On the Road

Mon-Thur, Aug 13-16, Joe & Nancy Sue Reeves, On the Road, (Ft. Wainwright, AK):
We drove up the road to Circle and Circle hot springs today, but only went as far as the BLM Rec. Area about mile 62. We forgot to top off with gas before leaving and were close on gas, but decided we didn't really want to drive another 200 miles of gravel road to Circle and back. We stopped at Nome Creek BLM Rec. area and tried our hands at panning for gold in the creek. We're not sure if what we found were flecks of gold, but we did decide we weren't going to get rich doing it and Joe said it certainly wasn't meant for cripples. See Joe gold panning. Any old prospector who made his fortune with a gold pan deserved every bit of it. We drove out the way we went in as it's the only road. We didn't see any wildlife and the scenery was rolling hills of Arctic Spruce. We stopped at the Davidson Ditch, a series of ditches and large pipe, which brought 32,000 gal/min of water over 60 miles to float gold dredge barges near Fairbanks.
Tuesday, we waked up early to rain pounding on the roof and turned over and went back to sleep. It has rained all day. Joe went to get service work done on the Honda, but couldn't get in today. He stopped by the PX and Commissary to pick up a few things and we spent the rest of the day reading.
Wednesday, it is still raining!. Joe went to get the Honda serviced again but still couldn't get it in. We're taking the M/H to get an oil change and lube job tomorrow before going 500 miles up Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle, Coldfoot, and on to Deadhorse and the North Slope.
Thursday, the weather was still nasty. We went to the RV service place at 8AM, got the M/H serviced in preparation for going north, 500 miles, to Deadhorse and Prudoe Bay. By the time they finished, three different mechanics had come out to express their misgivings about the trip. They said all the truckers were reporting the road in the worst shape they've ever seen it. It's rained for the last month and it's all mud with deep ruts in places and bottomless potholes. A real mess. By the time they were done, we decided to forget the whole thing. We went by Denny's, had breakfast, then came back to our same spot in the campground at Ft. Wainwright. By 2 PM the sun came out and the weather is pretty, right now. We'll stay here until Tuesday and hope all our mail catches up with us by then. If not we'll wait another day. Then we'll head South and plan to go into Denali Park again, then back toward Wasilla and maybe Anchorage before we head for Canada. We don't expect to do much before we leave.

Joe & Nancy Sue "On the Road", (Fairbanks, AK)