Monday, July 13, 2015

We changed our plans; we're now in Tok, Alaska.  More on that in a minute.

Before Alaska became the 49th state of the United States in 1959.  Before the Klondike Gold Rush from 1896-1899 and the Alaska Gold Rush from 1899-1915.  And before U.S. President Andrew Jackson purchased Alaska in 1867, Alaska was a Russian colony.  The Russians started exploring Alaska in 1741, claimed it as a colony, and hunted and traded for furs here.

There are still small Russian-speaking communities in Alaska, and the occasional Russian Orthodox church.  We visited this church in Kenai, Alaska, at the end of the Alaskan tour.  It was only a block away from our campground:

This church was built from logs in 1895-1896 and later covered with siding on the outside and plaster on the inside.  It replaced an earlier church on this site built in 1849.  Father Thomas Andrew, who has been the priest here since 2003, gave us a delightful tour and answered a myriad of questions.  The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1970 and is the oldest standing Orthodox church in Alaska.

When I last posted to the blog, we were at the Grand View Café and RV Park along the Glenn Highway, sharing the scenery with some Dall Sheep.  We had planned to drive to Valdez for a couple of nights, then on to Tok.  However, Deb has not been healing quickly and the weather forecast for Valdez was for five straight days of rain.

So we decided to head straight for the town of Tok (rhymes with “poke”).  This change eliminates a full day of driving.  We’ll spend three nights here, letting Deb sleep in and take some extended naps.  With some luck, this should help her feel better.

We stayed at the Sourdough Campground in Tok for one evening on the tour, the day after we departed from Dawson City and drove over the “Top of the World” highway, on our way to Fairbanks.  There’s not a lot to do in Tok, but the campground is one of the nicer ones we’ve visited in Alaska.  Each campsite is surrounded by Aspen and White Spruce trees, and has full hookups (electricity, water, and sewer).  It also has good AT&T cell phone coverage and weak Verizon service

Our current plan is to drive southeast from Tok on Wednesday, saying good-bye to Alaska for this trip.  We’ll spend the next couple of weeks driving through the Yukon Territory and British Columbia on our way to Calgary, Alberta.