Over the Border Into Alaska!
We only had about a 90 minute ride on the Alcan from our campground in the Yukon to the border of Alaska (and the USA). It was a very interesting time zone change as Alaska has it’s own time zone (which is 4 hrs earlier than EST or an hour behind the Pacific Time Zone)…I’m not going to even TRY to explain what happens with daylght savings time! Anyway - it was vvverrrryy exciting to arrive. We pulled over at the sign and official boundary and took in the significance.
The pic of the sign below with the international boundary is pretty cool because you can see the little path delineated in the brush that separates the two countries. It was exciting to stand in the spot where the countries connected. The plaque acknowledging the friendship between the two countries and its “lesson of peace” made me a little ashamed of the present state of our world, but it was still very cool to stand at one of the the exact spots where the countries connect!
Our first two days in Alaska were stops at a couple of Harvest Hosts in Tok and then Delta Junction where we finally got to put our Alaska sticker on the trailer. It was a VERY satisfying sticker ceremony! We even had a little rainbow in the background to celebrate our Oliver’s journey!
The views as we left Delta Junction to drive around this beautiful state were literally jaw dropping. If we said “WOW” as we drove once…we said it a gazillion times! Looking out and seeing the snow-capped mountains in the SUMMER was mind-boggling. At one of the turnouts we saw another Oliver and we swerved off the road to go say hi! She was traveling alone with her two dogs and had boon-docked there the night before with an amazing view. It was a wonderful intro as to what we would be seeing on this journey and to realize that we didn’t need to rely on only campgrounds as we made or way around.
Before I sign off on this chapter documenting our arrival in Alaska, I’m including a few more pics of the views and a couple that included our first views of the Alaskan Pipeline. I was kind of excited to see it once I realized what I was, in fact, seeing. “Look at those pipes above ground…Hhmmm - that’s got to be the Alaskan Pipeline!” However, it wasn’t until later in our journey when we were in the Fairbanks area that we really appreciated the awesomeness of this 800-mile feat!
In my next post I will show a map of the 49th state and highight where we went during our journey. Then I will share some posts in no particular order of the places we visited! Sorry I couldn’t do this in live-time but the sights were too amazing and I was too lazy to try to gather my words to describe the adventure!
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