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Chapter 1
Alaskan Adventures

I got out of the taxi at the Alaskan Backpackers Inn at seven a.m. I was about to embark on a journey on a yellow school bus down the length of North and Central America from Anchorage in Alaska to Panama City. A large iconic American school bus was sitting in the parking lot alongside the hostel. Next to it was a group of people milling about. These were some of my friends and travelling companions who would be making part or the whole journey with me. The bus had been christened Betsy and was to be our primary mode of transport for the next five months.

There had been a group meeting the day before but I had been unable to attend as I was still travelling to get to Anchorage. Therefore, I had missed the introduction to Betsy. The rest of the group had made their introductions to each other and to Betsy the day before and so I had the disadvantage of trying to pick up everyone’s latest news, jobs, and names for those that I did not know personally, already.

I found our leader and driver, Zoë, a Canadian and Seb, her co-driver, a Frenchman from Brittany and introduced myself. We were waiting for one more passenger, Richard, who had not turned up, so having waited an hour, we left a message at reception and set off. We needed to collect supplies so we stopped at a supermarket for an hour.

Before setting off again there was a call to the hostel but still no news from Richard. We set off and as we jerked into motion, a few people who had bought take-away coffees spilt some and complained about the coffee being hot. One of my fellow travelling companions was Gabi who piped up for the benefit of the whole bus that in America they had invented paper sleeves to help insulate the heat from within the cup and lids to stop spillages to protect your hands, as if no one anywhere else in the world had heard of Starbucks, paper sleeves and lids.

Gabi was in her sixties and came from California and she claimed that this was her first overseas trip. Although Alaska is still part of the USA she had flown north and so she was still in the USA. Further the overland journey through Canada back to the lower 48 states was not ‘overseas’ either so she was wrong on more than one account. But the section of the journey that she was joining us for would be her first foreign trip outside of the USA.

It is an urban myth that only ten per cent of Americans have a passport, as in fact 46 per cent have one (as a comparison, 83 per cent of UK residents have a passport). Overseas travel claims to broaden the mind and educate. However, of all the overseas trips made by Americans, to get a true picture you need to exclude certain trips. A lot of Americans are legitimate immigrants and take multiple trips overseas to visit relatives. Several businessmen also take multiple trips.

The USA is a large country and has a vast number of tourist destinations within its own boundaries so there is a reduced need for overseas travel. Everyone speaks English and the incidence of the ability to speak a language, other than English or Spanish, is very low. Most Americans may recognise the outlines of states and name the state capital of each, but fall short on recognising outlines of overseas countries or naming their capitals. If you also take out trips to neighbouring Canada or Mexico, the number of native born Americans who have experienced another overseas culture is actually very small.

Our first destination was Seward and the Kenai Fjords National Park and we had started down the road leaving Anchorage, which followed a route alongside a railway line, built between 1917 – 23, overlooking Resurrection Bay, named by the Russian fur trader and explorer Alexander Baranof. He was sailing along the coast and was caught in a storm and unexpectedly found shelter in the bay on the Russian Orthodox feast of the Resurrection; hence the name.

Seward was named after Secretary of the Interior William Seward (1861–1869) who negotiated the Alaskan purchase from the Russians. It has an ice-free port and became an important distribution centre for the Alaskan interior. As the city devastated by a massive earthquake in 1964, it has little of the original city left.

The Kenai Fjords National Park sits on the same peninsular as Seward and was set up in 1980 and covers 4,600 square kilometres. At its centre is the Harding Icefield from which 38 glaciers flow. As Kenai Fjords National Park is en route to Seward, we stopped at the Byron Glacier Trail for a walk up the valley to see the glacier.

It was a gentle walk but even at sea level we could see large patches of ice clinging to the mountain slopes rising above us. High above us, at the end of the valley was the snout of the glacier as it tumbled down from the icefield hidden from view behind the mountain tops around us. We checked the hostel for any news of Richard but he still had not turned up.

We drove through Seward and found our campsite along the coast where we would be staying for two nights. It was a warm, dry, and sunny day which made the campsite seem so much more inviting. The tents needed water proofing so we sprayed them as soon as we arrived and left them to dry in the sun.

