The End of the Highway

Day 48, Tuesday, July 30

We departed for Fairbanks this morning, and on the way stopped at Delta Junction, the end of the Alaska Highway.  This is the milepost marker for mile 1,422, the end of the Highway.  If you remember, we also got our picture taken at mile 0—that means we have travelled the Alaska Highway from start to finish, with the Top of the World in between!  We even got a signed certificate that certifies that “Jim and Connie Lund have braved potholes, rocks, gravel, grit and mud, successfully driving the Alaska Highway from Mile 0 at Dawson Creek, BC to Mile 1422 at Delta Junction, Alaska!”  Very cool! 

Also at the milepost marker were larger than life mosquitos--we’ve seen plenty of those too!  The Alaska Highway merges into the Richardson Highway, which we followed to reach Fairbanks.

We took off early this morning, and on the way saw a mama moose and her young calf. The mother was taking good care of the baby, just grazing alongside the road.  

It made me think of my own kids who sent me a picture from the Brickyard on Sunday.  Check out the Brickyard hat from 1994 with Jeff Gordon’s signature on it!    Almost as good as being there!  Love to you kids from your mama moose!

 

 

Also on the way to Fairbanks, we saw a spectacular view of the Alaska pipeline, suspended 1200 feet across the Tanana River between two towers.  The Alaska pipeline is 800 miles in length, and this is the second longest of the 13 major bridges along the pipeline.  To give you a perspective on size, the pipe is 48” in diameter!  WOW!

 

 

We reached Fairbanks, and feel like we are in civilization again!   There are 4 bars on our phone (hooray!).  And internet works (yippeee!!)  There are traffic lights, and more than one street, and a mall and a Walmart and a Sam’s Club!   It’s been quite awhile since we’ve been in a city this size.  But, it’s all relative…the population of Fairbanks is only about 30,000. Here are some tidbits about Alaska to ponder….Alaska is the biggest state in the Union—2.3 times larger than Texas!  (There was a great t-shirt in one of the shops that said “Size Matters”, and had a state diagram of Alaska with Texas shown in the middle—we got a chuckle out of that!)    But the entire population of Alaska is only 700,000—that’s less than the population of the city of Indianapolis!  There is a huge amount of land, and very few people occupying the land…It is truly a land of wilderness.

We are getting ready to leave for a salmon bake tonight, and a show at the Palace Theatre.  Tomorrow we will have time to explore more of the city…can’t wait!

I wanted to share a picture of the rainbow that appeared last night about 9:45 pm over the campground after a short rain shower. The pictures don’t really do it justice… This was the most brilliant and largest rainbow I have ever seen!  It was a full arch, and so big, we couldn’t even get the full arc in the picture.  At one side was a double rainbow.  It was simply beautiful.  I already had my pj’s on, but Jim called me outside to see it, and I’m glad he did.  (This also gives an idea on how light it is at 9:45 in the evening—notice the clouds above the trees in the second picture..it’s still complete daylight!)