Friday, July 6, 2012

#7 Alaska Trip - Whitehorse, YT to Tok, AK

7/4/12
Miles: 395
Starting to catch a whiff of the home stables and thinking of the USA on this Independence Day.  Nice to be able to celebrate both Canada Day and the 4th in their respective countries.  The road on this leg is definitely the worst of the trip with large potholes and gravel portions for 10 mile swaths.  This was also the area where the road washed out in 2 spots from 50 year flooding and closed it for 2 days last month.  The contractors brought in a temporary bridge while they rebuilt the road next to it.  Food was flown into the 3 cities' grocery stores cut-off by the flooding by an National Air Guard C-130 airlift.  Just before 1 spot of road construction, we came across a beautiful, big grizzly bear right out of central casting.  He was about 50 ft. off the road (pictured below).  He gave us a few poses before backing into the bushes.  Construction workers and bicyclists really need to keep their heads on a 360 degree swivel for an attack that could realistically happen at any time.
We got to the US / Canada border and stopped at a road side area to get pictures of the actual border and memorial before heading to the checkpoint (because there are no pictures allowed) which was very secure with multiple cameras and electronic measures in each lane.  They stop you 100 ft from the booth and look at you with binoculars and then wave you forward for passport checks and interview.  As we sat there, there were some explosions that turned out to be other border agents celebrating our arrival back to the US with fireworks.  Nice touch.

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