Who knew?

Whitehorse is huge.  Big surprise after miles and miles of open country doted by very small towns here and there.  Stopped at Walmart, Extra Foods, and McDonalds.  Fairbanks is 600 miles, DNP after that.  Cell phones should be working again in a couple of days.  Haven't seen any shack people for a while, so it should be smooth sailing the rest of the way.

On the ALCAN

Spent the night in Dawson Creek, start of the Alaska Hwy and about 1000 miles from Bend.  It will be 900+ mi to the next large town, Whitehorse. 1600 miles to DNP.  Should hit halfway point today.  Shoutout to David, Terry, Tim, Scarlet, Lee, and Pam.  Would have been here sooner, but Carol had to take blueberry bread and brownies to the shack people.

Striker visits Canada for the first time

We are at the McDonald's in William's Lake, BC.  Striker snuck through customs by sleeping in his condo.  Should be on the ALCAN tomorrow.  It starts in Dawson Creek, BC.  No cell phones for us in Canada.  Striker is upset because he can't tweet.  Other than that, all is good.

I'M DONE MAKING PREDICTIONS

Even though we have the car packed full, I'm not going to make another prediction as to when we are going to leave.  Should have known better anyway considering how things tend to go with our health.  Carol will tweet when we leave.  Don't count on Striker.  He seems to tweet only when he feels like it.

Check out the pic of the updated ride.  The fairing turned out pretty nice:

Click pic for larger view

I know I keep promising, but more pics will follow.

MAYBE WE SHOULD HITCHHIKE

You guessed it ... we're still in Bend.  But I've got this huge looking thumb now on my left hand and I'm thinking that could be an asset if we ever have to hitchhike on our upcoming journey.  I tried stopping the table saw blade with my thumb and ended up in the emergency room.  They say the thumb will be fine and that the main long term problem will be that it will have a significant amount of scar tissue on the end.  I got lucky.  Just a bunch of stitches and a slightly broken bone.  Then the whole thing ended up being a blessing in disguise.  They had me follow up with a hand surgeon today and I told him that I thought my carpal tunnel syndrome played a role in the accident.  He told me there is a simple surgery that cures the problem.  I had no idea.  So it looks like I'll be having the surgery when we get back.  It will be great to have normal use of my hands again.

Still trying to get on the road.  Good news is that someone who just got back from Alaska said the weather was miserable with rain almost every day for three weeks.  That happened to us once when we got going late to GNP.  When we got there the weather was great for the duration of our stay but we were told it was horrible the two weeks before we arrived.  It is sounding like this trip could end up being a repeat of that experience.  At least we hope it is.  It couldn't keep raining for longer than three weeks ... could it?

STILL IN OREGON

Doctor wanted 12 pieces of my prostate so that he could tell me nothing was wrong.  That and the normal delays that seem to plague us have left us really behind, which I guess is the norm for us.  Still you would think that having a full month to prepare for this trip after Yellowstone would have been plenty of time.  I'm just glad we didn't try to host and prepare for the trip at the same time.  We would never have made it.  Looks like we will be leaving this week, hopefully sooner rather than later.  All the big things we needed to get done are finished.  We just have left a bunch of smaller/faster things to do.  Could probably do it all in one day if I could get my body to cooperate.  So two or three days does seem possible now.  The renovations on the car are turning out great.  Much more organized than the trial run to Yellowstone.  Plus Striker's condo now has air conditioning in addition to the heating system it always had.  He seems to be happy with the changes if I am reading his tweets right (Yes, he is now on twitter, check it out through the link below).  That's it for now.  I'll try to have some pics posted in the next couple of days and then its off to Alaska ...