*This is the story of our journey from Whitehorse, YT to Tok, AK.*

We got started that day at a decent hour, not too late and not too early. Pack up didn’t take too long which was nice. Our neighbors next to us were an older couple and the man would periodically come around and ask us questions about our trip and what we were doing.

Turns out, he and his wife used to take trips like this when they were younger, and it brought back a lot of great memories for him. We ended up talking for about 15 minutes or so sharing stories of previous expeditions.  We both were on our way to the Arctic Ocean, except they were headed to Tuktoyaktuk and we were headed to Prudhoe Bay.

A short aside:

Em and I have talked about how neat it is that we can easily connect with the older generation. A lot of the older couples or individuals we meet usually have one of two responses when learning about what we’re doing. Either they are incredibly nostalgic because they had done something similar when they were younger and now they are traveling again in retirement, or they are jealous that we get to do this at a young age and wish they had the ability to go back and enjoy those things in their youth.

Regardless of which, both sentiments usually evoke such warm and powerful emotions among these people that they want to share that with us via their stories. And I think in a way, they get a vicarious pleasure from seeing us at a young age following in their footsteps. It’s been such a blessing to be able to catch a glimpse of all of those feeling amongst the many different travelers we get to meet along the way.

Anyways, back to the rest of our day…

We finished packing up and headed to the Whitehorse Micky D’s so I could get a bit of work done. We couldn’t help but notice as we drove through downtown in the 50* weather that people were acting like it was a hot summer day in California. So many people were in summer dresses, riding bikes, etc etc, I guess Yukon’s slogan “North of Ordinary” also applies to its citizens :p.

We left an hour or so later to continue our path along the Alaskan Highway. The scenery was still ever stunning as we approached the Costal Range and drove along the northernmost tip. These mountains were just the epitome of what you’d expect large mountain ranges to look like as well: sharp, jagged peaks, covered in snow, with seemingly no end.

Maybe 150 or so miles from the Alaskan Border, we came across a caution sign for mountain goats. And sure enough, right along the mountain were a group 5-6 bright white mountain goats, including some babies! Yeah, we were pretty stoked about that.

The closer we got to the border, the more the storm clouds built and the darker it became. We could see the pouring rain in the distance.

We stopped in Beaver Creek, YT 30 miles before the border for the last gas stop. We also figured this would be our last chance to stock up on Ichiban Ramens since we could only find them in Canada. I found a few Ramen’s and a bottle of tabasco (to spice up our po-ritos) waited like 10 minutes for Mr. Chatty Cathy behind the cash register to finish ringing up the previous customers. Finally, he was able to ring me up, and said the total was around $10 or something crazy! I said, “Dude, how much are those noodles!?” Apparently, everything was 3x more expensive in this town, so we opted to return our items and shop at some other super market along the way.

And then, here we are :), we finally made it to Alaska! It was quite the special moment. We made sure to memorialize it and soak up the experience… and also grab some selfies because we’re millennials.

As we were taking pictures, a couple two-up on a KLR were coming down from Alaska. They were soaking wet and cold to. the. bone. We tried talking to them, but they were from Chile and spoke broken English. We were able to gather from the rusty Spanish we knew that it was raining hard up ahead and very very cold. But I mean, we probably could’ve just figured that out from looking at their body language and their drenched gear as well.

The weather had held up all day long, but as soon as we crossed that Alaskan border the clouds came out and turned dreary. About 30 miles into Alaska it started to rain, and the temp was hovering around 40, so it was darn cold. We pretty much froze our butts off for the next hour or two till Tok. Emmy stowed her camera once the rain hit so we got very few pictures past the border crossing.

We stayed at Thompson’s Eagle Claw, a motorcycle campground on the outskirts of Tok. They had a cool teepee that Emmy really really wanted to stay in, but the rain was coming in from the top so we opted to find a cabin or a shack to better keep the rain out. We really didn’t want to set up our tent in the rain. We drove through the campground and found a 1970’s ambulance that they had permanently parked in a camping spot and retrofitted with a bed for campers. We decided to stay in it.

We were unpacking our stuff and loading it into the ambulance before going to find the owner and settle up with her. Em was in the ambulance and I was handing things to her, having a nice conversation, and I turned around and the camp host lady was standing right behind me! I let out a shriek and jumped about a foot in the air. All the while Emmy just starts laughing her head off because apparently, that wasn’t the most manly^™ of reactions.

She felt so bad for startling me, but Emmy assured her that I’m just a jumpy person and that she had nothing to worry about. She was stopping by to check in on us and settle up with us on payment.

We paid the money, then got back to boiling water for noodles for dinner and getting ready for bed. The ambulance itself wasn’t bad, but it also was a little janky. I mean people probably bled out on the 70’s style carpet and you could tell. And it had a musky smell to it which means we probably have mesothelioma or maybe it’s pneumonia 🤔, and rain was leaking through the roof onto the driver’s seat but it was totally worth it since we didn’t have to set up our tent in the cold and pouring rain!

After dinner, we snuggled into our sleeping bags for our first night of sleep in Alaska.

-RJ