NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAY 24 - BURWASH LANDING, CONTRABAND AT THE ALASKA BORDER & TOK

When you hear rain all night long on the roof of your motorhome, it's very pleasant. But then when the rain sound  goes all soft, and then muffled, and then silent, you know something has happened outside...

Yup. 

*S*N*O*W*

We pulled open the blinds to see our little surprise scattered all through the woods around us. Yep, it snowed.  It was going to get up in the '60s later, so we knew it would melt fast. But it was quite a surprise because it definitely was not in the forecast for Burwash Landing.

We were cozy warm inside. Besides the thick blackout window shades, we also put in pieces of reflectix insulation in each window cut to size. It really helps with the heat loss with these single pane windows on our motorhome. Our last motorhome had dual panes and we never had to worry about it.  We added the insulated windshield wrap on the outside and we also clipped my extra quilt on the inside to block off the air flow to the front cab area. 

Nick didn't care at all. He hopped up on our bed in the morning to share coffee and cinnamon swirl coffee cake with us. 

After we were done making breakfast, and doing a few things to get ready to go on the road, we looked out and the snow had already melted. We had time to get in one nice walk around before it was time to go.

Kluane Lake... It is a huge long lake that we are camped up on the north end of. Last night the winds were pretty strong so we didn't really get out and walk around. But now it was time to take a little loop through the park and see all the beautiful sites that were along the lakeshore.

I bet this is a really nice place to be in the summertime. Cool breezes coming off the lake and a beautiful campground to stay at.

We can see why it's Burwash Landing's best kept secret. It doesn't even appear on any maps!

We hit the road again. This was the most pothole'd

 filled in

 patched up 

dips and humps

hunk of road that we have hit so far. It was 10 times worse than what we drove on yesterday. We were bouncing so much I couldn't even get a clear focus with the camera through the windshield!!

You can see the level of reconstruction that goes on and how much it deteriorates every year. This is when people talk about how bad the Alcan Highway is...

At this point, we are still traveling through the Yukon. You might wonder why we are traveling through the Yukon when we had already been to Alaska at Skagway and Haines? 

Well, if you look at the map below you will see that that lower portion of Alaska is along the shore of Canada. To get to the rest of Alaska in the North, there are no roads. You need to cross back through a small portion of British Columbia and then the Yukon to reach the rest of mainland Alaska.

Just before we got to the border into Alaska, we had to put on our special t-shirts from the kids.

And sure enough, we made it to the border and the typical touristy thing to pose in front of the sign. 

WE MADE IT TO ALASKA!!!!

We walked around and mingled with a few of the other tourists there. We took turns helping each other take photos. Then we read the storyboards over by the international divide post. 

Here is Nick, halfway in Canada and halfway in Alaska. Canada got his butt and the United States got his front paws 

Even though we crossed the border, we had to drive ahead about 1 mile to the actual customs building into the United States. This is where things got a little crazy...

THEY CONFISCATED 

OUR 

RICE!!!!

Yes, they did.

As we pulled up to the border crossing, the first agent said they were having a little delay. They were doing a training session. He was very friendly and nice and took care of our passports. Then he sent us ahead to a parking spot where we would be boarded by another agent to do a check of our items on board...

This is the first time this has ever happened to us. But I guess it wasn't aimed at us specifically, it was part of a training exercise. 

A young man came on board. He seemed very, very nervous. He went straight to our refrigerator. He looked around and checked for things like eggs or fresh produce. We didn't have any of that. We know better. 

Then he did a surprising thing. He opened our pantry! He pulled in and out the sliding shelves and picked up a container of rice. It's the same containers I have for flour and sugar etc. I took them all from home. 

The rice was not labeled of course, because it was in a container. He asked what kind it was. I told him it was Jasmine rice. He said it's hard to tell. There is a ban on Basmati rice from India. Because I did not have the original package, he said he had to confiscate it!!!

I said it was just fine with us. It was a small amount of rice, we really didn't care. We had the boil in bag version of rice along as well. But that was in the package and that was fine because it was US processed. 

He said any of the rice coming from India of the basmati type is forbidden. So he carefully dumped the rice out of the canister and put it in a large plastic bag to take out of our motorhome. 

That was it. 

No searching for guns or drugs or anything else. They just had to take our rice----

OUR CONTRABAND 

SEIZED AT THE BORDER

We laughed afterwards, well on our way, as we continued on the Alaska Highway towards Tok. We know he was supposed to go in and find something, anything, as part of his training exercise. So if that's all we were going to lose, that's okay.

The road was only nice for the first few miles into the United States. After that it turned into the same miserable pot ridden frost heaved nightmare that was before reaching the border.

The scenery was pretty, and it just gave us all the more time to enjoy it.

We saw another post from the same young couples on Wild RV Life and Open Roading where they had stayed at this campground in Tok. So we decided to try it out.

More on this campground in the next blog. It was really interesting and kind of quirky.

We pulled into a nice site, paid our fee, and settled in for the night. 

The video on YouTube that goes along with this blog post: 

 We traveled 135 ROUGH miles today

 3,185 miles so far