There was a free day to do whatever was on offer. Several people wanted to take a sea trip along the fjord and hopefully see some whales. I was happy just to wander around town and see Seward along with Roger, an Australian chemistry lecturer on an extended holiday and David, a retired accountant from London. We were dropped off on the far side of town, near the harbour where several other members of the group were going whale watching. We walked back towards downtown along the sea front. After the harbour and its marina, there was a huge RV park with all sorts of vehicles, and judging by the number plates there were vehicles from all over the lower 48 states. Alaska is the 49th, joining the Union in January 1959 and is a long way from the other more southerly states, separated by Canada. There are fifty states in all and the fiftieth state is Hawaii in the middle of the Pacific, which joined in August 1959.

There wasn’t much to see of any historical significance in Seward, as it suffered badly from fires and the tsunami following the destruction caused by the earthquake. But it was an interesting walk in bright sunlight. There is history to the town, as it was an important harbour and starting point for many gold prospectors in various gold rushes following the Klondike discoveries in neighbouring Yukon, at Dawson at the end of the nineteenth century. These gold rushes include the Nome, Fairbanks, and Iditarod goldfields and later as prospectors spread throughout Alaska, hundreds of locations were found with gold deposits between 1898 and 1914.

Zoë took me on a tour of introduction to Betsy at the campsite, since I had missed-out on the briefing the day before. She is a traditional big yellow school bus built by Thomas Built Buses, which has its own interesting history. In the economic downturn after the First World War, tram designer Perley A. Thomas lost his job as chief engineer at the Southern Car Works in North Carolina. A few months later he was approached by the Southern Public Utilities Company, a former major client and asked to create a team to renovate several trams that he had designed that his former employer had sold to them.

He contacted his former co-workers and opened the Perley A. Thomas Car Works. Trams were replaced by vehicles, so he expanded and launched his first school bus in 1936. Expansion continued and in 1972 the name changed to Thomas Built Buses and expanded in the commercial market. In 1998, Thomas Built Buses became part of the Daimler group. Innovation followed and by November 2006, Thomas manufactured its last FS-65 conventional bus and retired the product, and produced buses with newer technology and design.

Betsy might be ageing but the Thomas buses have a reputation for being robust work-horses with tried and tested technology and are easy to work on. These buses were exported in droves and can be seen throughout Central and Southern America. In the USA, school buses are painted yellow but in Central America the buses come in all sorts of colours and personalised paint jobs. In Central and South America, they are also referred to as chicken buses, due to the locals often taking their chickens to market on the local buses.

Betsy has had a few modifications but is still easily recognisable as a school bus. She had a modified chassis and suspension to cope with rough roads and low clearance. The back three rows of seats have been converted into a locker for luggage, camping equipment and food storage. Inside there are a range of electrical ports for recharging phones, tablets, and laptops. Otherwise the bus is unaltered from its former role and anyone who has been to school in the USA would have that moment of nostalgia on entering the bus.

We drove back through Anchorage and on to Denali National Park, the home of Mount McKinley which at 6,190 metres, is America’s highest peak where we were due to camp for three nights. It was officially renamed Denali meaning ‘the tall one’ in the local language, but old names tend to stick. It was a long drive day so we left the driving to the drivers and settled into our seats, looking out at the scenery going past, or sleeping.

There were mountains with a scattering of snow on their tops, but as we drove further away from Kenai National Park, the scenery slowly changed to rolling forested hills. In places, there had been wildfires and great stretches had burnt, leaving just blackened trunks pointing skyward. As we approached Denali we could see the mountains covered in snow in the distance.

We stopped at a viewpoint with a braided river below it and views across the landscape to Mount McKinley in the distance. It was named after the American President but he never actually visited Alaska. It is the tallest mountain in the state and is usually cloaked with cloud. Many people come to look at it as it is on the tourists list of things to see in Alaska but few are lucky enough to see it. Down one side is the Ruth Glacier which has carved the Great Gorge. This is 3,000 metres deep but only a little of the gorge is seen as the glacier still fills most of it.

