September 1, Dawson City, YT to Delta Junction, Alaska -         300 Miles

We're In ALASKA!!

Delta Junction is at the northern end of the "Alaska Highway", Dawson Creek to Delta Junction - 1422 Miles.

For a little trivia, this highway was started in 1942, finished in 1943, and originally named the "Alaska - Canada Military Road", and the acronym was ALCAN.  Some Canadians didn't like this name, for whatever reasons, and in 1945 it was named "The Alaska Highway".  But the name ALCAN dies hard - it was only named ALCAN for two years, and now for 60 years that name still sticks in people's mind.  Honest, the correct name is "The Alaska Highway".

Getting up this morning, Norm found another tire that had gone flat - this one on the trailer.  So we had to unpack a spare tire and fix that.

Then we headed over the "Top of the World Highway", from Dawson City to the U.S. border of Alaska.  A fun little ferry took us across the huge Yukon River, and away we went.  But Norm and I were VERY disappointed in this "highway", in that it was in terrible shape in comparison with when we rode it four years ago.  At that time it was a paved road in reasonably good shape, many potholes but drivable, a few maintenance patches of gravel, and the scenery was stunning from atop many high mountain ridges.

This time it was a bad gravel road with a few short stretches of pavement!!  It seemed that no maintenance had been done in the last four years other than to dump some more gravel at intervals.  And unhappily the smoke from so many forest fires made visibility very poor.

Of course we had to stop at the metropolis of "Chicken" for lunch.  And to get on down to the Alaska Highway we had to ride a relatively nasty gravel road on the Alaska side of the border.  In all, we rode our Gold Wings a total of about 110 miles on gravel.

For the Wildlife Report, we had a great day in that we saw several Moose.  The first ones were a "Mama Moose" and two little "Moosies".  The little ones were probably yearlings, being too big to be this year's babies.  Then we also caught just a glimpse of a bull Moose and two or three other moose with him.

Now the wildlife union seems to be out to get Deane on his motorcycle.  He has been almost run over by a galloping moose in Alaska, chased by a big bull Buffalo in Northwest Territories, had a deer jump right in front of his motorcycle in Idaho, was chased by a Coyote in Mexico, and today hit by a Kamikaze bird.  I was riding down the highway, and all of a sudden saw a glimpse of a Grouse-sized bird headed for the motorcycle not far above the pavement.  He hit me hard in the ankle, but unfortunately he got the worst of it, and became a flying puff of feathers.  (The ankle didn't get hurt badly.)

All in all still a fun day.

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