Crossing the Yukon

The Yukon River Crossing

The Yukon River Crossing was impressive.  The river is so wide here, and we remembered having seen the beginning of it at Marsh Lake some 1500 miles upstream.  This is the only place on the entire Yukon that the road crosses it. 

Seeing how big it is, now it seems real that huge steamboats and barges plied this river in the beginning of Gold rush days.

  We stopped to get gas and John spoke with a man who was an instructor at Embry Riddle (Airplane pilot school) branch in Fairbanks.  He had driven to Coldfoot and back in one day!

The bridge is impressive, and a wooden structure at the top.  I guess that makes the most sense in the cold weather.  The pipeline runs right beside it.  It was apparently also an engineering feat.  Note that the picture from the truck was taken from the driver’s side!

We almost didn’t get diesel here, but John realized that we would just barely make it back to Fairbanks, perhaps on fumes” if he didn’t top off here.  We drove to the place advertised as having diesel – the Hot Spot Café, five miles up the road.

Boy, was than an experience.  There were three guys in the front of what looked like a Sanford and Son operation.  They shaded their eyes to get a better look at us, and never took their eyes off us the entire time we were there.  They were standing n front of a “gift shop”.  I was so incredulous that I started to take some pictures, but thought better of it, so I did get a picture of the “garden” and the sunning area – I guess you could get a tan here, but it doesn’t seem real.

They had discontinued having diesel, so we had to drive back to the Yukon crossiing.