It was early evening by the time we reached the campsite where we would be staying. We drove Betsy through the camp site to our allocated spaces then backed her up from the track through the forest on to a parking space and set up our tents on two neighbouring pitches.

Private vehicles are not allowed inside the park, instead there are a series of shuttle buses and you book the time you want to go. The driver points out things of interest as he drives through the park, with periodic stops. We caught our early morning bus and stopped at one of the designated stops with a café, shop, and toilets, set high on top of a river bank with a view across a braided river. The water levels were low, so there was a lot of light coloured gravel and rocks exposed. It was here that we had our first view of one of the local bears. On the far bank was a brown bear walking along the edge of the river, stopping every now and again to look around and smell the air. We watched until it walked back into the forest and was lost to view.

We got back on our bus and crossed a bridge over the river. There are a few cabins along the way but none are open to the public. They are either left over from the time before this area was a national park, that is prior to 1917 or used by the rangers. Bears are very inquisitive and strong and both doors and windows must be robust to resist tampering. There were heavy steel shutters on some of the windows to protect against bears.

The scenery we were going through had several wide open valleys with rolling hills rising significantly as they get nearer to the central peaks. The bottoms of the valleys have wide braided rivers. As the road climbs upwards, the trees thin to just a few struggling individuals and eventually there are none above the tree line. The grass covering the ground also thins and there are more bare patches of rock and boulders.

The road was purposebuilt to cross some of the best scenery in the park up the Toklat River, to give visitors the best views to appreciate the scenery, sometimes irrespective of cost and the engineering difficulties. That day there was a clear blue sky, no haze, no pollution, and fantastic views of distant peaks with glaciers descending from them from our vantage point high up on one side of the valley.

We had already seen a bear on the lower slopes and up here we saw elk and caribou. It is easy to spot them as there are open vistas with no trees and it was a bright sunny day. The caribou here can be seen individually (as opposed to congregating in herds as in other parks), and can be anywhere in the scenery. One caribou was standing right next to the road with its head planted in a large bush as if it was doing an ostrich impersonation and trying to hide. We got out of the bus to have a closer look and take photos.

While we were doing this, another caribou came gently jogging down the road and passed within an arm’s length. Those who heard it and turned around saw this animal coming straight for them. Others had a fright as the first they knew about it was when it rushed past them. Only those quick-witted enough and with a camera at the ready could get any close-up shots.

We arrived at the interpretive centre in the centre of the park where the bus waits for a while before turning around and heading back the way we had come. We saw more bears below the tree line foraging along the river banks as we made our way back. By mid-afternoon we were back at the campsite and we all agreed that it had been a wonderful trip with plenty of magnificent views of the wildlife.

The rest of the day was free and since I had heard trains during the night, I went for a walk in that direction. There was a high, long bridge and just beyond was the railway station. This is where the McKinley Explorer brings guests from the coast and their cruise ships, up into the mountains to visit the park in double-decker railway luxury.

I watched from the river as a train crossed the bridge and slowed as it entered the station. By the time I climbed up the valley side and reached the station, most of the passengers had climbed off and their luggage was transferred by porters. Ever inquisitive, I had a word with the conductor and was allowed on board to view the cabins, the restaurant area and the upper perplex roofed viewing level. It was a modern train with plenty of space but little in the way of decoration. This wasn’t needed as the large see-through roof gave panoramic views of the countryside as the train made its way through the mountains to its destination.

That evening we drove out of town to the 49th State Brewery. It is a large restaurant and bar that brews ten types of beer in various styles and strengths up to eleven per cent (which regrettably, was the one beer that they had run out of). Some were named after a local theme such as Solstice IPA or McKinley’s Stout or other well-known styles such as Dunkelweizen or Vienna Lager. I tried as many as I could before we finished our meal and I had to go back to the campsite.

The next day was a free day to do whatever we liked. There are several trails radiating away from the campsite, so I first headed to the railway station and the nearby interpretative centre. From here, the Roadside Trail leads off to the sled dog kennels. Here you can wander about the kennels and learn something about their history and their usefulness to rangers in getting about in winter. There is also a dog sled exhibition and demonstration so that guests can get a real understanding of mushing.

