We left Fairbanks and the North Pole with some good memories. Our visits with Santa, tour of the gold dredging mine, the many restaurants, the paddle wheel boat ride, the various museums, University tours/museum and the civic events in which we participated.

Yesterday we fired up our coaches, that have been sitting for three weeks, and headed to Delta Junction, AK, a trip of 98 miles. Delta Junction is the end point of the Alaskan Highway that was built back during World War II. We started out at mile marker zero in Dawson Creek, BC, Canada on May 31, 2014 and, through our many roads traveled in Alaska, have arrived at the end point of the Alaskan highway, 1422 miles from Dawson Creek.

Start in Dawson Creek, BC, Canada 

Highway construction ended in Delta Junction

Mosquitos are a big nuisance in Alaska and are pictured in many different art forms. We were fortunate to have escaped them until recently, but they have found us.  These two metal sculptures of mosquitos were in front of the visitor center in Delta Junction.

Ray and Tam with a mosquito

Jack and Betty with mosquitoes 

One of the heavily advertised businesses in Delta Junction is The Delta Meat Packing and Sausage Company. They specialize in and raise their own wild meats such as Reindeer, Yak, Bison, and Elk.  We picked up several packages of sausages made from the various meats and look forward to some good grilling.

Today we drove another 120 miles south to Tok, Alaska, on our slow descent to the lower 48. Tok is the gateway in and out of Alaska by road. There is no other way to drive into Alaska without going through here. We entered Alaska via Tok on June 6th and will probably leave next week, once Rich catches up with us. This means we will have spent a little over two months this summer in our enormous and beautiful 49th state. We hope to leave Tok and Alaska by a route that will take us through the tiny city of Chicken, over the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City, Yukon, Canada.  Our original thought was not to take this road but we are convincing ourselves we need to have this experience to round out our complete Alaska Odyssey.  Dawson City played a major role in the Yukon gold rush and should hold many historical sites.  We are looking forward to our visit there soon.