2 Roads into Alaska! Headed from Valdez to Skagway- 3 days of long driving

 There are only two roads that lead from Canada into Alaska. One is called Top of the World,  where you go through the city of Chicken, take a ferry, and the road is rough. The second road, is from TOK to Haines Junction, which is even more tough and more common for people to take. We took the first road on the way into Alaska, and the second road on the way to Skagway, Alaska. Our 61 day caravan trip is ending in one week. Boo hoo ! 

This second road, 294 miles, that was supposed to only take us 5 hours, ended up taking everyone 9 or more hours. As one guy who is traveling with us wrote on his blog “we had been warned of many frost heaves and were told to slow down. what we hadn’t expected, was about 200 of those miles were as follows: rotted and uneven, full of deep, potholes, cracked and crumbling, pavement, deeply wash, boarded gravel, rough jarring surface, dust, choked and loose, barely drivable, riddled with dips and gullies, more potholes than roads, eroded and neglected, bumpy and bone rattling, slippery with loose gravel, worn down to a base layer, shake your fillings, loose, and corrugated like an old tin Roof! “

 Our People experienced a flat tire, a hitch breaking on the back of their motorhome that was pulling their car and then the car running into their Coach, a motorcycle dangling off the back of the carrier, seat ripped, electrical problems and more. I kept saying, someone is going to find something that happened that they don’t know yet. Lo and behold, that was us. When we got to Skagway the second day after the rough road, I told François that there was a strap dangling from underneath our trailer. He looks underneath, and says, wow! Our spare tire is missing! It just rattled off on its own, who knows where!!! ( lucky for us, we had 2 spares….)

For those seasonal workers that come in for the tourist season, I’m sure they fly into a civilized airport and then take the train into these places. No road driving for them!