Day 8 - Whitehorse, Yukon, to Fairbanks, Alaska

Left Whitehorse pretty early (6:30 a.m.) with 40 degree weather. Rode for about 45 minutes and saw mountains in the distance. Kept riding for about another 45 minutes and was it ever worth it. We ate breakfast at the bottom of the Canadian Rockies. It was awesome. Can't believe that people actually wake up to that everyday. As we traveled farther, the weather warmed up to about 70 degrees (you guys that were praying for warmer weather for me did a GREAT job!!).

Today we actually hit the type of roads that we had been hearing about. We had several times where we had to ride on gravel roads for about 8 miles through construction areas. Then we hit the permafrost areas. WOW, this is hard to explain if you haven't been there. They are definitely worse than PA potholes. It's almost like a roller coaster ride because there are gullies where the road drops down because the frost has melted underneath it. The roller coaster dips weren't as bad as the gullies that ran up the road ahead of us. Thank heavens the road crew had them pretty well filled in, rough, but not as bad as they could have been. For those of you who knew my butt was worried, it honestly hasn't screamed yet. It's really your back and neck that take a jolt as you dip and bump along.

BUT, the views in the Yukon were worth it. We saw a black and brown bear, an elk and numerous moose. We even saw a mama moose and her baby drinking in a small oasis. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures right now because we had to drive to an Internet Pub to get this blog post in (forgot to bring the camera). We had to have a glass of their Alaskan Wheat beer (what a sacrifice). We're sitting outside at 10:24 p.m. and it's light as if it were the middle of the day. We're not sure what time it's going to set tonight but we're pretty sure it's up by 4:30 a.m. (we won't be though).

Tomorrow we're going to Denali National Park. Denali was created in 1917 and has grown to over 6 million acres. Hopefully we'll have more to tell you about that tomorrow night. But we might have to sacrifice again and go to the Internet Pub to update you (since our hotel doesn't have Internet or AT&T cell service).