Day 27, Wiseman, Alaska

Wow!! What an adventure.  We left Riverview RV at about 8:20am headed for Wiseman.  We had about 50% hardtop road and 50% gravel once we got on the Dalton Highway.  Some of the hardtop road was worse than the gravel due to the pot holes.  We stopped at the Wildwood General Store in Joy, Alaska.  The family running the store homesteaded 35 years ago and had 23 kids that they raised there, some adopted and as he put it ‘some homemade’.  They had a gift shop with some hand crafted items as well as T-shirts and sweat shirts.  Twila bought a book that their daughter had written and published about her growing up there.  She said that they really had an interesting life without a lot of conveniences, you know, what we call them necessities.  This is about 80 miles north of Fairbanks and of course now has a highway running right in front of their driveway but back then was wilderness.

The most disappointing part was no wildlife.  Nada, Zip and we drove for miles and miles and miles with nothing but wilderness.  We saw more wildlife in Canada.  We saw some pretty country but nothing outstanding.  We did stop at the Arctic Circle to take the usual tourist pictures.

 

We also stopped at the Arctic Visitor Center in Coldfoot and watched a film on the Alaska Pipeline.  It told the history and showed actual footage of the construction.  Worth watching and free.

When we came out Gary had a flat tire.  We were headed across the highway to the Coldfoot Camp Restaurant, Motel, Filling Station,and RV Park for supper anyway so Gary and I put on the spare and Gary had it fixed while we ate supper.  I think it almost ruined his supper.  We talked about how much it would cost and I said $25 and Gary said $20.  Would you believe $65 ??  $25 of it was because it was after 5pm.  The supper was another story all together.  It was a buffet and it cost $19.95 each but it had a salad bar with 2 or 3 different kinds of lettuce, artichoke hearts, cashews, pecans, almonds and the usual tomatoes and such.  For the meat they had rib eye steak and baked Tilapia with real mashed potatoes, carrots with onions and broccoli and risotto with cauliflower and mushrooms.  For dessert they had chocolate cheese cake, cookies, blueberry cake and a white cake.  It was tops and worth the money.

We drove up the road another 12 to 13 miles to the small town of Wiseman to our room for the night.  $90 a night for a 12 X 15 foot room that they might get $25 for in Oklahoma.  The bathroom is a separate room and is shared by the other rooms.  Welcome to the Wilderness.