mark and I decided to drive up to Chicken. The story about this town was that the early miners were trying to think of a name for the town and they decided to name it after the ptarmigans which are Alaska’s state bird and are reportedly so stupid that they’re easy to catch and kill for food. Only the miners didn’t know how to spell ptarmigan, so since they sometimes called them Alaskan chickens, they named the town Chicken. Continue reading
We have a list of churches in Tok and several nearby villages, but the list doesn’t give addresses. It gives phone numbers, so last night Mark called the contact person for the Tok LDS church. They are a house church. Continue reading
We had plans to drive to Fairbanks today and see what that’s like. We both needed better work shoes and there’s no place in Tok to get good ones. On our way, we stopped at North Pole, Alaska! Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus! Here are some pictures: Continue reading
It’s been a pleasant trip, but after the frustration of not being able to do everything I wanted with my blog the last couple days, it’s nice to be back on American soil! For starters let me just say that we are now on Alaska Time, so we are an hour ahead of Pacific Time. Continue reading
Sunset in Portland, OR: 8:38pm. Sunset in Whitehorse, YK: 10:43pm. I’m writing this at dusk at 10:50pm. I woke up at 4:44am this morning and daylight was coming through the skylight in our bathroom. It doesn’t make for wanting to get a lot of sleep! Continue reading
I’m a little confused. Yesterday the sunset time I saw for Portland, OR was 9:10pm. Today I’m seeing sunset in Portland is 8:36. I don’t know which is right, but sunset in Watson Lake tonight is 10:07pm! Also, one thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that we’d seen a couple hikers walking along the highway pushing or pulling little carts with their supplies. I think they’re making a trek along the Alcan Highway. Continue reading
One thing I forgot to mention about yesterday was that after we used Mark’s Wells Fargo card for gas, the card stopped working. I had called all our card companies before we left Washington to let them know we’d be traveling, so we were perplexed as to why Wells Fargo froze our card. Mark called them this morning and, sure enough, they had a note in their computer that we’d called them in advance about our trip, so they unfroze the card. If they hadn’t, we couldn’t have proceeded any further. Continue reading
We got up early again this morning, and it didn’t take long to break camp and drive to the border. They remembered us when we drove up and had us park and fill out some paperwork. Mark told them that all he has with him now is his shotgun and ammo for it. They charged us $25 (Canadian) and let us go without even looking in the RV. We left the border at 8:00 this morning. Continue reading
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”, so they say. That was certainly our experience today. Continue reading