I looked around the kennels. Dogs all have characters, and it was clear in these dogs. Some liked to be patted and tolerated the noisy crowd of tourists. Others just slept in the sun, while others hid in or behind their kennels, out of sight. After touring the kennels, I took the alternative but longer Rock Creek Trail to get back. This trail was noticeably quieter and stopping for a moment, I heard nothing except the sounds of the forest. I had met a ranger leading a small group on a flora and fauna walk near the start, coming in the opposite direction but I saw no one else after that. I scanned the trail ahead and stopped and listened for movement. Whenever I was about to break cover across a clearing, I made sure I looked both ways as I was by myself and didn’t want an unexpected face-to-face encounter with any large animals especially bears. The local wildlife probably is used to a lot of visitors around here and stay away, but you can never be certain.

You know when you are getting close to your destination as you start to see or hear more people. A lot of people only go for a short circular walk or a short distance up one of the longer trails before turning around again. I had begun to see more people and true enough around the corner was the visitors centre.

I had a picnic lunch at the centre before heading up the Mount Healy Overlook Trail. This was steep in places and didn’t look far on the map but seemed a lot further. Again, away from the centre the trail was quiet with just a couple of other walkers, but the outlook is worth the effort. On the return journey, I took the Taiga Trail and the bike path to the Wilderness Centre and finally back to camp. It had been a long day and I would sleep well that night.

We started our drive up the George Parks Highway past the 49th Brewery and for a while we got glimpses of trains running along the far side of the valley, high up the slope. After more than an hour of driving and passing through Cantwell, we turned off the tarmac road onto a gravel track along the Denali Highway to head for our wilderness campsite. The mountains set well-back from the road were covered with snow. As we gently climbed, the trees thinned-out and we had great vistas in all directions. We stopped a few times to stretch our legs and look at wildlife. There were caribou but we saw no bears. There is little traffic along this road and you really get the sense of being in the wilderness.

At mid-afternoon, we arrived at McClaren where the road crosses a river. The settlement is no more than a bush camp, a couple of houses, a cabin and a bar-cum-restaurant. We would be ferried upriver by motor launch to reach our camp. There were only two boats and we would need three trips, so the first boat set off with seven people. The second boat was loaded with our luggage and there was space for two people so Zoë and I jumped in and joined Alan the helmsman and his two dogs that also came along for the ride.

Another boat overtook us going fast and making a lot of waves that rocked us as it shot past. The boat that had taken the first group of passengers was coming back downstream, again fast and I am sure it swung towards us mischievously and spray went everywhere as it shot past and we ploughed through its wake. I was sitting in the bow of the boat and Alan’s dog came and sat right next to me. It was obvious that I was in someone else’s favourite spot. If I so much as moved an inch away from him, he would move an inch as well. If I nudged him as the boat rocked, he stood his ground and didn’t budge an inch. Alan confirmed that I was in his favourite position and he wasn’t happy at losing his spot.

We arrived at the campsite and unloaded the baggage. The tents were already set-up with wooden floors and three camp beds in each tent and I shared with Steve, a former English prisoner governor and Laurence, a New Zealander who worked in forestry. This was luxury camping, as all we had to do was unroll our sleeping bags. The toilet wasn’t so luxurious. It was a privy with a hole in the ground and no door. There was a wooden baton, so that if it was sticking out, it was occupied and you lowered it after you had finished. It looked away from the campsite up the valley to the glacier and the mountains beyond. It had the best view from any toilet I have ever seen.

The next day was a free day to do as we wished, which was basically either to sit around camp and do nothing or go for a hike. The difficult decision was in which direction. There were no discernible tracks, so you could go in any direction. There was a glacier at the top of the valley and although it was a fair distance I was ready to give it a go. No one expressed any interest in a long walk except for Sigi, a young woman from Austria who ran several chalets in the Alps and who often went off on her own at her own speed, and had already left to walk up the side of the valley. I was ready to go straight after breakfast so I set off up the length of the valley by myself.

There was no obvious path except animal tracks through the scrub and a pair of intermittent tyre marks where an ATV had been across the scrub some time this season. The vegetation at altitude and this far north, is delicate and just one journey in the spring can leave a trace that lasts for the rest of the season.

