Pretty Cool??

Day 69 – Tuesday, August 20

Happy Birthday to Jim!  Today is Jim’s 29th birthday (again)!  I surprised him with stickers on the windows which showed up when he lifted the shades this morning!!  (Thanks to Barb for secretly providing the stickers!)

We celebrated by driving 260 miles to Tok, Alaska.  It was raining when we left, and the road was full of frost heaves, so it took awhile to cover the miles—almost 7 hours.  They are still working on the roads up here—seems like highway maintenance is never done!

We’ve noticed a distinct temperature drop in the last few days—it’s really cooled off.  In fact, we think it was snowing over the mountains in the distance, because they were completely covered in white!!  It’s 50 degrees right now, and predicted to get into the 40’s tonight…Brrrr…

August in Alaska often marks a change in seasons.  One of the locals said they have had a first frost as early as August 16th….and today is the 20th!!  We noticed the trees beginning to turn already…

 

 

 

And, speaking of cool, …..our cooler is packed and overflowing with fish: 32 pounds of halibut and 16 pounds of salmon!  We have been monitoring the temperature in the freezer, and it has been staying around –4 degrees.  That ought to keep those fish well chilled!

We collect magnets from places we’ve been and keep them on the cooler.  This trip has added quite a few magnets, including a magnet for the states and territories we’ve traveled through…we added Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Yukon, British Columbia and Alaska state magnets! We also added magnets from Banff and from the Yukon.

The day before we left from Milwaukee on this trip, our nephew put a couple of stickers on the cooler (a special Coors Lite sticker and a Dan Wheldon #4 sticker).  I told him they would make the blog…so Jeff, as promised, here’s the photo of your stickers that made the trip to Alaska!

 

And, in keeping with the cool theme, our wagon master provided ice cream cones tonight with our travel briefing, and Jim got a happy birthday song!  We also heard that the two rv’s that had mechanical trouble are back on the road and will join us at our next stop!   One had a complete engine replacement. They had rented an rv to continue to travel with us, and then left yesterday to return to Fairbanks to pick up their coach. The job was completed in 20 days…the engine was air freighted in!  The other rv had a hydraulic pump replaced yesterday in Anchorage, so is back in operation.  That’s pretty cool!