West Fork Tolovana River Bridge Livengood, Alaska

Mileage:  45,900

We haven’t posted for 5 days now.  We have been in backcountry areas without any service.  We will get caught up though as quickly as we can!

The Elliott Highway is a winding road through the White Mountains.  It is another Alaska Scenic Byway.

The frost heaves as we left Fairbanks were like a bad carnival ride.  It is hard to rate them all, but this is one of the worst highways we have taken.  There is a much-needed road construction project to improve the roadway happening this summer.

The White Mountains are very green, thickly covered with white spruce, alders, birch trees, and all kinds of scrubby vegetation.  They are the White Mountains because they are white limestone beneath all the greenery.

The pictures do not do justice to the beauty of this area.  We were able to count 8 overlapping layers of mountains as we stood there looking…gorgeous!

The oil pipeline runs parallel to the road and was visible at intervals today.  It passed beneath the highway at some point and we should see it again on our drive tomorrow.

Our “campsite” is at the Tolovana River.  This is a parking area for the Colorado Creek Trailhead.  This trail is mostly for wintertime use.

We parked the RV and took the Jeep to the unpaved portion of Elliott Highway.

We saw lots of dragonflies.  This is a good thing.  They eat mosquitoes!

A family of ptarmigan took off as our Jeep rumbled by.

We saw a moose and her calf standing in the road.  As we approached, they trotted off into the thick brush and when we passed…there was no sign of them.

We went as far as Minto Village.  We had our lunch there by the Minto Flats.

Minto has a population of 212.  There is a gas station/convenience store, a school, a senior center, and a health center.  That is it!  The population is mostly Athabascan Native Alaskans.  They live a subsistence lifestyle.  Moose, small game, water fowl, berries and fish make up a large part of their diet.  Several families practice trapping, weave birch baskets, and make beaded and fur items.  The food in the “grocery store” was tremendously expensive and not very healthful.  I hope that they only overcharge us tourists and that maybe the locals get a better discounted price.  The temperatures in the village range from the low 70’s in July and then in the winter it can be as low as -40 degrees with a stiff wind chill as well.  It looked like most families were of modest means and struggling.  Minto is also a dry town.  It is illegal to bring alcohol here or sell it.  Penalties include jail-time.

We traveled back to the RV and had our dinner by a campfire by the little river.   We saw a beaver swimming around.  It was cool to see him so closeup.  Having seen a bunch of dens and dams I would love to sit and watch these little industrious guys work.

We tried to do some off-road exploring but the first trail got very boggy and muddy and too wet to continue.  The second trail was very short.

Tomorrow we plan to take the Dalton Highway, hopefully to the Arctic Circle.

We may never pass this way again and so we want to see as much of “real Alaska” as we can.  It is better to see this once than to hear about it 1,000 times.