Alaska Road Trip

We took off from Anchorage on Monday the 2nd and drove to Tok, Alaska where we stayed at the Sourdough Campground. This was a nice place with a Sourdough Pancake Toss every night and a community campfire with free marshmallows! Lots of RVs though and lots of retirees. We tossed pancakes at a bucket... we missed... and paid for breakfast. The pancakes were not nearly as good as the ones we had in Seward that Grandma made.

Tuesday we drove to Whitehorse and on the way we stopped to make a heart out of white rocks in the hillside.

That night we stayed at this little hippie commune campground right outside of town. There were no sites left so they said to set up the tent on the lawn and that's what we did. Us and a few other campers including two bikers from Edmonton. They offered to share their picnic bench with us and so we stayed up late with them swapping road stories. We really liked this campground because it was tent only. We've discovered that RV parks have a much older and stuffier feel.

Then in the morning, to Liard Hot Springs and Campground. We heard there was skinny dipping after midnight! On the road there we ran into a heard of buffalo and saw 5 bears!!! Including a momma and two babies! We talked to some folks at the hot springs that had driven through this heard of buffalo as well. One twelve-year-old girl said, "Did you see the giant buffalo testicles?!?" Unfortunately, we missed those. :)

The hot springs were a blast! Really beautiful and natural pools.

Because the bears were within about 15 minutes of the campground I was a little nervous and we decided not to head up for a midnight dip. But the Springs are open 24 hours for campers!

Today we woke up with no set plans or destination in mind. On the road we stopped for a short hike to some salt licks and ran into some Stone Sheep! We stopped at Charlie Lake campground near Fort St. John and found a pretty good site at about 8:30 pm. We were really in the mood for a shower so we used our heads and found a really cool swimming pool with a slide where we could have some fun and get showers in! So after setting up the tent we headed into town to find the pool and get some food for a campfire. We ended up showing up at the pool just in time for their last swim of the night. After that we got to Safeway just in time to get our groceries. We got lots of great grilling food like corn, zucchini, and dogs. Then, just to make it perfect, we pulled into the liquor store/bar to get some beer to go five minutes too late, but the girl was nice and sold us the beer anyway. After all of that, we showed up at the campground to find the gate closed to vehicles! So, we hiked in, packed up the tent, and here we are at the motel. It's 900 degrees in this room (Celsius, mind you), and it has little to do with the strip club downstairs.

We're really looking forward to getting home and seeing everyone soon! We will probably have a long day tomorrow and stay somewhere in southern BC. We're definitely going to find a campground with fire pits because we were both bummed we missed out on our campfire tonight. We're hoping to get into the states early afternoon on the 7th.