29.06.2013Vancouver –> Fairbanks: 3850 km

During our travel by car from Vancouver to Fairbanks we were lucky to have many very nice experiences. Some of these you have read about in previous posts (see Alaska Highway Wildlife), others we would like to share in the following.

Vancouver, British Columbia
On our way up north our first stop was at Lynn canyon suspension bridge:

Lillooet, British Columbia
Our first camp ground. Nicely located, close to a river, we again had to get used to our camp gear. After all it had been a while since we had camped the last time.

Prince George, British Columbia
Close to Prince George and after an 80 mile drive into nowhere, we visited the old gold town Barkerville.

One neat thing about it, apart from all the historic buildings and sites is that all the guides are dressed up as in the old days and also talk and act accordingly.

Stone Mountain – Summit Lake, British Columbia
Our camp ground for that night located on the highest point of the Alaskan highway on an altitude of 1295 m.

Refilling our drinking water supplies (after rinsing) while protecting myself from the mosquitos:

And after setting up the tent and getting all the work done, going for a very refreshing swim in the cool mountain lake:

That night there were continuos rain showers, but our tent kept us nice and dry. This is probably the coziest it can get, as long as the tent remains dry on the inside!

Our outside bathtub (Liard river hot springs) served us well for our morning bathing:

Finally reaching Yukon, we found the famous sign post forest consisting of over 60’000 signs. We even found one of our home town Bayreuth. Wonder who set that one up?

Wolf Creek, Yukon
The camp ground:

Yes, we remembered our boy scout lessons and lit that camp fire! And that beer we enjoyed after all the hard work wasn’t warm, thanks to our beer refrigerator:

After we continued towards the U.S. boarder:

Visited our stay for the next night:

Just kidding. This was a shed of the old silver mine close to silver creek which is now a ghost town near Kluane Lake.

And here again restocking our water supply:

And also in this one we had a refreshing swim! Rather short though, since it is also a mountain lake and thus quite cold.

Tok, Alaska

Unfortunately there are currently many wild fires burning all over Alaska due to the very dry climate of the past few weeks. In many of the regions the air was very smokey and impaired the sight and sometimes even made breathing difficult. Here we tried to capture a sample of a bad situation:

Alaska Highway ends at Delta Junction between Tok and Fairbanks after 1422 miles:

On our way to Fairbanks we stopped by North Pole…

Hohoho X-mas is coming

In approx 180 days…
Better start thinking about the presents to get for this X-mas!

Fairbanks, Alaska
When we finally arrived in Fairbanks we decided to cook spaghetti arrabiata using bell peppers, tomato sauce, a zucchini and a fresh jalapeño pepper. Not wanting to leave leftovers we decided to use all of that small jalapeño pepper…

The cook:

The hothothot spaghetti tomato-jalapeño vegetable ingredients from hell:

We were so hungry we eat all of it, but that sauce made us sweat more than we had the whole day and these hot sauces always burn twice…

Fortunately we could cool down with a cool breeze from the river while the sun set shortly after midnight!

A must for every visit to Alaska: gold washing.

Can you see the gold flakes?

They were not added manually! The dirt is bought from a mine and we washed a total of 53 US Dollars. Here my flakes worth approx 36 $:

If we continue like this we will sure be able to stretch our travel budget!