Day 22 - Anderson, AK to Tok, AK

Today was our last full day of touring in Alaska, and if we can believe what we’ve heard from many of the locals, we have been extremely lucky to have been able to see Denali – quite clearly – for the past 2 days. As a couple of them have said, “she has her own weather pattern”!

We headed north out of the Fireweed Roadhouse, equipped with muffins courtesy of our host Robin, and made a quick trip into Nenana to see the place that had originally thought of staying at. We

continued on the Parks Highway but just had to get a photo op at Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn – for Jana’s dad, of course!

We thought we might be able to check out the Ester Gold Camp, but it is closed and for sale, actually. So, we just grabbed a coffee at the local truck stop and got the vehicles topped up on fuel too. From there, it wasn’t too far to get to Fairbanks – the northernmost stop along our journey – and a visit to the local Harley/Honda/BMW/Stihl dealership! They have many more BMWs for sale than they do Harleys, but they did have enough clothing/trinkets/poker chips to allow us to spend some $s at the shop.

We didn’t have enough time to really do any touring around in Fairbanks, so off we went to find North Pole! And find it we did – complete with a visit to Santa Claus House and the official North Pole post. By now, we were on the Richardson Hwy and took it past the huge Eielson AFB – with more fighter jets on the ground that all of Canada likely has and then went to check out a neat place called the Knotty Shop – the young fellow at the counter was very intent on selling us some ice cream, and I just couldn’t disagree!

At one of the pullouts, we could look directly across and clearly see Denali in all it’s glory, but also very clear to eye were the Mount

Hayes, Deborah Mountain and Hess Mountain combination, which we would get a closer look at later on in the day. Eventually, we made it to Delta Junction and the end of the Alaska Highway (MP 1422). By the end of tomorrow, we will have done it from start (MP0 at Dawson Creek, BC) to end (MP1422 at Delta Junction, AK).

The drive the rest of the way into Tok was basically uneventful … except for the moose cow that decided to stroll out right out in front of us on the highway! We must be creatures of habit, because we wound up staying at the same place that we stayed at on our way north – the Yukon Motel – and ate dinner at the same spot as well – next door at Fast Eddy’s .

For the day, we logged a total of 450 kms for a total to date on the trip of 10,750 km