Day 12—Finally Reaching Alaska

We started today with a wonderful continental breakfast at the Inn. There was homemade bread, fruit salad, muffins, cereal, meats, cheeses, etc. Everything was delicious and had a touch of elegance. We finally got on the road around 11 a.m. and hit a Wal-Mart about 30 minutes down the road to buy bread and water. Yesterday we stopped at a gas station in a town and asked how much a 12 pack of water was---$12. Ugh. We passed it up and just emptied our cooler of what we had on hand. Today we bought more to make it the rest of the trip. We have also been fixing lunch in the car every day to cut down on that expense. We have cooler with sandwich meat, and we refresh the ice daily and buy bread when we need it. This plan has worked out really well because we are generally in the middle of nowhere at lunch time. The topography changed today to a little flatter land and more straight stretches. After about 200 miles of driving today we came upon a huge lake in the middle of nowhere. We looked it up in Mileposts and found out it is Kluane Lake...the largest lake in the Yukon...over 150 square miles. The water is almost a turquoise blue and absolutely breathtaking against the mountains on one side of it. We drove around about 1/3 rd of the lake and truly enjoyed the views. We also passed the tallest mountain range in Canada today. The peaks went up into the clouds and were covered with icefields (glaciers). They were beautiful and stayed in the distance of our travels for much of the afternoon. A little way after the lake we hit the worst road conditions of our whole trip. For over 100 miles there were "dips" in the road caused by the permafrost layer of ground under the road thawing and shifting. It felt like a really bad carnival ride...mile after mile of split second drops in the road that piled together made our stomachs ache and our necks hurt. Chris and I agreed if we had hit this area at the beginning of our Alaska Highway drive, we would have quit. On top of the dips, there were also tons of gravel patches in the road. As we learned about 4 days ago, this is nothing to take lightly...a passing truck sent a rock flying into my windshield and put a nickel sized pothole in the class and another time we passed a car that was overturned after losing control on a gravel area. Except for the scenery, this was no fun to drive. After driving almost 4400 miles total, we entered Alaksa late this afternoon. We stopped for a photo op (see picture) and also took photos at a bench where half is in the Yukon and half is in Alaska and the two names are carved in the seat with a line down the middle. So for a brief moment, we were all in both Canada and the USA. We also sang "God Bless America" when we passed a gas station, still in the middle of nowhere, selling gas for $3.09/gallon. For the final 90 minutes of driving after entering Alaska, we had mountain ranges to the left with icefields covering the top of them. The land was much flatter between the road and the mountains with lots of little lakes. The trees are so close together here that we looked at a hill to the left and swore it was covered with beautiful green grass. But we thought about that and said, "Grass wouldn't look like that from so far away". Turns out, it was covered with trees so even in height and color and size and placed so close together that it gave the illusion of a grass or moss covered hillside and top. It was really cool. Well, we finished today in Tok (Toak), Alaska after driving 426 miles for a trip total of 4486 miles to date. The kids have been really feisty today. Chris and I believe that it is a combination of being antsy after 12 days in the car as well as being excited about arriving in Anchorage and nervousness over seeing their new home. They want to get up EARLY in the morning to hit the road and get to Eagle River as soon as possible. Chris and I are thinking we need to let them wake up naturally so they are well rested and ready to handle the day's offerings. Please hold them close in prayer as they see their new hometown and house. I pray that they will be happy there.