so why am I standing in a campsite talking about where we're going leaving the cabin
and heading south well we had technical issues and we lost all of our video
so I'm going to give you a quick recap first on labor day Monday we left the cabin and had
started heading south but of course we needed to get tested for covid before we hit the border so
we stayed in Palmer overnight at a small campground and from there we went to Tok
for our reserved Covid testing at three o'clock but it turns out that the Tok testing site
which was just temporary didn't care about reservations it was first come first serve
so when we showed up around two o'clock we got in line with everybody else and we
eventually got tested at four o'clock but we had our results in a half hour and were able to
hit the road towards the border and from there we found a really cool campsite which is up next
good morning good morning and a good morning is a morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and a
sweetie in the other and it's a banner morning when that said sweetie makes that said coffee
for you I forgot that small little tidbit well I'm Angie I'm Ronda and we are Adventures in NoMadness
with coffee and sweetie hey we are 11 miles from the canadian border
uh it's about eight o'clock in the morning and we're heading that way uh if you're new to our
channel we are full time in our 21 foot escape travel trailer and we have a an off-grid cabin
up in Talkeetna Alaska and we came up last summer just to spend the summer and work on the cabin
with the pandemic we ended up staying through another winter my 13th your first it was awesome
but uh yeah I don't really want to spend a whole another winter here so we are taking advantage of
the relaxed canadian entry uh requirements and heading into the Yukon in a few minutes here
and going south for the winter where it's a lot warmer traveling and not all about the destination
is also about where you are at the moment and this is a perfect example take a look at the spot we
spent last night yeah so this is at the seton recreation area we found it on the Ioverlander
app which is a great app for finding overnight parking and boondocking this is in the Tetland
National Wildlife Refuge so really good spot this is a beaver pond right behind us there's trails
all over so if you're driving for the day and want a great place to stop overnight and then get out
and stretch your legs on some trails this is a great great spot now the nice thing about Alaska
is that you can you can use any of the pullouts as long as it doesn't say no camping or no overnight
parking this one didn't so we took full advantage we were the only ones here ready to hit the border
yep and enjoy some more fall colors oh that's gorgeous out here we're so lucky with this weather
oh well this place has a great clean pit toilet and a place to dump your garbage
but please don't pull in here and throw your garbage everywhere or offload a lot of garbage and
make it difficult for everybody else let's try to keep it the same way as it is right now clean and
perfect for the next camper that comes by looking for a great overnight spot oh my god coffee
let's go let's go let's go hit the border bye Alaska we're so sad
we'll miss Alaska for sure but we'll be back next year yeah
wait what how come we're in front of s Welcome to Alaska sign and we're leaving Alaska
there's a sort of this weird area between uh when you enter Alaska the border is that way
and then when you enter Canada the entrance is that way so there's this kind of in-between area
and the welcome to Alaska sign is there and the welcome to the Yukon sign is right there
we made it to the border we're at Beaver Creek and the Canadian checkpoint is right here
uh so far we've been here for about 30 minutes over five vehicles in front of us and it's taken
about I guess about 15-20 minutes per vehicle so we'll probably be here for at least another 45
minutes or so before we're through the border but what does it take to get to the border these days
first of all there's something called the Arrive Can app that Canada wants you to have we've got
it loaded on our phone it makes the whole process a lot more streamlined and then of course we have
our passports and inside our passports I have paper clipped our vaccine cards and this is all
information that they want you to input into the arrive can app and then of course we have our two
negative Covid tests we'll have that because they want to see those as well although they do ask you
to put that information into there as well as far as your passports and your vaccine card
you actually take photos of those and those get uploaded to the app itself we have our
vehicle registration sometimes they have asked for sometimes not I mean I've actually never been
asked for dog paperwork but so one time you don't have it it's the one time they will ask for it so
we have the shot records right here along with the rabies vaccinations and health certificate
and then we have our trailer insurance and our vehicle insurance and
registration which is up there still and that's everything we need so the arrive can app is
kind of the the newest latest addition to making the border crossing more streamlined
especially with Covid they were trying to gather all the information in one spot so yeah we'll keep
waiting we're gonna try and get to our friends tonight south of Whitehorse but you know with the
time change it's 11 o'clock already in the morning we won't get out of here until probably close to
noon and then you know beaver creek's right there might be a coffee stop along the way the weather's
gorgeous I know us we'll be stopping a lot to take photos uh so we're gonna camp somewhere
tonight and we'll hook up with our friend Shaun tomorrow what's this this is the Mile Post
it's the best resource you can possibly have one if you don't have connectivity it still works
it has lots of information about the different locations every single mile and what you're
going to see and what possible gas stations and whatever else is there
and if the road conditions are particularly bad in that particular mile it'll let you know but
I don't really trust that kind of stuff I just assume the road conditions are going to be bad
all right so how long did it take us at the border it took us
almost an hour of waiting for all the vehicles in front of us which were a total of five
and then the person in front of us took a little bit of time and they got pulled over because
he was carrying firearms and not sure if he had them pre-registered from what we could overhear
uh them at the uh the window and uh it took us from the time we got to the window and they were
dealing with them still so we had to wait a couple of minutes uh from the time we got to the window
until the time we were waved through four minutes that's all it took because we had our act together
and we had everything to show them right there plus the app all filled out so yeah
for almost an hour of waiting and four minutes to get through kind of awesome