-----Our alarms went off at 6:00. We snoozed it quite a bit, but by a little after 7:00 we went to Fast Eddy's for breakfast. We wanted to get a small sampling of breakfast goodies in anticipation of a late lunch outside of Fairbanks, and we ordered what we thought was going to be a small meal. We entertained the waitresses with our pre-coffee selves and ordered. What we did not know was that the Eddy's philosophy of Alaska-sized dinners would also be applied to their breakfasts. My two blueberry pancakes were as wide as the massive plate it came on, and they were very very good but I couldn't get but half of them down. My mom was practically swimming in biscuits and gravy with a generous helping of hash browns, while my dad was the only to finish his plate because he just loves French toast that much.

-----Being idiots who had no clue of how much we'd get, we ordered reindeer sausages for the table, and only about one and a half got consumed. I'd always wanted to try reindeer, and while I've heard great things about its usage as a hot dog meat, by itself, it differed very little from regular sausage, save for being a bit gamier and perhaps a tad chewier. It wasn't bad at all, but it was the icing on top of a massive, massive meal.

-----After clearing out what we could amidst the requisite coffee refills, we ended up packing and heading out a little after 10:00. We rolled through what was left of Tok that we could not see from our cabin, which is very little—though we did see a large chair as we were heading out. We circled back around to get a picture of it; a large lawn chair is the last thing one expects in a middle-of-nowhere crossroads like Tok.

-----The road out was as straight and flat as anything on the Alaska Highway. Above the trees lay mountains as far as the eye could see, and it appeared as if we were racing right into them. We were thankful to be going the speed limit for once, although the Alaskan drivers often blew past going nearly triple digits, and how we didn't see such folks in trees after going airborne on frost heaves is beyond my rational comprehension.

-----The road once again wound in and out, and the only treacherousness came in the form of facing down an oncoming truck with a wide trailer on a narrow bridge. We took several pullouts to see the distant mountains, which included our first glimpse of the Alaska Range. It was raining off and on, and the peaks wove their way in and out of the passing cloud cover.

-----Of note, we passed over several dry river valleys where either the glacier that fed it had receded too much or the ice from the mountains had not yet melted to cause the runoff. The wind, which came in enormous invisible waves throughout the day, buffeted fine particulates up into great clouds that could be seen for a long distance. (We saw this yesterday as well, between Whitehorse and the border.)

-----It was around two hours on the road before we got to Delta Junction, the end of the road for the Alaska Highway. Before the official end of the highway, however, there was one last stop: Delta Meat & Sausage, a locally owned meat packing company. We saw that they had some free samples of exotic sausages and were very interested, but the friendly Montana-born lady—half of the couple who moved up and started the company—said that we'd beaten the tourist rush and they hadn't gotten any samples out yet. All of their products were refrigerated, so we just talked to her a bit, and she told us that most of their business was for hunters in the Alaskan interior who needed a place to turn their game into manageable food items.

-----Delta Junction is where the Alaska Highway ends, meeting the Richardson Highway in town right next to the visitor center. A recurring theme of the past few days has been incredible friendliness on the parts of the welcome center people, and this was no exception; since it's before tourist season, the talkative ladies always are extra-friendly to the first faces they've seen in a long while.

-----This particular lady told us about moose encounters as well as advice on food to be found in North Pole, around 15 minutes east of Fairbanks. She advised that we go to Pagoda, a Chinese restaurant that was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. Once we got to North Pole and walked into its visitor center, the lady there told us that it was one of the few North Pole places open on Monday at all.

-----We successfully navigated all of the twists and turns of the Alaska Highway, and felt a great sense of accomplishment at having tackled its thousand-plus miles in less than a week. Yet the road went on, and the Richardson Highway proved to be much similar to that which we had grown accustomed. We saw more mountains and wound around more peaks and lakes, and even caught our first glimpse of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline.

-----Getting to North Pole is not a big deal, because it's a small place whose main claim to fame lies in their year-round commercialization of the Christmas aesthetic. The light poles are candy canes, everything that can be dressed as an elf is dressed as an elf, and there's an enormous and thoroughly creepy Santa Claus statue hanging around near the highway. I can't imagine what they do when December actually does roll around. (They've got live reindeer and a literal pole that they flew over the actual North Pole. When will these madmen be stopped?)

-----Even the Pagoda had colorful Christmas bulbs around its ceiling, but it was tastefully incorporated into the authentic Chinese aesthetic. The menu was huge and we were advised at both visitor centers that they give you enormous portions. Wondering if we'd ever run into an establishment in the Last Frontier that understands the concept of normal portions, we got teriyaki beef and chicken fried rice, which were both excellent after an appetizer of egg rolls. We entertained ourselves with trying sweet and sour sauce on most everything and analyzing our psyches with a handy guide to the Chinese Zodiac. The worst part of the whole thing was when I mistook a stemless cherry for a cherry tomato.

-----The main street through North Pole has an unnatural predilection for roundabouts. When you come off the highway, three come within a mile, and it was disorienting enough for us to get lost despite how small the place is. Getting out was even more fun, and all told I think we went around them a combined eight times. Dizziness is apparently the lingua franca of the commercial Christmas capital.

-----Thankfully, the two-lane Richardson Highway had expanded to a four-lane expressway at the Eielson Air Force Base, and it didn't have a single traffic circle in sight. The ever-present rain was the only hazard in getting to our hotel room, which was a race against time. Initially, we had gotten a rental vehicle to drive to the Arctic Circle, but after enduring the gravel breaks on the Alaska Highway and knowing that there'd be no legal way to switch drivers on the Dalton Highway, we canceled that in favor of a much less stressful tour van. Confirmation had to happen before 5:00, and my mom and I have both been waiting to get a signal on our cell phones, which we'd anticipated happening in Fairbanks, but we have had no such luck. (We'll get a signal again, I'm sure ... but it'll probably have to wait until Seattle at this rate.)

-----On top of this, a recurring theme of our Alaska Highway trip is that the phones simply do not work. Sure, you can get a dial tone, but dialing out in any way leads to a recorded error message. The last place we had a reliable phone was in Ft. St. John, where we didn't need it. Since then, Toad River did not have a phone, Whitehorse's ended up with an error no matter what you tried, Tok's didn't work until we physically went to the front desk, and now in Fairbanks it's a repeat of the Whitehorse fiasco. Dad had to go to the front desk to leave a message, and we got e-mail confirmation.

-----After so much riding, we were looking forward to getting out and walking around in Fairbanks, so we went to Creamer's Field, site of a small dairy operation that closed in the 1960s. During the spring, a wetland forms, and the walking trail around the wetlands leads over swampy regions that wouldn't otherwise be accessible. My dad was looking forward to seeing a moose, but alas, we saw nothing more than a large rabbit and several birds. The region itself made for an extremely interesting walk, with all sorts of submerged and half-submerged trees. The water itself was silty in places, giving sections a rainbow-colored hue. The wooden path was toppled sideways off of their anchors at several spots, which made for a more wobbly and interesting walk, but we had great fun walking around the deserted wetlands until the mosquitoes came out to bite at the very end. But we pulled up our hoods and kept walking, so they didn't bother us—save for the one time that I opened my mouth at the wrong time. (They don't have much of a taste, but what taste they have is appalling.)

-----Tomorrow: the Arctic Circle.