Rough Road

Robert, Tuesday, July 1

We drove from Destruction Bay to Tok, Alaska today. The reports of a rough road were understated. From Destruction Bay to the US boarder was about 100 miles and it was miserable. The road was rough with long stretches of gravel road. The worst part was the frost heaves. This is where the permafrost under the road causes it to sink. The places are not rough like a pothole but rather like an upside-down speed bump. Hit one of these babies at anything more than 20 mph and it can knock your fillings out of your teeth. Most, but not all, are marked by little red flags on the shoulder. For the hundred miles we averaged 25 mph. I hope we don’t see a road this bad again. We crossed the boarder and the road got a little better. The problem is that you get lulled into thinking the road is fine and you start driving 50 mph and suddenly there are five frost heaves in a row and you are bouncing off the roof of the truck. The distance we drove today was 238 miles and it took 7.5 hours. That’s an average of a little over 30 mph for the day. We checked into the campground in Tok and headed for town. The visitor’s center here has brochures for all of Alaska as this is this first town in Alaska on the Alaska Highway. We loaded up on all of the places we plan to go to. We then headed for the grocery store to pick up a few things. Finally we needed to get diesel as we had last fueled up in Juneau. At the first station the price was $5.499 per gallon! Leslie commented that as we were coming into town she had seen a sign for $5.249 per gallon. That is where we went. We needed more than 50 gallons to fill up. This reminds me of the stories of places with hyperinflation where the workers want to be paid and noon and at the end of the day so they can run out and buy what they need before the prices go up more. Saying you can wait for another day to fuel up means that the price is just going to be higher.