Last Day North-Bound on Alaska Highway

D: It rained last night at Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, and was still raining this morning. We conceded our status as "captive customers" (no other restaurants within walking distance) and had a real, but expensive breakfast. Packed the bike, in the rain, suited up and were on our way. The road north goes around the Canadian Customs Building at Beaver Creek, then north for about twenty miles to the U.S. border crossing and Customs Station. Five miles of this distance was a chip gravel road, slow going in the rain, but o.k. Some guy from N.Y. with a big motorhome (and car towed behind) "had to" pass me on the gravel, even though I was going the speed limit of 50km/hr (30 mph).
Customs was a breeze. Get off the bike, take off our helmets, hand them our passports. "No firearms, No packages from someone else, Snack crackers with cheeze in wrapped packages are ok" and we were on our way, after a brief conversation about the forest fires and how the road closing did 't affect us.
During a let up in the rain, we stopped at a paved pull-off and took our first pictures in Alaska. The landscape in this area is low mountains with broad valleys, lots of lakes and bogs, and thousands of pine trees.
We rode through more rain to Tok, where we stopped for premium gas and ate lunch in a restaurant. After lunch, we hooked up our heated jacket liners and turned them on. There was more cold rain, but we were comfortable.
Eventually, we traveled passed the rain. The sun came out and there were lots of "real" mountains, with snow fields up high. There were lots of short "gravel breaks" in the roadway. They were marked ahead, but on a motorcycle you have to slow to 35 mph from 70 mph.
We arrived at the end of the Alaska Highway, at Delta Junction, Alaska, in the early afternoon. Unpacked our tripod and took plenty of photos, looked at the visitor center exhibits, packed up our jacket liners and were on our way to Fairbanks.
We saw lots of very large river drainage systems on our way north to Fairbanks. This is the Richardson Highway, which runs from Valdez to Fairbanks. We saw the oil pipeline river crossing north of Delta Junction, but didn't stop.
By the time we got to the Air Force Base south of Fairbanks, there were very dark, threatening rain clouds just ahead. We went through some sprinkles, but made it to our hotel in Fairbanks without getting drenched.
Today, June 12, 2009, Sunrise was at 3:04 am, Sunset is at 12:38 am (tomorrow).
T: I'm so excited to be here. We saw two moose today but talking to the other tourists here it sounds like people haven't seen a lot of wildlife, especially bears. The wildflowers are almost as spectacular as they are in the Texas Hill Country.