Tok AK

No one seems to know for sure how Tok (rhymes with "Coke") got its name. Tok was created as a work camp for the construction of the Alaska Highway. One story is that it was once called Tokyo Camp and was later shortened to Tok. However, the USGS notes that the name Tok River was in use for a nearby river as early as 1901, which may have come from the Athabascan name "Tokai" for the same river. You would think that a town that wasn't created until 1942 would know from whence it was named.



If you drive to Alaska you have to drive through Tok. Whether you drive the Alaska Highway, drive the Top of the World Highway or come up the inside passage from Haines (as we did) or Skagway, you gotta drive through Tok. No way around it.



And so we did. On Monday we continued across the southwest corner of the Yukon Territory. We finally arrived at the US border crossing on the Alaska Highway. The crossing itself was uneventful, but there was a long line and a wait of perhaps an hour before we cleared customs. From there we continued to Tok. We had been boon docking for over a week and decided to stay in a full-service campground where we could take on water, dump our waste tanks, re-charge our batteries and do some laundry. We checked into the Sourdough Campground about 2 miles south of town on the Tok Cut-Off/Glenn Highway. The Sourdough is the home of the world-famous Sourdough Pancake Toss. Everyone gets two chances to toss a real sourdough pancake into a bucket about 15 feet away. There are several techniques. Dorcas used the underhand flapjack technique, kinda like tossing a horseshoe. Missed by a mile. I used the wadded up play dough ball technique. Missed by a mile. Others used the Frisbee method, but that usually didn't work too well either. If you got a pancake in the bucket you got a free breakfast of, you guessed it, sourdough pancakes at the campground cafe. I hope they cooked fresh pancakes for breakfast. The event was hosted by a Johnny Cash tribute singer who performed before and after the contest. Oh yeah. You could take an optional third toss, but if you missed you had to sing a Karaoke tune. There were no takers.

Observe Dorcas' classic one-leg-leaning-underhand method

Tok is the closest thing to a big town we had seen in a while. We visited a few gift shops, and I went to the local RV repair and service center, which amounts to a run down service station type building. This guy gets all the RV break downs for those traveling the Alaska Highway and the Top of the World Highway. He told me some horror stories about what folks have done to their rigs coming into Alaska. It was pretty scary. I wanted to replace a broken screen door latch, and he had the part, but it was almost $30. I knew I could get the part for about $12 in the lower 48, so I passed.