June 12, 2011 Day 9 Destruction Bay Yukon to Fairbanks Alaska

More rain this morning so we load up and hit the road in our rain gear. The restaurant and gas station are not opened yet. The road that had been getting a little worse for the wear is getting a lot worse for the wear. There are lots of pot holes, and I suspect from the frost heaves we have a lot of dips and bumps, I can feel my suspension bottom out every once in a while. And we have lots of areas of gravel. Not having had breakfast or fueled the bikes we stop in Beaver Creek at Buckshot Bettie's for fuel and food. We are about 20 miles from US customs and the roads is still rotten. One place where the road was gravel there was an area with a bit more of the loose gravel and when John hits that his bike started to fish tail, and as I watch each cycle of the fish tailing gets a little more away from center. I figured one more and the bike would hi side and John would go for a tumble. The last one went out far enough to get some solid ground and the bike went straight. Talking to John about it at breakfast told him it really looked like he was going to get bucked off. He said I should have seen it from where he was sitting,"There was nothing I could do, I was just along for the ride." We breezed through US Customs and the agent promised us better roads, he was correct. The rains had pretty much stopped, it had never been very hard, but a slow down none the less.We had decided to ride on to Fairbanks and then come back down south to Anchorage and Homer later in the week. Our first stop is Tok and we get fuel and try and get our internet to work, no luck. John had in times pass had trouble finding a room in Fairbanks so he said let's stop at the visitor's center here in Tok and see what they can tell us. We leave there 15 minuets later with room reservations in Fairbanks. Our critter count started with a Coyote a little after leaving Destruction Bay, then right after US customs, with in 5 miles we saw another black bear. The road sides are back to being much greener now and there are lots of trees.  44 miles out of Tok there is another moose down along the edge of the road in a muddy pond getting his lunch. That is the only critter that I have seen and John missed. He normally sees them first. Ridding into Fairbanks we have about 80 miles of wet roads and only about 10 miles of rain. We rode 445 today, with that first 140 being so rough that is a good days work.