Elmo's Log #6

Elmo got to visit with the Flag girl on the shore of Kluane Lake
Mountains and Teslin Lake
Kluane Lake near border of Yukon and Alaska. That is ice in the distance.

Elmo’s Log #6

May 30, 2006

On up the Alaska Highway heading for Tok, rhymes with Polk. Tok is in Alaska. Mountains in front of me, mountains to the right of me, mountains to the left, and mountains behind me; mountains behind mountains behind mountains; layers of mountains upon layers of mountains, and those most far, white towers where the sun streaks through the cloud, hurting my eyes. The sense of distance and mass is like other worlds, like planets or moons suddenly on the horizon, in our atmosphere.

There is so much beauty. I am not numb to it, but I am incapable of taking it all into my soul and storing that certain view of a lifetime when a turn of the head, a blink, a curve in the road presents me with another.

We saw a grizzly next to the road just outside of Haynes Junction about the same time that our trip odometer turned over 4000 miles. Just after we entered the USA, we saw a bald eagle, white head and tail, flying low over the car.

This road has become an adventure in itself. What the natives call “frost heaves” creates most of the excitement. Frost heaves are humps and dips in the road creating a roller coaster effect. Each heave is like a mole the size of Cadillac Escalade had tunneled under the road. Mixed in with the heaves are the traditional pot holes and a new obstacle which must be called a pot river. And of course you have the stretches of gravel where they plowed the heave or the pot river. We passed Snag Junction where the lowest recorder temperature in Canada was measured on January 23, 1971, -81.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yesterday and today were our longest hauls. We got to Tok and our campground on the Tok River around 5:00 Alaska time. We were the only campers there until around 11:45 P.M. (still light) when some young girls in a pickup camper pulled in. We also experienced our first mosquitoes of the trip. They like my bald head and Elmo’s snout.