We drove a hundred miles beyond Whitehorse to Haines Junction, then left the Alaska Highway for Haines Road. A hundred and sixty-five miles down Haines Road is Haines, Alaska, where we are tonight. This area, the Golden Circle of Alaska, is separated from the rest of the state by water and ranges of mountains, and encompasses Haines, Skagway, and the state capital of Juneau.

To get to Haines by way of Haines Road, we drove sixty miles through Yukon Territory, forty-five miles through British Columbia, and sixty miles into Alaska. The road only goes to Haines. We will have to drive the 165 miles back up Haines Road to return to the Alaska Highway and then head north again for 200 miles to get to the main landmass of Alaska,

Haines Junction was a convivial place. Everyone going down Haines Road was getting gas, because it was 130 miles before the next chance. That chance was just a little roadhouse, and if they were out of gas, so were you. Best to make sure of the 165 miles to Haines. They tell you up here to “drive on the top half of your tank.” You never know where you will find gas for sure.

Some miles before Haines Junction, we could see the towering mountains of the Kluane range. As we turned south from Haines Junction, we drove into them. Hot pink fireweed still bordered the roadside against a backdrop of dark, dark green spires of spruce. But now the sky behind them was filled with soaring jagged mountains. Great white splats of snowfields clung to the barren slopes and drabbled down the crevices. By the time we were twenty miles down the road from Haines Junction, we were surrounded by these lofty peaks.

Small, still lakes and icy foaming streams decorated mountain-backed vistas. On one such pond a single white swan floated like a living droplet from the snowfields above. The massive barrenness of the mountains, row upon row of them backing the stark beauty of the forest and waters beside and below us was overwhelming. The magic of the North takes you over, possesses you. You want to leap out and build a cabin right there and now where you can sit by the window and let the mountains carry you away.

As if we weren't about to go into sensory overload already, shortly over the British Columbia border we reached a height where the forests disappeared into miles and miles of rolling brushy tundra. The grand old mountains were half covered with snow as we neared their ragged peaks, and there were dirty summer snow patches on the hillsides near the road. Still we went up, climbing to the top of Chilkat Pass.

At the top of the pass the tundra brush was only spotty, like tufts of hair on the low red and green mosses. We were up there with the snowfields, where the remains of last winter's drifts came right to the side of the road and the only sound was the wind.

We had approached the pass gradually for miles, almost not knowing we were going uphill. Coming down the other side was a joyride, a ten-mile steep descent. Tundra turned to trees, but still the snow-riven mountains loomed over us seeming, as we looked ahead, to crowd the road.

Down we went. Lower tree-covered ridges pushed the rocky peaks farther away. We rolled into a remote U.S. Customs gate, going down. When we left the gate, we were still going down. Fireweed reappeared along the roadside. For some miles, going down, we followed the wide gravel bed and myriad wandering channels of a braided river.

We leveled out at Big Boulder Creek. A group of cabins and a small gas station/restaurant was the start of scattered cabins and shanties along the road for a few miles. Then we were back in the wilds. If that little log building in Boulder Creek with the one gas pump in front didn't have gas, and you needed it, the next chance was in Haines. It would be a long walk for gas - albeit a beautiful one - but long.

The road sloped down gently from Big Boulder Creek for most of the remaining thirty miles into Haines, an isolated hamlet on a mountain-ringed bay of the Lynn Canal. We secured our campsite, had supper, then walked down into Haines.

Can you imagine a quiet little town on the water tucked among mountains that half-fill the sky? The town is absolutely surrounded by the mountains. No matter what street you turn down, you are looking at snow-crowned peaks.

The main street goes sharply downhill to the sheltered harbor, filled with pleasure and fishing boats. We watched two huge white cruise ships cross the bay on their way to Skagway, and from there, probably to Juneau. They don't stop at Haines.

Not that Haines is without life. Ferries to Juneau and to Skagway leave from Haines. The Inland Passage ferries stop at Haines. People come to visit the Eagle Sanctuary, to take sea kayak trips, and do guided wilderness tours. But they go off from the docks in buses; and then are brought back to their various ferries to sail off and leave Haines to the natives, those of us in the campgrounds, and the small hotel.

