On North to Fairbanks

July 3 - 7   Days 25 - 29

As we continued north we were never out of sight of mountain ranges; Kluane, St. Elias, Wrangel, and Alaskan.  We never tired of seeing them.  While they all seemed the same to us, there were some subtle differences.  For example, the St. Elias range, shown below had sharper "edges" to the mountains, but the Alaskan had more snow.

I mentioned in my last posting that we would likely spend the 4th of July in Tok.  Yes, even I questioned what we would do for a day in a town with a population of <1,000.  But as it turned out, we rode our bikes for ~10-12 miles after we attended the big event; the 4th of July parade.  I think the whole village attended or participated in the parade.  I did notice that one entry in particular was totally different from parades I've seen elsewhere:

That's right, sled dogs pulling the float to advertise mushing excursions.  Our next milestone is Delta Juntion where the Alaska Highway officially comes to an end but another highway picks up seamlessly.

The further north we get the bigger and more aggressive the mosquitoes get.

I told Bonnie the fly swatter would not work on these guys,

we would have to use something more substantial

We are now in Fairbanks, the furthest point north we will go.  It is really interesting to witness the amount of daylight.  Below are pictures taken every hour from 1:00am to 4:00am.

1:00am

 

 

2:am

 

 

3:00am

4:00am

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data):

1. I've noticed the further the villages are apart, the container size for the food articles increase.  In one of the remote village in which we shopped, they had 20 pound containers of margarine, ramin noodles in a 48 pack, eggs in 5 dozen containers, sugar and flour in 50 pound sacks, and rice in 50 pound bags.  This was not a Sam's Club or Costco, it was a village grocery!
2. We noticed here in Fairbanks, there were city blocks that were reserved for 'snow storage' because they get so much snow, they cannot simply plow it off to the side, they have to haul it to a location for storage until it melts.