AKA Thursday, Friday, and Saturday: July 7-9, 2011
Day 27 (Thursday)
We got up, packed up, showered, and used the internet for the last time in 4 days.
Then we went out to try to see Denali one more time, and guess what?! We saw it again! 3 days in a rooooowwww! Woohoo! There's gotta be some smaller percentage of people that we can be grouped in now that we've seen the mountain 3 days in a row, but I don't know what that statistic would be. It was gorgeous though. No clouds.
Then we left. Headed south for a bit, then turned east. We took their Highway 8, called Denali Highway. "Highway" is a stretch beyond anyone's imagination. The "speed limit" was 50 mph. But that too was...someone silly just plastering numbers to signs without thinking. I think we went 25 mph, tops, the whole way across. It was something over 100 miles. I have never been so glad to actually go 50 mph before. It took so, so, so very, very long to get through there. But we made it. We saw a beaver, a bald eagle get attacked by gulls, and a couple moose or caribou.
Finally we got to Delta Junction where of friend of mine and Ashley's lives. We got to see Melinda Hamerly! She made us very yummy lasagna, let us sleep on her couches and spare bed, let us shower in her nice shower, and even made us coffee and french toast for breakfast! We felt very loved indeed.
Day 28 (Friday)
Following the non-burnt coffee and french bread french toast, Melinda showed Ashley and me some of her favorite spots near where she lives. She showed us Blue Creek which is nice and clear, but then it runs into the Tanana River which is not clear at all, and you can see the distinct boundary where they meet. That was cool. Then we tried to get to the Delta River several times. The first two times though, the channels had changed so much that we couldn't walk along the river. (Some of the rivers in Alaska have beds the size of...oh we'll just say the Potomac River...but they do not fill up all the way across. In fact, they sometime have 4 or 5 or 10 different channels all across the river bed, and they can change their routes quite drastically.) In fact, one place had swept away the poles and net of a volleyball court Melinda and some her friends had set up. The river bed, when clear of water, can be a pretty good place to play volleyball actually. There's a lot of silt that comes down the Delta because it's a glacier-fed river. So, if there aren't tons of rocks on the silt--which there can be, silt is about like sand. It's more glittery, and it sticks to you worse than sand, but it's still pretty soft. But, the volleyball place was underwater, so we went to try to walk along the Delta somewhere else. Finally we found a spot. It was also a great place to rock hunt. This is exactly like hunting for shells, just rocks instead. We picked up quite a few rocks to bring back. Then we went to have lunch at The Wok. Finally, we had to say good bye to Melinda and continue on our journey. But not before we said hello to two huge mosquitoes outside the Visitor's Center in town. They are (fake) MASSIVE; they are bigger than Ashley and me!
Day 28 continued and Day 29 (Saturday)
We drove and drove and drove and drove some more. In fact, the next two days were just that. We drove on Friday up to the border of Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada. The Customs Office wasn't open at 10 pm unfortunately, so we had to stop for the night. There were no hotels or campgrounds, so we tried to do something a little bit different in the car. We shuffled stuff around and blew up the air mattress in the back. It was quite comfortable for Mom, Ashley, and me. Dad stayed up in the front seats...not comfortable...not a lot of sleep. Someone else will be sleeping up there next time because the driver needs sleep.
At 8 the next morning, we went through customs. It was normal except they ASKED us if we wanted our PASSPORTS stamped. We said, Why yes, please, we would like that very much. And so they did! It had the normal Canada place stamp, and then a stamp of a miner panning for gold! So cool!
Then we kept driving. And driving. And driving. We drove south through Yukon. It was very boring. The road was boring. We saw no animals. I slept a lot. Ashley drove some. Eventually we got into British Columbia and the scenery got a little more interesting. There were a couple huge lakes which were very green. There was a desert (a whole bunch of SAND in the middle of nowhere, but no cacti) near Carcross. (I think the name "Carcross" comes from caribou crossing a lot in that area. However, when we say the name, we say the "Car-" part like we would say "car" as in the moving vehicle, not like we would say the beginning of "caribou".) Then there was some weird land getting closer to Alaska again that reminded us a lot of the tidal pools and coasts of Maine. It was weird. But weird is better than boring.
We got back through US customs no problem at 9 pm or so. This border crossing is open all day and all night all summer long. It was a little weird because there was the Canadian customs, then there were 27 kilometers of Canada still, and then there was the US customs. There's this mountain in the middle which doesn't have much room for border protection housing and customs offices, especially not for two countries, so they both do it back into the two countries. So there's kind of this no-man's-land in the middle. We got into Skagway, found a place to stay, and I passed the heck out. Yes, I was working on a 12-hour sleep day. I don't know if I made it, but I was trying. Hahahaha.
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