Day 2- Glennallen to Whitehorse

This began the first real day of the journey home. The wind had blown strong all night long so it kept things partly cloudy in the morning. We left Copper Center and the trailer that we slept in that night. We were so appreciative of the kindness of Micah's family to let us stay there.  The drive to Glennallen has a road that drops down into a river valley and then climbs back up a hill. We made the one last climb up the road to Glennallen. We stopped to look over the valley and Mt Drum.

Maddie had grown accustomed to the many changes of Mt. Drum from spring through summer and fall and now would no longer see it. We filled up at Glennallen at $4.36 a gallon.

As we drove towards Tok we looked at the mountains that make up the Wrangell St. Elias park. The weather was beginning to break up and and we knew we would be seeing sunny skies in awhile.

There were swans in many of the lakes and some beautiful scenes.

We made it to Tok and had lunch in the park at the intersection of the Alaska Highway as it heads to Fairbanks or the cutoff that went to Glennallen. We filled up again at $4.19 gallon. This would be the last time for a few days that we would see gallons and not liters. We did see some moose but they were in the back of pick up trucks. At the gas station the locals were talking about the hunt and sharing stories about everything.














We arrived at the border between Alaska and Canada in the afternoon. It is amazing to see this clear cut line as far as you can see that marks the border.

The boarder also allowed us to sit by each other and be in two countries.

When we made it to the first town in the Yukon at Beaver Creek we filled up at $5.79 a gallon ($1.59 a liter). The drive from there was spectacular with tall snow covered peaks and lakes everywhere.

Along the way we saw a live moose and at the south end of Klane Lake some mountain goats on the hillside.

What really made the drive this day though is when we came across two grizzly bears on the side of the road eating berries. They were taking their time and didn't even care that we were watching them. We could hear them sigh as they would take a break from eating. It was great.

We then got to Haines Junction for the last fillup of the day. It converted to $5.22 a gallon and it was a completely automated pump. No one was around and there was no store to buy anything to snack on. Haines Junction sits on the east side of the Klane National Park in the Yukon so the mountain range is along the west side of the town.

























The rest of the drive that day was more through forest and not through the mountains. The setting sun lit up the area though. We arrived in Whitehorse to have dinner and decided to stay the night as the next place would be two hours away. Even though there were a lot of hotels they were all filled which we could not believe since it was now the off season. One desk clerk said last she checked there were two rooms in town still available.  We found the Family Hotel and they had a room with two twin beds. As we were bringing our luggage in we heard another guest talking to the clerk about turning the heat on in the building. The clerk said the heat would not be turned on until a certain day. The person then asked if they had extra blankets and the clerk said no. The man said, "we did pay for a room we should at least get something". This was going to be interesting. Maddie had her bed and Cindy and I shared the other and clung to each other so we would not fall of the side of the bed unto the "who knows what was in the carpet" flooring. There was a laundromat below us and a restaurant and the halls smelled of smoke but it was a place to stay.

 We traveled 524 miles that day and even though this would be the shortest drive of the trip it took a lot of time because of the road conditions.