Day 12 - Valdez, AK to Delta Junction, AK

Happy Birthday Don! Today is Don's 50th birthday.

Today is the first part of the trip that we backtrack over a previous day's road. We leave Valdez going back on the road we can in on. Since it was the best day of the trip so far for scenery this is NOT a problem. It is a joy to get to go back through Keystone Canyon and see the falls again. We're going through in the morning this time and the shadows in the canyon make it very cool. Then back over the pass.

Riding up to Delta Junction today we need to take the Richardson Highway. This is one of Alaska's first highways. The pipeline also follows this route from the oil fields down to Valdez. We were able to see the pipeline in several places today. The most intersting section is where the pipeline goes underground. To prevent the pipeline from melting the permafrost there are special radiators sunk into the ground with radiator fins above ground. It pulls the heat from below ground and releases it above ground. Kind of hard to imagine but a picture below will help.

We saw three moose today. All for brief periods at pretty long distances. The moose are skittish and run for trees and cover quickly. It is easy to see why wildlife photographers spend hours and days trying to get pictures. You have to be in just the right place with your camera ready for the instant the animal appears. Very difficult.

The weather has still been very good to us. Each place we go we hear of rain the day before or rain nearby but we've missed it. It seems that we were going to run into it today but didn't. Just after Paxson it started getting very cool and the road was wet. Seems like it rained here just a short while ago. Walt and I put our rain gear on in case it starts to rain on us. Just like washing a car seems to cause the rain to come, putting on rain gear seems to bring the sun out. I enjoyed putting on the rain gear though. It was getting pretty cool, probably the coolest day so far during this stretch. So, I got bundled up with yet another layer. I was warm and dry. (I'd better be! I had a shirt, a windbreaker, a leather jacket, and a rain jacket on!)

We got into Delta Junction and the motel manager recommended the Buffalo Center Diner as a place to eat. We all had buffalo burgers for our dinner tonight. The waitress was helpful and told us that the last remaning herd of about 800 wild buffalo is in this area. About 800 strong. I'm pretty sure we were eating buffalo that had been raised on a ranch.

Back at the motel we cleaned the bikes a little and watched some TV and reading. No internet but satellite TV allowed a good selection of things to watch. Walt spent some extra time on a couple key sections of his bike seeing of the dirt was going to come off. Good news! With some time and water Walt found a layer of chrome under the dirt! I learned how to do a little chain adjustment in the field. I pulled out my bike's toolkit and with Don's supervision was able to tighten up my chain just a little.

We have cell phone coverage here but think that the next two days, which will be spent at Healy (just outside Denali), will be an "electron-free zone" (no cell phones, no internet). We're approaching the farthest point away from home in out trip. Today Walt's odometer shows we've ridden 3,154 miles so far. The GPS calculates the shortest route home to be 3,078 miles.