Alan and I retraced our steps along the Alaska Highway from Tok to Destruction Bay to Whitehorse to Watson Lake. It was at Watson Lake that we would head south along the Cassiar Highway through British Columbia instead of continuing back to Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek. I thought about combining our three days of travel to Watson Lake into one post, but I would have had to leave out a lot of the photos I wanted to share. Here we go, Day 1.
Moving on from Fairbanks was a bittersweet moment. It was the actual point in the journey where we pointed the truck to the east, and officially began the long trek home. That afternoon, we would arrive back in Tok, and spend our final night in Alaska. But first, we had two stops to make.
I have to admit that I didn’t give Fairbanks a fair shake – at least not at first. We didn’t spend enough time there on our previous trips to Alaska to really get to know the city. In fact, I remember thinking it was sort of boring. And I wouldn’t want to live anywhere you needed to plug your car in at the grocery store in the winter so that you could be sure it would start when you came out. (The average high in January is 0; the average low is 15 degrees below zero.) Once we were in Fairbanks on our own schedule, we were able to explore the city a bit more – and we really liked what we found!
On our prior visits to Fairbanks, our family had taken the Discovery Riverboat Tour, visited the Alaska Pipeline and panned for gold at Gold Dredge #8. We enjoyed all of those activities, but Alan and I felt no need to do any of them again. Honestly, I was looking at Fairbanks as a reprovisioning stop, and the only other item on our “must do” list was to visit Pioneer Park. Pioneer Park is sort of a living history museum. And a park (with a playground, a carousel and mini-golf). And home to a performing arts center. And you can “camp” in the parking lot. Yup, that’s all it is, an honest-to-goodness parking lot. Nothing but spigots with potable water and public restrooms in Pioneer Park. If there was a trash dumpster, we couldn’t find it, yet we called that parking lot home for four nights. Because we packed in so many activities (some fun, some not so much) into the three full days we were in Fairbanks, I may end up breaking our stay down into two posts. We’ll see how it goes. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though.
Long-time readers know that Alan and I often arrive at a destination with a scavenger list of sorts. Sure, there might be a museum to visit or a restaurant to try, but sometimes there are simply unusual items on the list that we just want to see. That was the case on the day we traveled from Denali National Park north to Fairbanks. We wanted to see the Nenana Tripod. And we weren’t going to leave Alaska until we did.
When our earlier reservation at the Riley Creek Campground in Denali National Park was canceled due to the wildfire near the Park’s entrance, I was devastated. I had really, really, really been looking forward to visiting the Sled Dog Kennels in the Park; the kennels had been a bucket list item for a long time. When we secured our second reservation for Riley Creek, I was thrilled.
Alan and I had booked just two nights at the National Park campground since our “To Do” list was short: 1) Visit the kennels; 2) drive the Park Road to see what kind of wildlife we could find; and 3) get a good look at Denali (North America’s highest mountain at 20,310 feet) - if the mountain decided to show itself. We figured that, if the weather was cooperative and the wildlife was abundant, we’d book extra days at a local, private RV park if we couldn’t extend our stay at Riley Creek. With fingers crossed, we set up camp.
