Sunday, May 23rd

The owners of the great park we stayed in last night tried to get the TV operational for us, but they didn’t have any better luck than we have had. It’s not very important to us or we’d call the folks in Alaska. At least the furnace continues to function well. That’s a good thing since it’s cold as the dickens.


I’m composing this in Word as we travel. Looking outside, I see an occasional mule deer, lots of snow on the ground (probably a day or two old) and many, many dead pines. The trees are being harvested in some areas. Hope we are not selling all of them to Japan to be turned into flake board and sell back to us.

Back to solid ground and not typing as we travel. We are in the camp ground for the night: the Toad River RV Park. No kidding. The river is beautiful behind us and we have seen several kinds of ducks, a whistling swan, looooons, muskrats and a beaver. Across the river, there is a beautiful pasture with horses in it with two foals (maybe three to four days old) and a mare that will drop her foal at any minute. Thanks to our binoculars we can spy on them. They all look very happy. PETA would like this scene.

We have finally found some of the other 151 units in our march to Anchorage. There are four units in the park tonight. We just spent some time talking to a couple from SC. Sweet people.

It’s 9:00 p.m. and the sun is not even down yet. Guess what time it comes up……. Okay, about 4:00 a.m. This can’t be good country for night people! If I lived here, I’d have to wear a sleep mask. : )

Cliff figured out the rate of exchange on liters vs. gallons of gas tonight, and we are paying about $4.60 a gallon for petrol. This RV park has a restaurant and they are very proud of their hamburgers which ranged from $8.00 to $15.00. We ate in. Actually, we haven’t had a single meal outside the RV.

The Alcan was great – not much traffic, but a few rough in spots. The maps refer to it as the Alaska Highway. I drove some and found out it is, indeed, a chore to keep it going straight. Especially when a big truck passes in the opposite direction.

Saw bears today, and caribou, mule deer and a hoary marmot (per Cliff), and some very interesting birds, some of which we could not identify. We have decided that on the next trip we need to have our Birds of North American and Trees of North America books. May also have to have a wildflower book.

It looked like snow early in the day, and it was all around us, but we escaped. Some of our other travelling friends had lots of snow to the northeast of our path.

Sadly, I destroyed my wonderful new camera yesterday by removing it from the mother ship before disconnecting it the way to should be done. I know better but when I looked up and saw a mule deer right in front of the RV, I grabbed the camera and unplugged it while it still on. Very dumb. Hope it can be fixed in Alaska.