Alaska Highway Tok

Milepost 1314.2

June 17 Sunday We began the last leg of our trip on the Alaskan Highway. Left Tok about 10am. Stopped at the Delta Meat & Sausage Co and did a tasting of reindeer & buffalo sausage and their special mustard-- YUM! Had to make some purchases!

End of the Alaskan Highway at Delta Junction

We reached the end of the Alaskan Highway at Delta Junction, milepost 1422. We posed for a picture of this landmark since we had a picture of us at the beginning of the highway in Dawson Creek 1422 miles earlier. Funny, it was raining at the beginning of the highway and again at the end. We are now traveling on the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks, our next stop.

North Pole Visitor Center- notice the roof!

Ar home, we had previously watched  an episode of Diners, Dives & Drive-Ins on Foodnetwork. For those who don't know this show, Guy Fieri, a chef, travels around the country looking for favorite eateries of the locals. This particular show highlighted restaurants in the North Pole/Fairbanks area. One that caught our eye (and stomachs) was the Pagoda Chinese Restaurant in North Pole. The show-cased dishes were walnut shrimp and king crab legs prepared in a wok. We just had to search this out as we were driving right through North Pole on our way to Fairbanks and I thought it would be the perfect place to celebrate Father's Day for Gary. We decided to first stop at the North Pole visitor's center to ask directions. 

Dinner at Pagoda

 We saw the typical “?” sign which indicates 

information so we were looking for a big, modern building such as have housed other visitor centers

 on our trip. We almost missed the little brown cabin with grass and dandelions growing on the roof! However, it did give us directions to the Pagoda!  The food was delicious and plentiful, although we found out that the king crab is a specialty dish they only prepare during the Christmas season. We did have the walnut shrimp as an appetizer-simply scrumptious- and found other entrees that very good.  All in all a great stop.

 

Alaskan Pipeline Viewpoint

Muskox

We got to Fairbanks about 3:30pm .It was 81 degrees and sunny. Our campground, Rivers Edge, is situated on the banks of the Chena River which was the birthplace of Fairbanks. We did a couple of touristy things that evening; stopped at the Visitor and Cultural Center and toured their exhibit and got some info about Fairbanks and Denali. Also went to the Alaska pipeline viewpoint and took a drive to the Large Animal Research Station (15 minutes from downtown Fairbanks) where you can view wildlife. Supposedly you can view Muskox, Caribou, and Reindeer which are enclosed in a huge fenced area. However, we only saw two Muskox, and only one near the fence.He didn't seem really impressed that we

 came by to see him!