I forded a few streams and headed up the valley, keeping the main river to my right. The water was cold as it flowed straight off the glacier, and I didn’t mind wading through streams up to my knees which I had to do a couple of times as I couldn’t find a better crossing-point. The start of the trek was across a wide flat valley floor and easy going until there was a slight rise. There was evidence of a mine with some discarded mining equipment, rubbish, and several spoil heaps but I had no idea what was being sought. After this there was a steep rise right across the valley. I took a dry rocky gulch to the left and scrambled up the slope.

There were no trees here but as I traversed the valley side, there were several small lakes with a milky blue to green tinge, more evidence of some mineral that had coloured the water which had been investigated by the mining company that had dug into the mountain just below. Another scramble and past the next promontory, I either had to head up the side of the valley or down to the valley floor. I opted to keep my height and any views of wildlife and scrambled diagonally up and across the slope only to regret it later, when I had a marvellous view of the glacier ahead but no easy path down.

The glacier had pushed a lot of material into a terminal moraine across the valley and then retreated to form a lake in front of the snout of the glacier. The meltwater had built up until it had carved a route through the far side of the moraine and was slowly draining the lake. Up on the surface of the glacier were darker ribbons of rocks, tracing the lines where smaller glaciers had joined to make one large glacier and lateral moraines had joined together to form medial moraines running the length of the glacier. The lake was a milky colour due to all the fine silt in it from the meltwaters flowing off the glacier. Bobbing about in the lake were a few icebergs that had calved from the main glacier.

I had reached my goal and planned to return the way I had come, but from my vantage point high up on the valley side, the valley floor looked a lot flatter and easier walking so I carried on down to the bottom. I had descended through the gulch and had started to walk across the flat section. I noticed a caribou to my right and one to my left so I aimed for a spot between them. Then, angling their way down the valley slope towards exactly where I was going was a caribou and calf. Just as at that moment there was a noise behind me and I turned to see a caribou running at me from where I had just come.

Common safety advice is that you are recommended to avoid wildlife, but what happens when they come at you? I remembered that you back off from bears and run from moose but what about caribou? They are meant to be timid like deer, and usually avoid people… and these must have seen me but were still coming my way. There were some other trekkers way off to my left, so seeking safety in numbers I quickened my pace and headed straight for them whilst keeping an eye on the movements of the caribou.

The walkers weren’t part of my group but they had seen the caribou and stopped to watch them. We exchanged greetings and hiking plans. I wanted to know how easy the route was that they had taken to get here, whilst they asked about paths higher up the valley. Meanwhile the caribou went their separate ways and seeing a gap, I was off again, heading towards the camp.

I rounded the last bluff but from my low position on the valley floor, I wasn’t sure in which direction the camp was and I couldn’t see it. I only knew for certain that it was next to the main river. And it had started to rain. The problem was, which of the many channels would become the main river which I would be unable to cross. I didn’t want to end up on the wrong side of the river so I stayed well to my right for another kilometre or so, before turning at a point that I hoped was perpendicular towards the main river.

As luck would have it, plus what I like to think of as having a good sense of direction, I was just a hundred metres off-track and I gratefully waded the last stream to arrive back in camp. I was the last one back. It had been severe weather at the camp all day and everyone was huddled in the mess tent, drinking tea to keep themselves warm, so I kept quiet about the weather further up the valley which had been bright and sunny for most of the day and only became cold, overcast and raining as I got nearer to the campsite.

We were waiting for the launch to take us downstream to McClaren but we had the choice to paddle. The severe weather had eased off, and after a straw-poll of who wanted to paddle and who wanted to go by launch, there was a consensus of people opting for paddling in canoes, so we ended up three to a canoe, two paddlers and a passenger in the middle. The luggage was loaded onto the launch and we were left to set-off in our canoes in our own time.

The first canoes soon disappeared out of sight and we were the last to go, Zoë in the bow, me as helm at the aft and Bonser in the middle. Bonser was an easy going accountant, originally from London but who now lived and worked in Manchester. The canoe in front of us had Anja from Germany in the bow, Tracey from Australia in the middle and Steve aft. Their canoe team was short on paddling skills and it swung all over the place, plus they didn’t recognise approaching shallow water, until they were on top of it, whether they could have done anything about it or not.