Bob and I walked along the harbor. We passed or met a few other tourists enjoying the warm evening. At 9:00, still in the sunshine, we strolled back to the campground, surrounded by the beauty of the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Haines and Skagway, Alaska

We climbed aboard the Fairweather II Fast Ferry this morning to follow the wake of the cruise ships going to Skagway. For thirty-five minutes we traveled down the Lynne Canal between steep green mountainsides that slid into the sea. Bob and I were glued to the front windows of the ferry, not wanting to miss a minute of the experience. The mountains were, and have been, veiled with a light haze since we arrived in Haines. It is smoke, still smoke from those fires that kept us at bay earlier this month. The smoke arrived in Haines, the Indian gal at dockside said, only this last week. At first it was so strong that it burned their eyes. We couldn't even smell it now, only see it.

There were four, count them, four cruise ships in the Skagway harbor when our little ferry pulled in. One ship was about a mile long, and the thousands of people on those ships were all in Skagway for the day. But it was sunny. It was in the 70s. It was Skagway at its best. What are a few thousand tourists, anyway?

My friend at home told me that Skagway was just a tourist trap. Well, it sure looked like it. Jewelry and gift shops lined the main street, Broadway. Skagway, in the Gold Rush days, was the Sin City of the North. It is still a magnet. Instead of rowdy gold-seeking stampeders getting fleeced by gamblers and ladies of the night in Skagway, now jewelry and t-shirt shops take the tourists' money. Same difference, only less fun.

Skagway, whatever its reputation, was the gateway to the Klondike gold fields of the Yukon in 1897 and 1898. Gold seekers came up from San Francisco by boat as far as they could, which was to Skagway. From there they had to cross the mountains to get to Bennett Lake and the inland water passage to Dawson and instant wealth. Ah, dream on.

The home of Skagway's first homesteader, William Moore, the Mascot Saloon, and a museum, comprise the Klondike Gold Rush Historical National Park in Skagway. We visited them all, watched the movie on the Gold Rush in the visitor center, and immersed ourselves in the rowdy Gold Rush days of Skagway. The monumental photo of stampeders of 1897 climbing the “Golden Stairs,” the steps carved into ice up the 300-foot crest of the Chilkoot Mountains pass, is on the Alaska license plate.

These men and women climbed the stairs not once, but as many as forty times, hauling up over the pass and to Bennett Lake enough supplies and food to last them a year. The men carried fifty to eighty pounds a trip, much of it in boxes and barrels. Canadian Mounties were watching. You had to have enough supplies to last you a year or you didn't go into Canada. They saved many lives from death by starvation and cold out in the wilderness of the Yukon.

The National Park restored bar and homestead exhibits told not only of the buildings' history, but also how the restoration was accomplished from old photos and found items like broken dishes and faded scraps of wallpaper. It's amazing what you can learn from a scrap of wallpaper when you have the knowledge and skills.
There weren't a lot of people at the homestead, which was on a short side street off the beaten path. You had to be looking for it to go there. Most of the tourists were in a shopping frenzy on Broadway or taking a ride on the White Pass and Yukon Railway. We could, therefore, study the exhibits at our leisure.

We chatted with park staff, particularly the ranger at the homestead. He was a seasonal ranger whose home is in northern Florida. He spends the summers in Skagway, but leaves for the sunny south before the legendary snows come roaring over the mountains. We used to do the same thing at Acadia National Park in Maine, so talked shop and Florida with him for a while before we moved on.

Some time later we were walking up Broadway minding our own business when a woman in a Gay Nineties costume whipped open a door a little ahead of us, bounced out, and began yelling at people on the street and at another costumed girl seated carelessly on a second floor windowsill. They were hustling folks for a Gay Nineties song and dance show of some kind. We got hustled, and followed the crowd into the Eagle's Hall Theater for the 2:30 show. What a treat!

The lead-off act was a fellow who played a guitar, sang old songs, and ended his act with a recitation from the Robert Service poem, The Trail of the Ninety Eight, from which I have quoted. Robert Service is the bard of the Yukon. He came to the Yukon to find gold, and his poetry of the land has been gold to the world ever since. If you haven't read The Cremation of Sam McGee, your cultural background is sadly lacking.

