Tok, Alaska

Bennie, picture by Isabelle Boutin

Tok, what can I say? We didn't get much in the way of pictures on the way because of the rain.

I'm not complaining about the rain because having lived in Alaska for 10 years, I have seen wildfire after wildfire due to dry Spring seasons. Any rain in Alaska right now is good rain.

So instead of a picture of Alaska, I offer a picture of our cat, Bennie. Of our three cats, Bennie is the one that is having the hardest time adjusting to RV living. The travel still stresses him out. He spends most the time we are driving hiding under the passenger seat of the RV or in my wife's lap. The other two cats, Spawt and Bags, have learned to enjoy the ride. Bags mostly sleeps through the trip while Spawt enjoys looking out the window or napping.

Twinkie, our dog, on the other hand has her ups and downs. She loves the drives as long as we make sure to stop every couple of hours to let her stretch her legs. However, whether or not she enjoys our camp site is dependent on how busy the camp site is. She really doesn't like large camp grounds.

Twinkie and Tammie, picture by Isabelle Boutin

Where we stayed in Tok was a large RV park, exactly as one would expect for a rural town that sits at a major Alaska crossroad.

Tok is on route 2 and is a little over a 2 hour drive Northeast from the Canadian border. Its also where traffic from Fairbanks and Anchorage meet. Consequently, Tok sees a lot of travelers, especially in the late Spring and Summer as tourists are traveling into Alaska and Alaskans are traveling down to the lower 48.

We stayed at the Tok RV Village, which was our first experience at a larger RV park. We were packed in pretty close together and there were a lot of RVs pulling in and out throughout the day and early evening. There were a lot of travelers from all over the place converging on this one spot so it was crowded and rather busy.

This is when we learned that Twinkie does not like large, crowded and busy RV sites. Normally, she loves taking walks and exploring the area but every time we tried to take her for a walk, she just wanted to jump back into the RV. Even when we could get her to go on walks, she kept her tail tucked between her legs and kept trying to get us to go back to the RV.

Twinkie made it clear to us that large, RV parks are not the places we need to be staying. We also happen to agree with her.