8 June 2007 would be our longest day of on the road time. This is the day that worried me the most as far as traveling. 370 miles worth of highway during tourist season and just not knowing the road, where to go or what to really expect. So we got an early start, on the road by 7am and heading north to Fairbanks.

After 2 1/2 hours of driving and seeing the sites we pulled into Fairbanks, wandered through town looking for the local Wal-Mart. I am guessing this is the closest Wal-Mart to the Artic Circle, Even closer than Yellowknife Northwest Territories for you Ice Road Trucker fans out there! Does yellowknife have a Wal-Mart? I’m sure it does, Wal-Mart is everywhere plus the town has it’s own TV show!

Back to the drive. After getting some touristy trinkets we hit the highway for our southbound trip to Glenallen Alaska. The road follows the Trans Alaska Pipeline so you get to see it from time to time going over or under rivers, through mountains, over mountains, under the road and anything else you could imagine. There are places you can stop and view the pipeline but it is forbidden to be close to or on the pipes.

About 15 miles south of Fairbanks is North Pole Alaska. Yeah, the real North Pole. Okay, not Santa Claus North Pole but this North Pole has a zip code, so it is real! This town never takes it’s Christmas decorations down…..never. There is a huge 40′ Santa that welcomes you into town, candy canes and signs saying Merry Christmas decorate the light poles. It’s 24/365 Christmas in this town. We had to put on our Everett Silvertip jerseys and get pictures by the town sign, good times.

We made many stops as we traveled along, one nifty place was at the Tanana river. You got a great view of the pipeline suspended over the water. Quite impressive and amazing. As we kept traveling south there were places to pull out, see the sites which included massive mountain ranges, vast forests, rivers, valleys, moose and of course the pipeline.

We had all kinds of weather, from sunny blue skies to cloudy and cold. As we passed through the mountains we traveled next to a lake that was still iced over, so it had it cold moments. It was beautiful and we made quite good time. We pulled in to the Caribou Hotel in Glenallen at 5:25pm, right about when I had planned to be in Glenallen so it all worked out real good. The hotel was not the greatest but it was home for the night.

To see pictures attched to this leg of the trip, click North to Alaska Day-15 Denali to Glenallen on the left side of the home page.