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Day 17
Woke up late and ate a breakfast/lunch at the restaurant that was pretty much apart of the motel. Nice warm filling food with some really good water (weird thing to say but we've had some pretty nasty water on this trip apparently sulfur gets in it often). Said goodbye to the beautiful view after I got another sticker to go on my laptop and headed out to Tok, Alaska. We had a short drive planned for the day so we could enjoy this apparently wicked awesome campground that we were going to stay at. The views have been amazing as usual. Anyway to more exciting news, we were driving down one of the gravel parts that would soon be resurfaced when a rock bounced off the u-haul at the necessary trajectory to completely blow out the entire rear window to the bed cover. Safety glass went everywhere and the poor freaked out dogs got as close as they could to the cab. Apparently this had been happening a lot though because the next time we drove over a gravel section rocks flew into the bed. I think it was then that Bryan decided we weren't stopping at Tok. The border was really awesome because there is just one main road going into Alaska so they were able to make a big deal of it. The customs offices are about 15 km into their respective countries so you could get out and enjoy the border. There was a big welcome to Alaska sign and a bench that was divided in half situated right on the border. One side said "Alaska" the other "Yukon" just one of those novelty things meant for pictures like the line on the wall in Greenwich. The coolest thing though, and this was really quite an impressive sight, along the entire border to the horizon was a 15 foot cleared area out of the dense forest. Usually I would hate to see the trees clear but it was really impressive seeing a visual representation of the border that wiggled its way to the horizon on either side of the road. A sign at the border taught us about the "roller coaster" roads, apparently the roads are constructed on deep bed of gravel and some type of styrofoam so when it expands with ice and stuff it just bends and doesn't break, but it still results in rough riding actually quite ironically we just passed a sign that said "Rough Road Next 112 miles." It is nice to be back in familiar units even if it's pretty stupid that we haven't conformed to metric yet. At a Napa we cleaned out all the glass and rocks. There was quite a lot of glass, thankfully it was safety glass so you could grab it. In Tok we stopped at a gas station where the highlight of my day occurred. At the Napa a sweet old Bentley two-tone chauffeur car passed, then when we got to the gas station there were two more at the pumps and then an open top old old Bentley chauffeur car (where a soft top could come up to cover the rear occupants only) and a 20's Bentley open top race car at the car wash off to the side of the gas station. Unfortunately, diesel was on the other side of the station, but I being the carelessly charismatic person I am decided to figure out what was up. Whipped my camera out and walked to the pumps but the two were gone so I made my way over to the car wash kinda thing and ended up having a very interesting conversation with an Australian couple. Apparently it was a global Bentley club and they were on a tour from Vancouver to Anchorage and they were all bundled up in their immaculately restored '27 Bentley (the chauffeur car I mentioned previously). I mentioned that this was my dream to do something like that and the man said that it is his too and apparently they travel all over the world doing things like that. He told me it just takes a lot of hard work to get to your dream but it is possible. When I asked them how they ship it around they said a container and when I said that must be pretty pricey the man said slightly sarcastically "Money doesn't matter," I laughed. But we kept talking for a bit and they were very nice people on a very interesting journey. Anyway it was at the gas station that it was made clear that we are actually driving to Anchorage tonight and staying at their new house!Back at the car we made the short drive (about 10 feet) to the Grumpy Grizz Cafe where I had quite a nice and interesting dinner. We talked to these two French Canadians in their mid 20's who are riding there bike from Anchorage to… get ready kids… Montreal, also known as that city North of Vermont. They are planning on getting there in November, left June 1, and have taken 13 days to travel the distance we are going tonight. When we get to their house we won't have any internet so it will be a while till anyone reads this unless I stumble across an internet cafe somewhere. Let's see though we have three hours left in the five hours from Tok to Anchorage, I'm really excited about getting to a real city! (I like a good mix of settings). Not much wildlife today except about twenty miles outside of Tok we saw rabbits on all sides of the road for a few miles, kind of random. It's weird to think the driving journey is almost open, but my trip has definitely not reached its end yet!
So here I am 5,109 miles in 17 days. Anchorage, Alaska. It is currently 2:10 and has just become twilight. In fact, you can see the sun starting to think about coming up. Nothing really exciting happened on this last leg of the journey, some narrow windy roads but thats about it. We drove on their largest highway and there were periodically moose crossing signs on the side of a 6 lane divided highway, that made me laugh. Everyone is all cranky and aggravated due to the time, it is kind of funny. The house is really nice and quaint nice older place in what seems to be a good neighborhood. There is one room with hand painted charlie brown scenes like a banner that runs around all the walls (amazing artwork) and part of the drawing is a height measurement chart for the little kids that lived here. There is also a massive outline of alaska in the garage that takes up a whole wall and a dry erase board the family left that has stuff like "I love you daddy" on it, it is all really cute and would be hard to say goodbye to. We are sleeping on air mattresses tonight, movers get here monday. Oh! and I found if I sit in a certain area of the house I get a reasonable Wi-Fi signal! So that fixes my own big problem. It is really nice to be done with the driving part, but the trip isn't done yet so keep checking and I will keep updating!
Breakfast: French Toast part of a cinnamon bun and water
Lunch: Ummm… I had some chips at one point
Dinner: fish and chips (she asked if I wanted cocktail or tarter sauce and looked at me like I was insane when I said malt vinegar and then had to convince her I was serious… but I got it!), coleslaw, and raspberry pie! (it was pretty much straight up puréed raspberries in a pie shell mmmm)
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