Quartz Lake

Tok is the only village one traveling up here must pass through twice unless you wimp out and go back on the ferry.  I had considered the wimp option myself dreading the trip back through the remote sections of Canada.   

The ferry is very expensive.  If you can’t get a cabin, you sleep in a lounge chair or on the floor.  The trip takes several days.  Our dog would have to stay in the MH alone most of the trip.  This is not an option for us.  I wish we had phone service on those very long lonely stretches through Canada.  You are at the mercy of passersby if you need help.  Help could be more than two hundred miles away.

Spending a few days around Tok visiting with locals I learned many people settled here because they broke down here.  They spent so long waiting for parts they ended up buying a place and staying.  I am serious.  There is a sense of freedom here you don’t get in the lower 48.  Many here live in a cabin back in the wilderness.  They fish and hunt to stock up for winter.  They are far from the bureaucrats that like to run the lives of others.

It gets cold here in the winter.  The record books say the coldest day on record was  -75.  A local said the record books are wrong.  A few years back they had -83 at his house.  In fact, it was so cold that year they had to close the school for a month.  They don’t close the school unless the temperature is -60 or below.  

Electricity is a luxury here.  At home we pay about nine cents a kilowatt.  On a normal month in the summer we may use 2100 kilowatts.  That figures out to about $189.00 per month not including taxes and assorted fees.  Here, 2100 kilowatts would cost me $1470.00!  Tok generates its own power.  It sells for seventy cents a kilowatt.  

Alaska has more hours of sunsets and rises than anywhere in the country.  I bet you didn't know that the sun rises in the north and sets in the north, did you?

We are camped at Quartz Lake State Recreation Area northwest of Delta Junction this weekend.  We have had a couple of pleasant days with highs near 80.  We have been bathed in brilliant sunshine.  Most of the people here are Alaskans.  They are out on the lake fishing and swimming.  We passed a river not far from here still covered with ice.  I don’t think that lake is warm enough for us Floridians.

Today it is raining again.  We have had steady rain five of the seven days we have been in Alaska.  I hope this doesn’t continue all summer.  The campground has cleared out this morning.  I think if the weather had continued, more would have stayed.  

I bought a fishing license.  If the weather gets more agreeable, I will go down to the lake  and try my luck.  The fishing is very good here.  Large catches of salmon and rainbow trout were brought in all weekend.  Shrimp seems to be the preferred bait.