day 31 - drive to Tok

Monday July 3– Day 31 of trip – drive to Tok + two border crossings

                Written by Travis (the son)

Today we drove to Tok.  I know I was super lucky and got the exciting day.  We left at 7 am.  We drove to the first border crossing.  It was about 50 miles up the road.  We pulled up, and a Canadian border patrol lady walked up to us.  She basically said say no to the following questions.  After less than 5 minutes we were off.  A new record time for border crossings (Our previous border crossings took us-2hrs, 30min, 5min).  The 2hrs was from 2 years ago.  My silence was appreciated.  I had learned from “BEAR SPRAY AND FIREWORKS, DAD!” We first crossed into BC.  Then we drove into the Yukon Territory (where my dad peed).   The drive was boring except for every 5-10 miles my dad would say “This area screams bear country” for about 250 miles of the trip.  But we did see one bear.  He was a black bear that was colored brown.  I know the name and color switched is weird.  The roads were horrible.  Ups and downs.  The road was very bendy.  The permafrost (frozen dirt) would melt in some places so the road would sink. Then we crossed back to ‘Mercia.  The crossing process was the same.  When we got to Tok we went to 3 Bears (Alaskan grocery store) that my dad shipped his guns to.  There he found stretchy woman’s pants he got for mom.  Once we got to our campsite, we cooked dinner for us and the Monsons. Their ferry came in at 11:00 am, so we were 4 hours ahead of them and had plenty of time to cook dinner for them.

After leaving Haines, we traveled to the Yukon Territory- a new province for us all!

A bear we saw on our drive to Tok