Several times we caught up with them, only to see Steve standing in the water, pushing the canoe across a gravel bar. We stayed close, not because it was a difficult river; it was shallow, not too fast moving and there was only one way to go, but just in case they needed help. Besides which, it was a great comical scene, seeing the problems that they had; but at least they were enjoying it and there was no rush or danger.

It wasn’t all plain-sailing as the river braided several times and approaching an island, I steered towards the left-hand channel, only to see too late that it shelved into shallow water. It was too late to paddle out of it and the current took us past the start of the island. We shouted at Steve’s canoe not to follow. We beached the canoe and all got out and I stood in the water up to my waist and lined the canoe back up the slough and around the tip of the island, before we all got back in and set-off again in the main river. Steve had not gotten much further as they had beached on a sand bar, which was the same one that I had seen and that had persuaded me to go left in the first place.

I have paddled canoes many times but I am not used to being helmsman with two people in the boat. If Zoë leaned to the right, a natural position when paddling on that side, then Bonser would lean to the left to see downstream. That meant that I had two heads to try to see around and had to lean even further and the change in weight distribution affected the way the canoe handled. Ideally the weight should be nearer the back but with just three people and no baggage as ballast, Bonser was sitting forward of centre and Zoë in the bow. She has a physically demanding job driving the truck and undertaking mechanical repairs so, as a result she has a great physique, but is quite muscular for a girl.

I was only wondering about weight distribution and innocently asked how much she weighed, which I realised straight away is not a question you should ever ask a woman. I got an indignant reply, but thinking quickly and hoping to redeem the situation with a bit of humour, I said that she must have misheard and that I was asking what her favourite flowers were. And with Bonser as a witness I was not going to live this down.

Eventually, back in McClaren we dragged the boats onto land and changed into some dry clothes. Most people opted to upgrade to a bunkhouse, but a hardy handful of us pitched our tents for the night, including Bonser and I, without our tent buddies, so with just one person in a tent, there was no shared body heat and it would be a chilly night. But we weren’t that eager to camp yet, to be both under canvas and to cook for ourselves, so we all had an evening meal in the restaurant.

After our wilderness camp and thrilling canoe journey it was going to be a long driv day to reach Wrangell-St Elias National Park. This is the largest national park in the USA; six times the size of Yellowstone which is the best-known park, and which people already think is big. Four major mountain ranges meet here, and the park includes nine of the sixteen highest peaks in the USA, including Mt Blackburn and Mt Sanford. The high country is covered with snow all year round, resulting in extensive icefields and there are huge chains of glaciers within the park. Numerous sheep and mountain goats live around the craggy peaks, whilst the park is also home to caribou, moose and brown and black bears.

We stopped off at the visitor centre to get tickets and view the information boards to see what is in the park. From a ridge, just beyond the main building we could see two of the peaks in the park, standing side by side, Mt Drum and Mt Wrangell. Both are volcanoes but Mt Drum is a stratovolcano, with explosive lava forming a steep sided cone, whilst Mt Wrangell is a shield volcano, made-up of flows of lava and shaped like a low dome. We can see them but it would be another two hours before we reached them and our campsite. On our way, we passed the oil pipeline that runs the length of Alaska from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean over hundreds of kilometres of tundra, to Valdez on the southern coast of Alaska.

What interested me was the 313-kilometre-long railway line built from Cordova to Kennecott to service a vast copper mine, high in the mountains. This is one of the copper deposits with the highest grade of ore in the world. We paused in Chitina, a small settlement with a café, a community store, a hotel and at most, a dozen houses, before continuing along the road that goes through a cutting. This was originally cut for the railway to reach and cross the Copper River Bridge, which is more than 450 metres long, spanning the wide, shallow, muddy river and then climbing up the far side.

After the bridge, the road heads east on the north side of the Chitina River, along the track bed of what, at the time of construction, was the world’s most expensive railway, across the Kuskulana Bridge, built in 1911, above a deep gorge. A bit further on is what has survived of the Gilahina Trestle Bridge, 268 metres long and up to 27 metres high, also built in 1911. The road reaches McCarthy and our campground whilst the old railway route continues up to the Kennecott Copper Mine.

