Into The Yukon!

We probably won't always be able to update this regularly, but we've been lucky with Internet and thought we should make the most of it. 

In Delta Junction we tried hitching for a couple of hours and were getting thouroughly sodden when a car pulled up.  It wasn't a lift, it was a local couple who lived two minutes away.  They had taken pity on us and brought us back to their lovely, self-made house (yay for more Alaskan wooden houses) and fed us hot coffee and paella.  They also turned out to both be originally from Idaho! You can imagine how excited this made C.  What are Idahoans doing? Ranching mostly.  Why are there Basque people there? Sheep, it turns out.  All those questions C has been bugging people with back in the UK for ages now, answered and we're still in Alaska.  Not only this but since the rain was still chucking it down, we were invited to stay the night and gratefully accepted.  Next morning there was the quintessentially American breakfast of waffles and they showed extraordinary kindness in driving us to the next town over (which being Alaska was 100 miles away): Tok Junction, pronounced as if there was an 'e' after the 'k', giving us a cheap laugh.  On the way we saw our first moose :).

Lots of tourists pass through Tok, headed up or down the Alaska Highway into/out of Canada.  Hurrah, thinks we.  Just one ride in one of these gigantic, posh RVs (many of which look like tour buses for rock stars) and we'll be well on our way.

Six hours later we've invented several new insults reserved just for people who drive huge RVs with space for a small village (and their goats) inside, but apparently think hitch hikers are just part of the scenery*.  But a local family eventually stopped and took us on to Northway Junction, the last turnoff before Canada.  We ended up camping there and today two lifts took us past our first bear sighting (a black one, moseying around by the road) to near Destruction Bay (most awesomely named bay EVER - C).  The second of these lifts is yet another kind stranger, who has taken us in and in return for lifting some heavy stuff and peeling potatoes has fed us Alaskan Salmon she was bringing back over from where it was caught in 'fish wheel', an Alaskan native tradition.  Her house is   Our host belongs to the First Nation from this area and has lots of interesting stories and info about the area and the people.

We've seen loads more breath taking scenery

and some interesting woodland creatures...

There is a bit of a sense of hurry to this part of the trip.  It's a great shame.  It's because our 90-day visa waiver in the USA doesn't stop ticking while we're in Canada (they apparently own it or something) so we have until the first of September to get from here all the way to Mexico.  It's very do-able, but does mean our minds are on dates and times more than we'd like and limits detours and hanging around just because something is interesting.  But heck, there are millions of people whose issues with borders and immigration systems are far greater than just not having time to go to Amarillo (they have a 72oz steak there- you get your name on a plaque if you eat it within the time! - C)




* Other responses include speeding up, crossing the road presumably in case we leap onto the fenders, and raising their hands helplessly which we have concluded means 'sorry, I can't actually stop this thing'.