The show was a melodrama that told the history of the legendary king and con man of Skagway, Soapy Smith. The “Ladies of the Night” and 'Nineties Dancing Girls did cartwheels, flashed their underwear, sang and pranced to exhaustion. We loved every minute, and clapped and shouted with a will. It was a well-written play of historical vaudeville show that entertained us mightily, and the engaging young man who played Soapy Smith could have conned me out of anything.

So what did we do after the show? Leaped into the buying frenzy ourselves. It was time to do some Christmas shopping; and quite frankly, we did well. In two hours we had the major portion of Christmas giving bought and paid for. We climbed aboard the Fairweather II with the backpack stuffed and our hands full of large bright-colored bags, looking every inch the tourists that we are - the kind of tourist Skagway loves to see.

Hazy golden sunlight of the long subarctic evening tinted Haines as we got off the ferry. Not far from the dock is the Lighthouse Restaurant. We strolled over there, looking for our supper. The restaurant is on a slope to the water, and sits a little above the public marina that is sheltered from the storms of the Chilkoot Inlet and Lynn Canal by a curved stone and earth seawall.

We sat in a glass-walled room surrounded by mountains, fjord, and marina, and enjoyed an Alaskan dinner of grilled salmon with a glass of the local beer. What more can you ask of life?

Haines, Alaska

This morning was spent at housekeeping; cleaning the camper, doing laundry, and washing the car. After lunch we made the ten-minute walk from the campground to downtown Haines.

We stopped at the local information center to look around and then shopped for books at the Babbling Book store. The rest of the afternoon we spent at the Sheldon Museum. One floor of the museum was devoted to the building of Haines Highway and the Sheldon collection of memorabilia. The upper floor exhibits were about the Chilkat and Chilkoot local Indian culture, and I learned a lot from them. There was also a nice bookstore where I picked up a copy of John Muir's Travels in Alaska.

On the way back to the campground we stopped for groceries. An IGA sign hangs in front of one of the doorways into a long block of picturesquely derelict buildings fronted with small stores and a dentist's office. I expected, in this far-away corner of the world, a small dim store with limited choices. Well, the lighting was not real bright, the wood floors slanted a bit, but there were aisles of shelves crammed to brimming with goods. If you want it in Haines, the IGA probably has it, and at a fairly reasonable price.
“Look, Robertson's lemon curd, would you believe it?”

“Roma tomatoes are $1.19 a pound, not bad.”

“Did you see all the bulk foods over there?”

We ranged up and down the aisles and soon filled our red plastic shopping baskets. My backpack was stuffed to capacity again, and Bob carried two bags of additional food as we trudged back to the campground, two tired puppies looking forward to a quiet evening.

Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

I had been thinking, during the night, about that IGA store and its cornucopia of foods. It'd be three or four days before we got to any sort of town, and even then the groceries might be limited. We'd need apples in a day or two, and were getting a bit low on oatmeal. IGA had bulk oatmeal for seventy-nine cents a pound. So before we left this morning, while Bob was getting Little Moby unhooked from the supply system and hitched up to the car, I slung on my daypack and headed for downtown Haines and the IGA.

When I got back I shoved the spinach and green peppers into the fridge, then dumped my backpack on the floor to be emptied of the rest of the groceries later. We said goodbye to campground friends we had made in our three-day stay in Haines, and headed north up the Haines Highway to drive with the braided Klehini River again and climb the Chilkat Pass.

We stopped for lunch at a scenic turnout. Bob stood outside the vehicles and scanned the landscape with binoculars while I was fixing lunch. Later, while Bob was tidying up Little Moby after lunch, I stepped out to admire the scenery. To my left, at the highway edge of the turnout, a gray-haired woman with a camera slung around her neck was trying to climb up two cables strung between posts. I wondered first of all where she came from, since I didn't see any vehicles; and second, if I should go offer to help her. By the time I had discovered the motor home she must have come from parked directly behind us and looked back at her, she was standing on a short post and leaning against an adjacent taller post taking photos, all alone, with wilderness draped around her.

In front of the jagged snowy mountains of the highway turnout vista were high forest-covered ridges. The nearest ridge plunged hundreds of feet forming a chasm with the ridge where I stood. At the bottom, far away, a milky green river wound its course through the gorge it had probably carved.

