NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAY 23 - DESTRUCTION BAY & BURWASH LANDING

It was time to leave Million Dollar Falls. It was quite cold and crisp although the sky was blue.  

We are doing pretty good on our propane usage. We are running the big furnace which does eat up a lot of battery power. But we supplement that with our Bluetti power station which keeps our house batteries up to 100%.  We run the Starlink off the Bluetti power station too. 

During the day, we run an extra little Coleman catalytic heater inside on the small 1 lb propane tanks. Steve has been refilling the Coleman propane tanks from our 5 lb larger tank. More on that later...

Then it was time to head out some of the most rugged roads that we can find between Canada and Alaska... The famous Destruction Bay of the Alaska Highway!

We crawled along slowly and enjoyed the scenery. Mostly we were doing between 30 to 40 miles per hour. But in the really rough patches we would slow down to even 10 mph. Steve would wind back and forth between the potholes, keeping track of oncoming traffic (of which there was very little to none) and keeping track of crazy people that wanted to fly up behind us and pass us and keep on flying up the road!

The trumpeter swans are gathering on lakes and ponds, getting ready to head further north. These are a bit fuzzy to take a picture of through the windshield as we were going over the bumps!

I did catch a pair in mid flight...

So this is about what the roads look like... These are called "frost heaves". As the frost seasonally heaves up and down, the blacktop surface kind of flexes along with it. The road crews come along and slap in more blacktop to fill in the worst gaps. They're usually marked by little orange flags so you know what's coming. But they're not always marked either...

Some areas are down to gravel and washboard sections. They are evidently on the schedule to be repaired. But of course, it's brand new spring weather and the snow just melted. It will take a while to get to these sections. 

We stopped in the small town of Destruction Bay, Yukon at the Fas Gas station. We fueled up and paid $5.35 a gallon for diesel at the US rate after the conversion. That's probably the most expensive diesel we will be paying, until our trip back home. Soon we will be over the border into Alaska, and paying US prices. 

The average on that fuel up was 16.67 miles per gallon!! 

We made it past Destruction Bay up to Burwash Landing at the North end of the large Kluane Lake. 

One of the YouTube RVing videos we watched showed this deserted campground that the government used to own and manage. From there I guess it went to a local indigenous tribe. Now I guess the little town of Burwash Landing takes care of it. There are no fees charged and you're asked to take out whatever you take in and keep care of the place.

We drove in and looked around. We were the only ones there! We chose a campsite that was more shaded by the trees and protected from the wind. The few sites that were closer to the water were the north end of Kluane Lake and it was quite windy.

This was just perfect for us. It had been a long day of rugged driving. We wanted a nice quiet spot to pull in and relax.

Steve set up the grill on the table so we could cook out for the evening. He and Nick explored the campsite while I got the things ready for our dinner.

Being out in the wilderness, it means we need to be constantly "bear aware" and have a can of spare spray and a canned compressed marine horn at hand.

(Especially if we're cooking good smelling food!)

The only wildlife we saw were some big snowshoe rabbits with their fuzzy white feet and a sassy little red squirrel that kept hollering at us.

We were tired and went to bed early.

Here's the link to the corresponding video on YouTube about this day: 

135 miles today

 3,185 miles so far