Friday we drove 151 miles from Haines on the coast to Haines Junction in the Yukon, Canada along the old Chilkat trading trail for the Natives, now a road. It was a very pretty drive, lots of lakes and this beautiful falls called Million Dollar Falls that we walked into. Haines Junction was a camp for the road crew building the Alaskan-Canadian Highway in the 40's. It is now a small town for the maintenance road workers with a post office, one store and two churches. The Catholic church took over an old quonset hut.
Saturday we drove 290 miles back into Alaska to Tok. This was not such a pretty drive. It was mostly permafrost, where only about 10 to 8 inches of ground melts in spring. The trees are stunted and the land very soggy. The permafrost also causes lots of potholes, pits and sunken road. Not fun to drive.

Sunday we headed south to Palmer near Anchorage, on the Glenn

Highway, 276 miles. This was a lovely drive even though it was a gray day. We drove down a wide valley between the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains. We say 3 glaciers. The one here was the largest, Matanuska Glacier. We are in Palmer three nights. It was established by the railroad and to house miners digging coal which was shipped to the coast on the railroad for ships during the war.