I breathed deeply of the fresh breezes. The air had a clear, icy tinge to it. Again the monumental beauty and stillness of the Far North captured me. Mother Nature demands much in this part of the world, but she gives much. I can understand why people homestead up here, at the end of the world. You are beholden to no one, and live as one with the mountains and the forests. The struggle for survival is shared equally, as are the rewards.

The vista narrowed as I looked down at the few feet of earth between myself and the edge of the chasm. There was a small aspen making a foothold, taller fireweed than on the high pass, and, mirabela dictu! dandelions, huge dandelions tossing their feathery seeds to the winds.

I was jerked from the Yukon's grip when the motorhome pulled out from behind us and the camera lady called, “What part of Lake County are you from?”

Florida is summering in the Northwest. A couple working at the campground in Haines lives only thirty miles form us during the winter. The camera lady was the second person just today on Haines Highway to ask that question, and was found to live only about fifteen miles from us. To top it all, though, another couple camped near us at Haines was actually from our hometown of Leesburg. I think the world is getting too small.

It was in the low sixties, really quite warm, when we were up in the mountaintops and tundra. When we got down to the aspen and spruce forests, temperatures soared to almost eighty degrees. Still the fireweed bordered our way and still the mountains watched over us from behind the trees. The guardians of the North travel with us.

We're camped tonight at Kluane Lake, the biggest lake in the Yukon. There is electricity generated by the campground's diesel generator, but the power is uneven and the electric clock loses time. Who cares? There are no phones, none at all. Not even satellite phone service has reached here. That's fine. It's good to be away from technology for a while. Our campsite has a view of the lake. A grizzly has been seen in the area. Maybe we've really found a wild place.

Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

What a disappointment this day has been!

We elected to spend another day here and enjoy our almost-lakeside campsite. Mountains of Kluane National Forest surround the lake and campground. The gal who runs the campground with her husband has created flower beds all around the campground at the edge of the wild. Baskets of flowers hang from the office porch, and there was even a dish of cut flowers this morning in the ladies' washrooms. This could be a scenic and pleasant place to spend a day.

But the sky and far mountains were hidden in a gray cottony haze when we greeted the day this morning. It was breezy and in the fifties. The wind off the lake was chill, and made it feel even colder outside. So much for my visions of lunch on the picnic table, and of sitting out in lawn chairs an

d reading with the lake and mountain vista before us. We huddled in the camper for lunch and drank hot tea.
In the late afternoon a hazy sun brightened the campground, and it stayed that way through the evening. Temperatures improved to about sixty-two, and the breeze died down. But it was too little, too late.

Even then, the day went fast. We took long walks around and around the campground. Bob pitched horseshoes with himself for a couple of hours. We chatted with other campers. We read. I worked on the computer, Bob napped. It was a quiet day, and a break from go, go, going. Tomorrow we'll be all relaxed and rested and ready to go again.

Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory, to Tok, Alaska

Bob saw a grizzly bear today! The stop sign woman saw the grizzly bear! I didn't.

We were on the Alaska Highway at the north end of Kluane Lake when we got stopped for road work. The woman holding the stop sign walked over to the van to tell us that it would be about five minutes before the pilot car returned to take us through the construction. We got to talking with her about Whitehorse, her home when she wasn't out in camp with the road crew. We said we enjoyed the Talisman Restaurant. She had worked there. She said the thing she liked about the restaurant were the ongoing exhibits of area artists' work that the owner hung and arranged around her restaurant. I said I had admired the Celtic art that was on the walls when we were there. She knew and named the artist, a friend of hers.

About then Bob glanced at his rear view mirror and exclaimed, “Grizzly! Crossing the road!”

The stop sign gal wheeled and gasped. “Omigod, a grizzly! He's really blonde.”

I bounced around the front seat trying to look in Bob's mirror, looked in my mirror and was about to open my door to look back when the stop sign woman said, “He's gone - into the brush.”

My big chance to see a grizzly bear in the wild came and went, and I missed it.

We weren't two miles out of the campground where we had spent the night when we came upon that stretch of road construction. It was only the beginning. For the rest of the morning what wasn't blowing-dust gravel, some stretches of it ten miles long, was bumpy frost-heaved pavement that bounced Little Moby like popcorn behind us.

