DAY 25

If things go well we will be in Alaska today. We woke to a beautiful setting of snow covered mountains with trees as far as the eye can see.

The scrap booker in me HAD to take photos of us crossing into Alaska. Smart me thought ahead just for this photo op and bought extra batteries before we left Colorado. I put them some where safe to keep them from getting lost. When I needed more juice for the digital camera I would have them on hand and know just where to find them. Guess what?? Those bad boys are really safe cuz I have no idea where I put them. So I had to buy $9 batteries (4 AA) as I have missed place the ones I set aside for the trip and the low battery sign is on.

The worst part of the road has been the last 150 miles to the border. There are A LOT of frost heaves with no break. We have seen more orange flags than we can count. We averaged about 30mph during this stretch. Brad was more then ready to get through this area.

I think the Yukon is the prettiest area I have ever seen in all my travels. There are about 30k people in the entire providence and 20k of them reside in Whitehorse. Look at a map of the Yukon to understand the size of land and you’ll realize how sparsely populated it is. There was a stretch for 108 miles that did not have any services. We even passed a sign that said we were leaving the 911 service area.

The bathrooms along the highway were a big disappointment and are disgusting. We’re hoping it is due to winter weather and will be kept better in summer months. There is a lot of trash everywhere especially at the rest stops. Thank God for the RV.

We made it to Tok, AK by 3pm. This was a good thing for a few reasons. We had phone service again and our internet air card picked up service too. We crossed our final time zone and lost an hour. Kissed the Alaska ground and stepped in 2 countries at once. And most importantly we found diesel for $2.96/gallon…and we were happy about it!! We stopped and talked to our horse trailer friends again and exchanged phone numbers. We will have to get together with them when we get settled.

We left out of Tok with about 300 miles to Anchorage. We knew we were right where we belong when we saw ATVs driving around the town to run errands. We kept driving until Brad noticed it was already 10pm and it was just starting to get dark. We decided to stop about 115 miles North of Anchorage and called it day.

A feeling of home has come over us. The kids are even remarking the beauty and it doesn’t have anything to do with video games! We knew our trip was a success when Zac called daddy Jason saying, “It doesn’t even feel like we have been traveling for a month.”

Wildlife count for bald eagles, moose, and caribou increases each day. Today we added a new animal to the count. We saw a load of bunnies in the trees right along side the road.

We will try to get some sleep but we are beyond excited!!