Goodbye Alaska

We set a 7am alarm to get on the road from Tok as we had nearly 400 miles to cover to get to Whitehorse (Yukon Territory, Canada). We topped off both vehicle with gas and got on the road. We had about 90 miles to the border. Canada customs is another 20 miles down the road. There is not a lot along this stretch of the road. We did see rivers, creeks, and lakes looking quite full along the way. There was major rain in Alaska several days ago which caused flooding in the area. In fact, the Taylor Hwy had many parts washed out. Several people were stranded along the road. We drove that road into Alaska a few weeks ago. Last night I called an RV park at Border City to see if they had any spaces and they said they were flooded. As we drove by we saw that the RV park was surrounded by water and several RVs were stranded there. We were thankful to not be a part of any of this flooding. We sailed through customs with no issues.

The stretch of the Alaska Highway today was bad. We were told that it was horrible from Beaver Creek all the way to Whitehorse, but that's not the case. Construction starts in Alaska about 15 miles before the border. It's rough going from the border to Beaver Creek. It's absolutely HORRIBLE from Beaver Creek until about Destruction Bay. Frost heaves and uneven pavement that really pushes you side to side on the road. We are taking the Cassiar Hwy tomorrow which is known to be bad, but many people say this portion of the Alaska Hwy is worse. We hope so. From Destruction Bay to Haines Jct there are rough spots, but most are well marked and if you slow down all is OK. The road was pleasant from Haines Jct to Whitehorse. A few heaves along the way, but pretty smooth the whole way. It took us over 11 hours to drive the 393 miles yesterday. The trade-offs for going slow was the Jeep bumper still being entact AND our gas mileage when up to 10.6 mpg.

We got into Whitehorse and planned to get gas, money, and then check into a campground. We had issues getting money as the ATM said we were over the daily limit. This was frustrating as I had used the same bank in the Edmonton area and gotten out $500 no problem. I tried different amounts and different banks and got the same result. I ended up being able to get $200 from the first bank. We stopped by the public library to use the WiFi and check our bank balance. Plenty of money in there, so I was confused by not being able to get more than $200 out. Since we are low on funds (we are avoiding using our credit card and getting 3% fees on each transaction) and it was after 9pm and we wanted to get another early stop we decided to just park at Walmart. I never thought we'd do this on the trip, but it was late and I was concerned about having enough cash. We are going to be more remote over the next few days and there are places where we will need cash. We plan on hitting the ATM in the morning before hitting the road. Hopefully it's not to loud in the parking lot overnight.