Day 12 • Fairbanks to Denali Highway, mile 20ish • 229 mi

Sometimes you just follow where the road leads.

I got a late start after the long day yesterday, and quit Fairbanks at around 2pm, with plans to ride about 100 mi to Delta Junction and set up an early camp before running the Denali Highway twice tomorrow.

The 4th of July is pretty big up here—at least, it's a great excuse to get out. At the Salcha River boat launch, it might have been a pickup truck convention.

At a rest stop, I met four bikers heading my way—just down from Deadhorse, they had plans to push on through Delta Junction and camp somewhere along the Denali Highway itself. Based out of San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, they were my kind of people. For the first time this trip, I rode in formation.

We tried to stop at the only dinner south of Delta Junction, but stumbled into a small 4th of July cookout, with bluegrass bands.

The eastern 20 mi of the Denali Highway are some of the best tarmac found in the state. 70 MPH sweepers, half mile sight lines, good to middling pavement, and gorgeous scenery make it my favorite bit of road so far. Unfortunately the camera was covered in smeared bug, so I can't quite share it with you.

If you'd like an exercise in futility, try finding an open campsite in Alaska on July 4th at 8pm. We needed up camped in an open spot just along the road, but hey it's flat and beautiful:

Also, I discovered that if you try hard enough, a hammock bug net can be repurposed as a personal bug net:

Tomorrow we run the rest of the Denali Highway's 110 mi of dirt. Good thing I have all that Dalton practice!

Total mileage: 229.6
Trip mileage: 1,522 mi