Awoke at 7am to wet ground and threatening skies. During breakfast we checked the weather and things were supposed to be clearing west of us. It turns out there was a HOG rally scheduled for this weekend here so to kill a little time hoping the skies would break we went over to the Harley dealer. Things weren't really scheduled to get going until tomorrow so we quickly looked around and decided to just head west and find clearer skies. We lucked out about 15 - 20 miles out of town the rain eased up and within another half hour the sun was out. We opted to keep the rain gear on cause over the course of this trip especially the last 4 -5 days we have learned that things change quickly and we're becoming superstitious about taking the rain gear off. Today was another top day as you can see from the pic. The scenery is magnificent here in the northern Rockies. We stopped at Haines Junction for gas and lunch. As we're coming out from lunch there are 3 ladies getting off BMW dual sports with Mass. plates and they had noticed our CT plates. We of course spend 20 minutes talking and comparing trips. They had shipped there bikes to Seattle and taken the ferry up to Haines and were taking 2 weeks to ride around Alaska. They belong to an all women's MC club from Boston called "Moving Violations". One of the women was well into her seventies and was between Chemo treatments! She had the best attitude about life that you can imagine. She has ridden her bike all around the world. She even rode a trip from Switzerland to South Africa. We wished them a safe journey and headed out. As I said we ate at Haines Junction and when we took off after lunch failed to pay attention to road signs and continued the way we came into town. We realized this when we stopped for today's pic and a trucker at the rest stop asked us where we were going and let us know of our error. Luckily we were only 60 miles down the road! We went back to Haines Junction, gas upped again and took the correct road this time. The roads continue to be pretty good although after getting back on the right track we finally came upon our first pilot car area. A pilot car is at a construction site where there is a vehicle that you are required to follow through the construction as it's alternating one way and the pilot car escorts the cars one way and then turns around and goes the other. Depending on the length of the work zone it can take 10 - 30 minutes so everybody is out/off of their cars/bikes talking. Some of these work zones are up to 8 miles long! Another thing we found out is that bikes get to go to the head of the line which is nice to pass all the trucks and campers and you don't have to eat as much dust. This first area also had a water truck which we had the pleasure of having to have our pilot car be right behind. Can you say very dirty muddy bikes!!!!! This construction was in an area called Destruction Bay, how appropriate! Shortly beyond this area we get into road conditions that we had heard the horror stories about. Basically the road is now an intermittent series of frost heaves/patches of gravel that are sometimes marked/sometimes not/sometimes marked for no reason. These heaves are not as bad as we had heard, but you need to be ready to zig/zag/slow down at a moments notice. So now we are finally indoctrinated to the AlCan highway. We get into Beaver Creek about 7:30 after we blow by our hotel and realize when we get to Canadian customs that maybe we missed it. Canadian customs is about 22 miles inside from the actual border. We go back about 1 -1-1/2 miles and this time we manage to see the hotel but that's a story for another time! We unpack, go to dinner and then go to bed. Tomorrow we'll be in Alaska!!!!!!!!!
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