I had seen the dust-coated rigs in campgrounds, and wondered where they'd been. Now I know. The windshields on some vehicles were so coated with dust the driver had to use wipers in order to see. We'd expected that the drive would not always be smooth, and today proved it.

Big tankers watered some of the gravel stretches with water pumped from roadside streams. It surely cut the dust, but did create a thin layer of gritty mud. Little Moby was already streaked and splattered from the rain and common dust of six thousand miles. Now he looks like a milk-chocolate cake with splats of fudge frosting on it. Hour after hour we drove at a speed of only thirty-five miles an hour, just another link in a long chain of dirt-covered rigs heading north on the Alaska Highway. Reading orange and black signs saying “Extreme Dust Conditions,” “Caution, Loose Gravel,” or “Bump” was our amusement as we bumped along.

The Great Spirit had smiled on us and it was a bright, sunny day, but the mountains were still shrouded in a haze. I wasn't so sure it was smoke. I would have bet on road dust. But when we got out of the car to stretch after driving four hours, we could smell smoke. This smoke is more likely from Alaska than the Yukon. Last night the folks in a fifth-wheel camper parked next to us advised us to skip Fairbanks for now, as there were fires around and the town was socked in with smoke.

Around noon, dusty and bedraggled, we came into Beaver Creek, population 112, the “Farthest West Community in Canada.” It had taken us over four hours to drive 130 miles. Bob voted for lunch out. There are about five buildings in Beaver Creek, and two of them are restaurants. We pulled into Buckshot Betty's Restaurant on the recommendation of there being several trucks and campers in the lot.

Buckshot Betty's is a smallish cabin of new logs. Moose antlers on the roof hid some of the letters in the word, “Restaurant.” A peeled and varnished log bulging with burls held up a corner of the little rain-roof over the door.

The four tables inside were also peeled log, varnished to a high yellow, and had maps and coins imbedded in their polyurethane tops. Three tables were taken; we grabbed the fourth and sat down.

One young woman, twenty-ish and wearing a baseball cap did it all. She took orders, bussed tables, collected money for gas, sold books and rented videos. An anonymous voice back in the kitchen turned out exceptional huge burgers, long grilled hot dogs, inch thick French toast, and a tossed salad for me that was fresh and crisp with a lot of tomatoes and black olives.

There were two computers on a wide shelf at the back of the store, free to Buckshot Betty customers. You had to stand to use them. Good thinking. That kept any one person from monopolizing a computer. They had the internet via satellite by microwave towers. There are no phone lines into Beaver Creek, and they have to produce their own electricity, as with nearly everyone along the Alaska Highway. Odd items of clothing and books for sale as well as videos to rent were piled haphazardly on narrow shelves at the back, also.

The place was full when we were there. Several First Nation folk had coffee or a sandwich, and traded off on the computers. Most of the other customers were off the road, like us, looking for a change from canned tuna fish for lunch. I wandered outside to stretch a bit while Bob paid the bill. When he came out, he had a grin on his face and a big home made cherry-poppyseed scone in his hand. They knew what they were doing when they put the display of fresh baked goods right under the cash register. They saw Bob coming a hundred miles away.

About a mile beyond Beaver Creek a roadside sign warned with one word. “Smoke.” Twenty miles beyond the sign we crossed the border into Alaska. The construction areas in Alaska were somewhat farther apart and the frost heaves more gradual, so we made a little better time. The smoke was much worse. Visibility was a couple of miles in haze, and then the forests and mountains all but disappeared. Even with the car closed we could smell it, and when we opened a window or stepped out, it was like sitting by a wood fire.

We saw quite a bit of rock writing along the way today. It's always fun to try to read it. Rock writing is arranging small stones on a sloped roadside bank to form words. Schools do it to boost their teams. Individuals spell out the usual Dick loves Jane. At one slope, there was just the big name, Pam, spelled out with a heart beneath it. In the middle of the heart was a shiny hubcap. What an expression of love! A lot of the rock writing is miles from any settlement. People go a long way to put their names up in lights, er, rocks.

