Stalling? Yah, But Can You Blame Us?

Last night, we stayed at the one of the last campgrounds in Alaska before crossing into Canada. We originally planned to drive into Canada yesterday but the nice weather and the drive from Glennallen to Tok made us hesitate before leaving this wonderful state. I thought the drive to Tok would be just another drive but it was beautiful and peaceful. As we moved away from the Wrangell Mountains, we came into large rolling hills with startling fall colors and hundreds of little lakes, some with a pair of trumpeter swans. The road had significant frost heaves, so we had a slower, rolling drive through fall. It was quite lovely.

We weren’t ready to leave Alaska. We found a fantastic campground at Deadman’s Lake in a national wildlife sanctuary. There weren’t many people there, and we got a large site by the lake. It’s one of our favorite camping sites so far. We were also quite surprised to discover there was no camping fee. We met some really nice campers on our walk and more when we went to a ranger talk about foxes. We were debating staying here an extra day but when four different people throughout the day talked about it possibly snowing this weekend, we decided it was time to continue south.

This morning, we heard wolves howling not that far away. We didn’t get to see them on this trip, but it was cool to hear them. As we left the campground, we saw four ptarmigan whose plumage definitely blended with the scenery.

We also saw a young brown bear fairly close at a rest area just before leaving Alaska. We stopped several times to take photos of the fall colors. It was great to leave Alaska on a high note.