Fires, flats and friends

Tonight at Denali. The past few nights the Wi Fi has been weak or very, very slow, so I will catch up tonight, I hope.

We have driven the Dawson Highway, or Haul Road, and survived. We've been north of the Arctic Circle, and took the second obligatory tourist photo, which I posted in the previous post. So, here are a few observations:

The Road - About 195 miles from the beginning to Wiseman. The Dawson Hwy was not nearly as bad as we had expected. It was unpaved in places but had three paved stretches, one nearly 80 miles long. It was dusty in a few places, muddy in one section that they were working on and had wet down. Fortunately it wasn't raining, but there are some 300 fires burning in Alaska and it was incredibly smoky. The services were non-existent, gas at Yukon Camp (60 miles) on the Yukon River, and at Coldfoot (180 miles). The traffic was practically non-existent driving up, with only a few trucks and more cars and RVs. Coming back we passed maybe twice as much traffic, but still drove miles without seeing another vehicle.

The Terrain - Rollercoaster at the southern end, then flat for the last with rugged mountains on either side. Because of the smoke we didn't take any pictures. Too bad because the Brooks Range is supposed to be spectacular. The boreal or taiga forest got more and more stunted as we drove north, finally dwindling to tundra. There were huge areas of purple fireweed like the two photos below.

This typical of the northern area towards Coldfoot.

This is an old burn with dead birch and spruce and a lot of fireweed.

The pipeline parallelled the road for most of the distance.

We stopped at Coldfoot to mail some postcards since it has a post office. The postmistress was one of several friendly residents we came across, willing to talk for as long as we had questions. Then on to Wiseman where we stayed for two nights. I posted a picture of the log cabin we stayed in in the previous post.

Wiseman consists of a number of log cabins that appear to have been there forever. This is a picture of the local ATVs in summer storage. The owners of our log cabin B & B were a German couple with two children who live here year round. They use a combination of wind, solar, and gas generator for electricity, and a pump for water. The cabin was comfortable and, European-style we had down comforters on the bed, just laid on top of the sheet, no top sheet, not tucked in at the bottom. The comforters had a cover on them which served as the top sheet and was laundered between guests. We had a shared bathroom - knock before entering and lock both doors before using.

This is a picture of beautiful downtown Wiseman. Note the delphiniums growing six feet tall. The flowers are beautiful up here. We walked around the "town" and met several of the local people, all very friendly and eager to talk about the area. One was Flo, and Eskimo healer who comes up here every summer to collect caribou leaves, also known as wormwood, that she uses for her salves. Good for what ails you. We each bought some. The can said that it could also be eaten in an emergency.

Midnight. We toast the long twilight with Welches grape juice. The sun had set, or was at least behind the mountains but it was still light, as you can see. No flash needed.

We drove another 60 miles north to Atigun through treeless tundra to the top. It was so smoky we decided to turn around here. On the way back Linda fished the Dietrich River but didn't catch anything. I took some photos, but this stupid blog site keeps deleting some of the photos I post and it takes forever to load them, so you'll have to wait til I get home to see them.

On the way back, we got a flat. If we had to have a flat, it was a good place - the only wayside on the whole highway. We had pulled in for a comfort stop - it has the most well-made outhouses in Alaska - and I noticed that the left rear tire was low. As I watched, it went completely flat. We unloaded everything, got out the spare, and jack, and the manual to tell us where the jack points were.

We got the car jacked up and the lug nuts removed. As Diane was removing the last lug nut and reading the manual in a staged photo op, two angels arrived, Jim and Jeannie driving a red pickup with two blue kayaks on top. We must have looked like utter fools.

Jim finished replacing the spare while Diane tried to look like she knew what she was looking for as she examined the flat tire. Our angels then followed us as we drove another 45 miles south, favoring the spare, and not exceeding 45 mph, until we reached the Yukon bridge where there was supposed to be a place that repaired tires. Not so any longer. The guide book was outdated. But they had a compressor, so we were able to inflate the spare to its recommended 60 psi. I had had it checked before I left but the tire people had apparently thought that 35 psi was enough. So Jim and Jeannie followed us the rest of the way to mile 0 of the Dalton. They turned off to Manley Hot Springs while we continued another 90 miles to Fairbanks, not exceeding 50 mph and keeping our fingers crossed. Once in Fairbanks, it was too late to get the tire fixed but we went through a carwash and removed the mud and grime of our great adventure.

Next morning we found a tire store. Turns out the tire was ruined. We must have driven enough as it deflated to damage the sidewall. They sold us a good used tire for $35 (I had to trust them that our tire really was damaged beyond repair). Then we repack the spare and our luggage, g0t an oil change and headed for Denali.

It is raining today, first rain in weeks. The smoke has been washed from the air, but we still can't see the mountains for the fog and clouds. But tomorrow is another day. Tonight the hot tub and probably an early night. Our bus into the park leaves at 6 a.m.