Before the railway was finished, a sternwheeler was designed and built in the lower 48 states and then dismantled and freighted north. It was carried across the mountains by dog-sled teams and reassembled above the Abercrombie Rapids. Then it worked the river to transport goods up the Copper and Chitina Rivers to start building the mine, until the railway arrived with the first locomotive in September 1910 (in fact there were three sternwheelers eventually doing this job). The railway cost USD23 million but profits from the copper mine topped USD100 million between 1911 and 1938; more than a billion in today’s money.

Our campsite was an area covered with boulders and a few scraggy trees doing their best to survive. There were magnificent views of the snow-capped mountains in the distance, but nothing else. It was hard to find a flat pitch without clearing a few rocks first and it was cold. To console ourselves we walked to McCarthy and looked around. It is a fascinating place full of wooden houses in true western clapper-board style, plus a bar of course, although the prices reflected the cost and distance to haul goods into the town.

Zoë had brought her violin and she played a few tunes as live entertainment for both us and the other customers. We left late in the evening and walked back to our tents. The path was easy to follow as this far north at the height of summer it doesn’t get dark, just twilight around one or two in the morning before brightening up again.

There were various activities on offer such as ice climbing, glacier walks, a flight over the glacier and hiking but my primary aim was to do the historical mine tour. I caught the first shuttle up in the morning from the campsite and bought my ticket for the first mine tour. The smaller buildings, easier to renovate and maintain, were all in excellent condition.

However, the main ore-processing plant, a huge building standing more than fourteen storeys high, built up the sloping hillside overlooking the glacier, still needed quite a bit of work on it to make it look as good as the other buildings. I absolutely love industrial economic development and the trip around the power plant, the huge ore processing plant and offices was fantastic, but I won’t bore the reader with any details, other than to say that it is a great destination to spend a day. But there is a magnificent view of the whole plant, the glacier and some of the peripheral mining sites from the top.

I had asked my guide which of the surrounding mines was the best preserved and I was directed to a site in the mountains behind the ore plant. The track was a steep gradient between dense shrubs on both sides of the path. I had no view other than the blue sky above, the greenery on both sides and the grey gravel of the track, and occasionally a glimpse of the mountain ahead, where the track turned a bend. The enjoyment of any trip is not just reaching the destination but also the journey to get there and this seemed a particularly uninteresting trek, with no prospect of improvement. It wasn’t a popular choice either as I had seen no one else on the track. So after nearly an hour of walking with no prospect of better views, I turned around.

My alternative plan was to trek alongside the glacier up to another mine site. On the map, it was a greater distance but the gradient was gentler and I had magnificent views across the glacier. I could see tiny black specks on the mostly white ice that were people going ice-climbing or having a walk on the glacier. I met several people coming down but I saw no one ahead of me or following me on the trail behind, and this wasn’t surprising as it was getting late in the day and most tourists were making their way back to their hotels in nearby communities. There were only a few of us hardy souls ready to brave camping nearby.

The trail broke through the tree line and from here-on were uninterrupted views across the valley, up and down the glacier and of the many peaks around. At the mine-site there was an information board with some photos, discarded rusting equipment, foundations of buildings and areas that had been levelled or piles of debris but no buildings. With the limited information from the information board and some imagination, I made a mental image of what the site might have looked like while it was being mined. The ore was carried by cable car from the mine site to the main ore processing site, but nothing of this remains, other than a few lengths of discarded cable.

I made my back down the valley the way I had come. At the main Kennecott Mill site, some of the buildings had closed for the day and there were noticeably fewer people around. It was after five p.m. and although I had not missed the last shuttle, I decided to take the old wagon trail from the mill to McCarthy and on to the campsite. It would be about another hour and a half to walk but it was not my turn to cook that evening, so I had the time to spare.

