Alaska Trip 2013 Squango Lake YT - Tolsona Wilderness Campground AK

We left Squango Lake campground on day 10, June 19th and headed toward Whitehorse YT. Whitehorse is a fairly good sized city with lots of gas stations, restaurants, fast food places, grocery stores, etc. We bought gas and went to Walmart and picked up some 4 liter jugs of drinking water and a few other items. Since we had no cell phone coverage, I began to look around for a pay phone so I could use my keepcalling.com calling card to check in and let everyone know we were ok. I finally located one in a small park down on the south side of town near the river. After I finished making my calls I was walking back to the Roadtrek and there were three or four ladies with a couple of little children in tow walking in the same direction. I heard one of them say, I haven't ridden the trolley since I was a kid. When I got to the Roadtrek I noticed they were walking on up the hill next to the parking lot. As I drove off, I looked and sure enough, there was a trolley.

When I got home I looked the Whitehorse trolley up on the internet. It is real interesting. Next time I am in Whitehorse I may try and take time and ride it. When we finished up in Whitehorse, we went up Two Mile Hill Road and rejoined the Alaska Highway.

A little ways above Whitehorse you can turn left and follow the route of the original Alaska Highway from mm 929 to mm 934. In 2008 I had driven a few hundred yards out on to the northern end of the old highway but this time I decided to drive the entire 5 miles.

Further north the Alaska Highway runs along the side of Kulane Lake for several miles. The water in Kulane Lake is a beautiful shade of turquoise.

We ended the day at Lake Creek Campground which is about 111 km southeast of the Alaska Border.

We got up on day 11, June 20th and continued our journey north. We had only driven about 10 km and were getting close to Pickhandle Lake rest area when I noticed a bull moose on the side of the road. It is not completely evident from the pictures, but the moose was eating the leaves out of the top of that tree that he was walking around.

We left our second close encounter with a moose and drove on to Beaver Creek YT. Canadian customs is located just north of Beaver Creek but the actual border and US Customs is located about 32 km north of there. That has got to be about the worst 32 km of road I've seen. This time nearly the whole length of it was under repair. At times the traffic was routed off to the side since the entire roadbed was being dug up and regraded. The construction zone was so long that the pilot car we were following from the south end handed us off midway to another pilot car that took us on to the end of the reconstruction near the border.

We crossed the border over into Alaska with no problems and continued on north. As I mentioned previously, when you get near Tok, cell coverage kicks back in. When we got to Tok, I went into the Three Bears and got some things for lunch and something to cook for supper. Then we hung around town for awhile so I could call our peeps and let them know we were OK. Finally, we headed down the Tok Cutoff toward Anchorage. The Tok Cutoff runs from Tok to the Richardson Highway a bit north of GlennAllen. You follow the Richardson down to GlennAllen and then pickup the Glenn Highway to Anchorage. When we got to GlennAllen we had already driven about 300 miles. Although most days we drove more than that, 300 was kind of our unofficial daily target. On my last trip, I had stayed at the Tolsona Wilderness Campground which is not to far west of GlennAllen. It is a nice place so we decided to stop there for the night. I had picked us up some ground beef at the Three Bears in Tok, so I fixed Dixie and myself hamburgers for supper. Then I took advantage of Tolsona's excellent washers and dryers to do a load of clothes. Tolsona may be out in the middle of nowhere but have great wifi so I was able to check up on my emails. We went to bed that night relaxed and content.