June 12th

THE DETAILS:

WEATHER: The day started mild but cloudy. The temp. was 55 to start. An improvement over the last couple of days. We didn’t have to sleep with the electric blanket last night!

DISTANCE: We left Pink Mountain at 10:30 this morning and pulled into Toad River Campground at 4:30. 6 hours of driving and 260 miles of driving. When we pulled over to take a picture of the beautiful scenery we met people from Colorado and Kansas…. Guess which one was most impressed with the mountain view?


Good to have you aboard Heather! There’s always room for one more. I would stay away from the wine cabinet though… Tim has been in there since the beginning of the trip and I don’t know what condition you’ll find him in.

The campground we stayed at last night included in their information: “Black bears are a fact of life. Do Not Become Alarmed. Do not approach and scare the bears.”! They are worried about US scaring the BEARS! LOL! When we began our travels this morning there was a large moose lying dead on the southbound side of the road. That one was black like we see in NH.

The terrain is once again beautiful. Miles upon miles of straight-as-an-arrow scrubby pines and mountains looming in the distance. There are points that the road will have a steep 9 percent descent into a beautiful portion of water and cliffs. BTW, thanks Dan for posting the information on the dangers of the Alaskan Hwy. so that mom has reason to worry! It was actually interesting and informative, thanks. You were right about the adventure just beginning. It was absolutely stunning driving through the mountains today. The kind of beauty that takes your breath away. Pictures (though we took many) does not do it justice. Besides the scenery we also ran across our first black bear. He was just off the southbound lane of traffic eating dandelions. We were so close to him that we could hear him munching on his dinner!! Gary estimates that he weighed around 200 to 250 pounds. Mom, we stayed in the car! Amazing. We also saw one in the distance. Though the “Milepost” magazine warned us of possible caribou and rock sheep being in the road we, unfortunately, did not catch a glimpse of them.

I think I have finally adjusted to the 2 hour time change… just before heading into another one! It’s difficult when you go to bed at 10:30 and it’s still light outside. We used a cardboard cover over the roof vent over our bed last night in order to darken the area. Gary made it before we left with slits in it allowing venting but giving us the greatest degree of darkness. He should have been an engineer.

The campground we are staying at is the prettiest so far. There is a huge river right outside out side our back door! There’s moose droppings along the shoreline and a good sized mountain on the other side. We will sleep well tonight.