I passed the cemetery on the outskirts of the mine site. Most of the tombstones were only made of wood and the lettering had faded so much as to be indecipherable. A few tombstones were stone but there were not enough stones with legible messages to create any sense of the place from the dates and brief epitaphs. From the cemetery onwards it was a pleasant if lonely walk in the forest, always on the lookout for bears. From McCarthy, I knew the way home from the night before, and crossing the bridge over the river I was rewarded with a picture of a moose just standing in the water a few metres downstream of the bridge.

Driving back across the Copper River we had a brief stop to view the fishing boats used during the salmon run. The whole area is a hive of activity for the few short weeks when the salmon are running. It is a race against nature to capture as many salmon as possible before the salmon season finishes and the endless winter sets in. This is the last chance for people who live in these remote inhospitable regions to preserve salmon for the winter for themselves, or to provide them with something valuable with which to trade.

Then it was a long drive with an overnight stop in Tok. On long drive days, some people slept, some read or just gazed out of the window. To while away the time, we had a game based on Forfeit. A word would be called out and everyone had to do the action. Thus, a call of bear meant that we had to raise our arms with our hands open as if they were claws and to look menacing. A call of moose and we had to put our hands up to our head with our fore and big finger raised as if they were antlers. A call of condor and we had to put our arms out sideways and pretend to soar.

The sight of responsible adults making strange shapes with their hands must have been something to behold but it was amusing and helped to pass some long and otherwise tedious drive days through unchanging forests. Many people may note that condors are not native to Alaska but are large birds’ native to South America, so how had they become part of the Forfeit game?

Earlier we had seen some large birds and someone had asked what they were. No one knew but as a joke, I shouted out that they were condors and subsequently any large unidentified bird was called a condor, and so it was used as one of the call-out words for the Forfeit game. We never did establish what the forfeit was for not getting the right action associated with the call, but it was good enough to see people joining-in and making the required shape and laughing good naturedly at those who got flustered and got it wrong.

Originally Tok was a camp for the workers constructing the Alcan and Glenn Highways in the 1940s. It is also where the Alaska Highway crosses an arm of the Pan American Highway. The Pan American Highway is not a single route but several major arteries that connect the far north of the Americas to the far south.

One branch starts in Anchorage which is the road that we were on and meets another branch that starts in Prudhoe Bay. They meet in Dawson and at Carmacks they split with the easterly route going to Watson Lake and the westerly branch going via Whitehorse and the Alaska Highway to reach Watson Lake. There are multiple choices here, but one branch heads east to the Great Lakes and then south to San Antonio in Texas. The westerly route heads south via Calgary and Denver to San Antonio.

The road crosses into Mexico down the eastern side of the country to Mexico City, then Oaxaca and along the Pacific coast towards Panama. We would be following the western route of the Pan American Highway until reaching Yellowstone National Park, where we would make a diversion to Salt Lake City, but pick it up again in Mexico.

Tok is best known today for its association with dog sledding as well as dog breeding, training, mushing and the Tok Race of Champions Sled Dog Race, one of the oldest in the Alaska held each March. Our camp site at Tok was well spaced-out, under some trees and surprisingly quiet. The facilities were modern and clean, with ample hot water. As for the group, for some reason Zoë and Bonser had a cake fight. I forgot how it started but it was good-natured and fun to watch, but if you weren’t careful and you watched too closely, you might get hit with some icing ricochet. It was fun to watch and relieved some of the boredom of a long driv day. It was a shame to waste food and I helped myself to some of the larger recognisable pieces of cake out of Zoë’s hair and off her T shirt.

Also, en route we stopped at Chicken. When the town was incorporated, the residents wanted to call it Ptarmigan but couldn’t agree on the spelling so they called it Chicken instead. This is the site of an early gold rush and there is a large dredger on display in the centre of town. Plus, with a name like Chicken, there is plenty of scope for puns on chickens everywhere. There is a large metal statue of a chicken in the middle of the community. A finger post lists various sister communities, throughout the world with the distance from Chicken. Roosterberg, Belgium, 4,305 miles, Chickaboogalla, Australia, 6,765 miles, Chicken Gizzard, Kentucky, 2,951 miles, Eggamfaaker, Austria, 4,696 miles and Cluck, New Mexico, 2,535 miles, to list just a few.