Destruction Bay - What a beautiful place!
The local Grizzly of Destruction Bay
Friday August 13, 2010. At the campground last night they had a live band and when they finished playing, one of the guys came out on the deck and talked with us. I think he said he was Larry's age and he has been in Destruction Bay 40 years. He talked about building a cabin which he lived in for 25 years and the cabin was a 'dry' cabin. No power, no water, nothing but wood for heat. He talked about cutting a whole in the lake during the winter to haul water to his cabin. He then told us that he built a house a few years ago at the far end of the lake and the only thing he has is a pump for water and somehow he has a shower in the house. His toilet is outside and he has solar panels to generate what power he has. He still heats with wood. He told us he was a commercial fisherman for years until he retired. Now he has a sailboat that he takes out onto Destruction Bay routinely and he plays in the band. It really sounded like he loves living there.He was born in Massachusetts but came to Destruction Bay area as a young man. He said you do what you have to do to survive in the place you love. I guess that is very true for most of the people in that area as there is no industry for many miles.I think if I was willing to sacrifice many luxuries, Destruction Bay might be my place of choice. It is one of the most beautiful places, if not the most beautiful, we have visited on our trip. There is absolutely nothing there except natures beauty.
We had a very long day of driving today. I believe we drove 370 miles or something close to that. We left Destruction Bay around 9:30 and only drove about 10 miles and spotted a grizzly out on the beach area of the bay. We pulled over and took a few pictures and by this time we had a crowd coming toward us from the highway. It was like the paparozzi. Everyone wanted a shot of the grizzly. He was very large and we were within 2 blocks of him with the water in between us. He really didn't care that there was a crowd photographing him as he was filling his belly with fish.
On the drive to Whitehorse, the roads were not great. I didn't remember them being this bad on our trip up but they had many frost heaves and broken pavement. There were several construction sites that was gravel and the dust was horrible. We decided to stop at Walmart in Whitehorse to restock since we really haven't bought much since Leslie and Pete left. We debated on staying in Whitehorse as they have a wonderful RV Park that we stayed in going up. It was only about 2:00pm when we finished picking up our groceries so we decided to drive on to Dawson Lake. It was about another 240 miles onto Dawson Lake so we did not arrive here until almost 7:00 tonight. We are staying in the Downtown RV Park which is just a few blocks from the famous sign post park. The RV Park is just another parking lot, which is what the majority of the RV Parks are when you travel this far north. There are a lot of Provincial Parks that are beautiful but most do not have any type of hookups. I needed sewer tonight as our laundry is piling up and I can't run the washer without sewer. So we are here and hooked up and we had a light dinner, I had my quiche that I bought yesterday at the little coffee house on our way from Tok to Destruction Bay. I will say it was not as good as it looked but of course, I could eat it without a problem!!! The quiche I had from Magpie Bakery in Valdez beat the one tonight by a mile.
The RV Park has a car wash so Larry took the car down and sprayed it down. It will not look like he cleaned it by the time we get out of town. I don't know if the car or the motor home will ever get the dust cleaned off when we get home.
We both have loved this trip and Alaska is AWESOME. The beauty of Alaska, The Yukon and BC are beyond compare. We have talked to so many travelers that have made this trip 4 and 5 times but I'm not sure we will make the trip again. It is soooo-- expensive!! If we ever decide to come back, we will be better prepared to fish as that is what draws most of the people here. What fishing we did do, we totally enjoyed. I would have enjoyed trying to fish more but just seems our time ran short. If there is a next trip, I think we would want more time and just plan to mainly fish as there are thousands of wonderful lakes and rivers for that. It seems as we travel, there is water every 20 miles or more. Driving here today we came back through the Teslin Lake area. We had stopped to take pictures on our way up but I had forgotten how large and how beautiful this area was. There were many RV Parks down near the lake which would have been a great place to spend some time as well.
While we were in Walmart today I debated on buying Tucker a small bed for the dash of the motor home since that is where he rides everyday. I looked at all of the beds and of course, they were sewn with golden threads because the price was ridiculous! I finally decided to buy a cheap bed pillow and found a soft furry cover on the clearance rack. I brought everything out to the RV and after I put the groceries away, I took the pillow out of the plastic, put the new cover on it, picked up the two bath towels he had been laying on and placed the pillow on the dash. He would not go near it and kept looking up wondering what happened. Larry picked him up two times and placed him on the pillow and he would meow and jump down. He then wanted to lay on the ottoman that we use with the passenger seat so Larry could not put his feet up. He tried one more time to put him on the pillow and he immediately jumped down. Finally, Larry retrieved his bath towels and put them back on the dash and Tucker jumped up and laid down and slept on them all the way to Dawson Lake. Yes, we treat him like a child and today was a good example of how he acts like a child! He is such a great cat! He never causes any problems so we are both partial to him and he gets a lot of attention from both of us. The other two are ok for cats but they just don't have the personality that Tucker has.
We have been trying to decide all day whether to drive to Hyder. We have talked to many travelers saying that they have a forest fire burning down near the Hyder area and some days they let people travel through to Hyder and some days not. The guy that owns the RV Park here in Dawson Lake told us it is a two day drive even though it is only around 200 miles. We talked to the guys from Kankakee last night at Destruction Bay and they said the road is narrow and full of curves, which I assume makes it a long trip. The people parked next to us tonight are planning to go to Hyder on Sunday and seem to think they have opened the roads by the fire area. They have been here many times and sometimes host a caravan. They are from Crystal Lake, near Chicago. They offered to have us travel with them but we haven't decided. We are leaning toward just continuing our trek toward home. Seems now that we are out of Alaska, home is sounding better everyday!
The smoke here in Dawson Lake is overwhelming! I just talked with the owner of the Downtown RV Park and he told me that the fire is actually burning only 20 miles from town. We seem to never hear the news since we travel all day and rarely get a local TV station at night. The fire is pretty large from his information so probably best we forget our trek to Hyder. We would have to have about four extra days to do the Hyder trip and we are pretty short on time since we have to be home to leave for our Florida trip.
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