June 9 – To Fairbanks, Alaska

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Not much to report today. We did the somewhat boring 200 mile move to Fairbanks. The drive couldn’t have been much different today. In previous days it has been up and down with lots of curves and potholes and having to concentrate all the time. Today it was huge long straight stretches and cruise control most of the way.

First we drove towards a wall of mountains.

Then we went along beside then for quite some time. Most of the time we could not see the mountains because of the trees lining the roadside.

The highway before the half way point town of Delta Junction, and the end of the Alaska Highway, was one 60 km long straight stretch. It is hard to concentrate but you have to keep watch for animals, although we have not seen any for quite some time.

The guide books said to stop at this family owned meat company for some free samples. I guess it is still early in the season because there were no samples out. We bought some smoked salmon strings and some reindeer sausage chunks. Later we discovered that the salmon had been made by a company in Fairbanks. We somehow felt a little deceived. They were very good however.

 

Some the rivers we crossed over had these huge long bridges over a trickle of water. I guess they get very wide but not very deep when they are really flowing.

Here is our first sighting of the Alaska Pipeline that starts in Valdez and goes to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. It gets its own suspension bridge.

Near Fairbanks is the little town of North Pole. You can guess what it is dedicated to. Even the local welding company got into the spirit. We didn’t stop.

Just before Fairbanks is the huge Eielson Air Force base, with the runway right beside the highway. There were signs saying “No Photography” so we were good but it seemed kind of silly. We saw some lines of A10 Warthogs, what looked like F18s and a string of KC135 tankers.

We are now in a somewhat expensive, for us, campground in Fairbanks. We will probably move once we scope things out a bit. We hit the visitor’s center for info, Walmart for supplies and called it a night.