In mid-afternoon we drove into a Tok (rhymes with poke) RV park and got a site. The smoke isn't so bad here. When I tried to pull down the folding step to the camper, I had to really struggle. It came loose in a spray of gravel. Dirt was caked on the step and supports. That's all right. This campground has a pressure wash setup where for twelve dollars we can wash and scrub Moby and BlueVan. Rigs were lined up to use it when we drove in.

After supper there was a free show in the office building. It was billed as an Alaskan folk singer who writes most of his own songs. Well, there were two guys, actually, in Hereford-spotted hats, who played guitar and banjo and sang about Alaska in a foot-stomping Appalachian style. We stamped our feet, clapped, and a laughed our way through an hour of super entertainment. There were sing-alongs; they had a line of patter, and one even recited Robert Service's Ballad of the Yukon with style and aplomb.

Afterwards, a gal staying in the campground served birthday cake in honor of her husband's birthday. We stood around and talked, ate cake, bought a CD from the singers and had it autographed, stood around and talked some more. I would say it was twilight when we finally strolled back to the camper, but it wasn't. It isn't. We're far enough north now that there is no darkness at all. There is a bright twilight for four or five hours. That's it. That's night.

Tok, Alaska

Moby and BlueVan needed a bath, but we didn't want to deal with it when we got into Tok yesterday. It was item number one on this morning's agenda. We drove the rig up to the wash area, and got in line.

When our turn came, I manned the high-pressure hose and Bob took charge of the long-handled brush and a bucket of soapy water. A motorhome sat on the cement slab next to us. Four people brandished hoses and brushes over there. Water flew and mud flowed. We did our best to get 6,000 miles of streaked and plastered dirt off Little Moby and BlueVan in half an hour. Vehicles got sprayed. People got sprayed. Everyone worked feverishly. Others were waiting, lined up and watching us.

It was a rough job, no niceties. The vehicles and we rolled back into the campsite dripping and splattered. The units dried with a nice patina of dust-colored drips and streaks, and there was still mud in some of the cracks and crevices. Dust-colored fingerprints circle the door handle of the van. They're all the price of travel, the badge of valor for trucking 6,000 tough miles. There'll be more dust. Tomorrow we're off to Valdez and another 6,000 or more miles after that.

We showered, then ran errands. Our first stops were the Tourist Information Center and the grocery store. After an excellent lunch at a log cabin café, we got gas and stopped a

t a liquor store for some wine. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing laundry and catching up on email.
Ok, Ok, so they're Holstein caps, not Hereford. What do I know about cows? We went back tonight to hear the guys in the black and white Holstein caps sing again, and enjoyed it just as much as the first time. I even got to sing some harmony with them. There was a hot time in Tok tonight.

Valdez, Alaska

Robert Service said “the farness” of this land. It is the farness, the immensity of the mountains, the vastness of the vistas, the stillness of endless wilderness that is overwhelming - and alluring.

We traveled down Route 1, Tok Cutoff, to Route 4, and continued down Route 4, Richardson Highway, into Valdez. Highway names up here are used more often than the numbers, which is confusing to us foreigners. There mailboxes every now and then at the point where gravel lanes met the highway. We even passed two school bus stops and did get a glimpse of a log school building big enough for a couple of classrooms. These hardy souls have pushed back the wilderness for a few acres, but they are hardly a speck in the everlasting landscape.

Blankets of hot pink fireweed hid the firescars in burnt-over areas. Only tall bare spires of what were once spruce trees show that a forest had been there. We smelled smoke when we came out of the camper this morning, reminding us that forest fires still raged near Taylor Highway north of Tok.

We drove south out of Tok, and were only thirty or so miles from town when we came upon a stunning mountain range. The mountaintops were pink in the morning sun, like the Alpenglow you see in advertising posters for Alaska, but it was from smoke haze. They were practically the first mountains we could see clearly since we left Haines.

Eighty miles or so north of Valdez, a small brown sign at the roadside announced “Pipeline Viewing.” A narrow gravel lane ran back into the trees. We swung in, went an eighth of a mile, and there it was in all its hugeness, The Alyeska Alaska Pipeline. We walked under and around it, read the interpretive signage, and took pictures. A billion and a half gallons of oil flows through that 800-mile long pipe each day. You'd think Alaska would be sucked dry as a prune, but it just keep flowing, the liquid gold of the Far North.

