Wednesday, September 13, 2006

WE'RE IN ALASKA!


Praise God, we made it! We are now in Tok, Alaska for the night.

We stopped at the border and took a lot of photos which I tried to download to the computer just now, but when I turned the camera on it read "no images". I wanted to cry, but quickly decided that if the pics are lost I'm not going to let it ruin the joy I feel right now. Thankfully, I downloaded some photos from earlier today while we were still on the road, so I have those to post.

This morning before we left Watson Lake we got gas and Bren and I hopped out of the car and ran across the stree to the Sign Post Forest. It's an area in a park that has thousands of sign posts from places all over the world. It's pretty cool if you've never seen anything like it before.

Neither Rick or I had a good night sleep last night, so we were both pretty tired all day. Rick drove in the morning as usual, but I was unable to sleep. We listened to more of Tom Nelson's teaching on the book of John and enjoyed the easy ride. Of course that easy ride had to change when I took over driving. The roads for the rest of the day ranged from a little bumpy to downright trecherous. All of us got motion sickness. (Oh, the reason why we were unable to find Dramamine in Canada is because in Canada it is called Bromamine. "Dramamine is an American product", the Wal-Mart saleslady told us.)


We had lunch in Whitehorse, Yukon which was lovely with it's snow-capped mountains.

The only animals we saw on the road today were two squirrles and an Elk. That was a bit disappointing after all the critters we saw yesterday, but it made us less concerned that we would hit one on the road.

(I took this center pic of the Swift River in Yukon)

The most beautiful part of the drive today was Lake Kluane (which I didn't get photos of because I was driving). Imgine a turquois blue lake surrounded by the fall foilage with stone gray, snow-capped mountains. It was so incredibly beautiful that I could almost ignore that the road around the lake is being repaved, which slowed us to a crawl. The road was so messed up that traffic had to stop and wait for a pilot truck to show up and lead us through the mess.


The first stop after we entered Alaska, we were unable to get a room because of the pets, so we had to drive another 90 mintues to get to the town of Tok where we are staying at a comfy place called Young's Motel. We had a delicious (but very late) dinner next door at Fast Eddie's restaurant.

Because we had to drive further than we wanted to today (appx 644 miles), we will only have to drive three hours or so in the morning before getting to Eielson, our home for at least the next three years.

It is now time to hit the sack and get over losing our border photos. The Lord greatly blessed us with a wonderful trip these past thirteen days. We had no car trouble, no one got sick, our pets handled the trip well, and we always had food to eat and a bed to sleep in. I am so thankful.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! You are almost there. Thank you for sharing so much about your journey with us. I hope your arrival is the start of the 3 amazing years filled with blessings for all of you.

Donna said...

Melene, thank you. I'm so glad you came along for the ride!