A Viking’s Walkabout – Day 21 – Viking Navigation LLC

Anchorage to Tok, Alaska

Distance: 318 miles / 512 km

Time: ~6 hours

Time to get back on the road… I pick up War Bus at the Anchorage BMW dealership first thing in the morning and head out of town. I at least saved on valet parking for two nights. Spend some time repacking everything and doing a load out check. Then on the road for Tok. A choice will then present itself at the fork in the road. I don’t have much of a plan from there until the Slauson Cutoff…

I hope to benefit from all of their works on this trip… except the cemeteries… Cemeteries?!?!?

Freaky clouds…

Back in the woods, rain, and clouds… huzzah….

Cute cabin at Tok RV Village and Campground Cabins. Another place where I got slightly better internet setting up the Starlink, but the cabin was very cute, warm, and comfortable. There were some real “war busses” in the RV lot. Lots of disposable retirement wealth on display.

I’ve tried to walk or hike a couple miles every day as part of an exercise routine and effort to end the trip with the logbook of a trucker but without other common physical attributes. I decided to walk to dinner. I miscalculated… Round trip on foot turned out to be about 3.5 miles. Again, I lost track of scale.

Walking along the Alaska Highway I passed this art project near Tok Community Park.

I ended up at the descriptively named Tundra RV Park and Bar. No food. Lots of Doritos. Great PBR. I’m definitely from out of town. Thankfully there was one out-of-town hunter at the bar trying to make friends with six cool locals. Among the locals: Our awesome bartender who was the youngest person there by 20 years and opened a PBR like she was firing a pistol; The drunkest man I have ever seen… and I work in Washington, D.C.; George Clooney’s suave Republican cousin and his girlfriend; Christopher Walken if he had been an Alaskan bush pilot with strong opinions about hunting licenses; the power company lineman who just happened to be from Kansas and could have been played by the younger Wilford Brimley (think, Ted Spindler, The China Syndrome); and his son. Nice people and a fun conversation.

The lineman and his son convinced me of something very important: I should NOT go back to Whitehorse via the Alaska Highway. Instead, I should turn north out of Tok and proceed to Chicken, Alaska and then over the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City. “Well worth it,” my new electrical friend assured me, and so my course was set.

Abandoned service station. Tok, Alaska.

Jaywalking the Alaska Highway back from the Tok RV Park and Bar… bar.

Better sidewalks in Tok than Orange County.

Fast Eddie’s dessert. They have lots of fancy desserts. I can’t eat but two bites of this, but had to try it.

Abandoned roadhouse… It is late, but the sky is still light.

The Shell Station beacon across the highway.