A fellow in the Tok campground had told me that the last section of Richardson Highway, after you turn off the Tok Cutoff, was really nice. Spectacular might have been a better word, but I'm not sure if that even does it. There were glaciers galore. Near the top of Thompson Pass, the Worthington Glacier is so close to the road that you can pull off and walk over to it, a great wall of ice on a permafrost meadow. Once we topped the pass, we rolled down the mountains for miles and miles, just like at Haines. The road ended at the Prince William Sound in Valdez. In Haines, you could look down any street in town and see mountains. Here in Valdez the mountains practically slide into the camper. In Haines we were surrounded by mountains. In Valdez, they're sitting on our shoulders.

Fishing is big here. The harbor is jammed with private fishing boats, and charters will be happy to take you out to catch the big ones. I mean big ones. They bring in halibut here that weigh over a hundred pounds, and salmon to the limit. You're allowed only two halibut a day per person, but if those fish are fifty-pounders, and most of them are at least that, you've got food for the winter.

A long boardwalk borders the Valdez waterfront. Along it and the labyrinth of floating docks below are state of the art fish cleaning tables with huge floating bins for the offal. Sea gulls do well here. They haunt the bins with their screeches and wails, eating until they bulge. Bob stopped to talk to a couple who were cleaning halibut on Floating Fish Cleaning Dock #5. They keep their boat moored here, and had driven down from Fairbanks for a long weekend. They had gone out fifty miles into the ocean yesterday, stayed out there overnight, and caught their limit of four halibut. He was filleting the fish, and she was packaging. They planned to freeze some of the fish for themselves, and share the rest with friends and family.

We came down here to learn about the pipeline, and found halibut. They're huge fish, as I said, the flat kind of fish whose eyes migrate to the side of their bodies as they mature, like flounder. Five fellows who apparently had gone out fishing together dragged big white coolers to the cleaning dock. From them they pulled salmon, some huge fish I didn't recognize, and halibut. With great effort, they dragged some of these gargantuan fish over to a rack and hung them from meat hooks, then started cleaning. It was under sixty degrees and overcast. The water from those hoses had to be ice cold and their hands were constantly in it, washing off the fish and rinsing the filets. You had to love it.

The campground we are in has a walk-in freezer. You can rent a tray or shelf to freeze your fish, and there are outfits around town that will be happy to send it home for you for a price. Ice is all over. I don't know where it all comes from, but people jam big white plastic coolers with ice and their fish to take it home if they live within a hundred miles or so. Everyone comes to camp and fish. Without rubber boots and big coolers in our car, we felt really out of the scene, like the time we walked into a bar in Ten Sleep, Wyoming, and everyone in it was wearing cowboy boots and jeans. They stared as we walked through and quickly out the back door in our shorts and baseball hats, with tourist branded on our foreheads.

Getting Started

Michigan
Mackinac Island
Sault Ste. Marie

Canada
Wawa
Schreiber
Kakabeka P P

Alaska
Cantwell
Denali
Kenai
Soldotna

International Falls, MN

North Dakota
Icelandic State Park
Willston

Malta, MT

Alberta, Canada
Fort McLeod
Wetaskiwin
Valley View

Alaska
Kenai
Soldotna
Homer
Seward

British Columbia, Canada
Dawson Creek
FortNelson
Muncho Lake

Yukon Territory, Canada
Watson Lake
Whitehorse

Alaska
Seward
Palmer
Tok

Yukon Territory, Canada
Whitehorse

Alaska
Haines
Skagway

Yukon Territory, Canada
KluaneLake

Alaska
Tok
Valdez

Yukon Territory, Canada
Whitehorse
(and Skagway, AK)

British Columbia, Canada
WatsonLake
FortNelson
Dawson Creek

Alberta, Canada
Whitecourt

Havre, Montana

North Dakota
Williston
Medora

Valdez, Alaska

Medora, North Dakota

Wyoming
Spearfish
Devil's Tower NM

Rt. 20 across Nebraska

Des Moines, Iowa

Branson, Missouri

Jackson, Mississippi

Tallahassee, Florida

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