Dalton Highway Day 2

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We awoke to that irritating high pitched hum-mosquitos clung to the tent.  At one point during the night, we assumed it was raining but it was only the constant thumping of the mosquito landing on the tent.  Who knew these beasts that weigh so little can recreate a rain storm on our tent fly?

I felt sick inside.  James being so encouraging, helped me to get going.  And to my surprise, it was great.  The weather was perfect and only when we stopped did we encounter the swarm of bugs.

The view changed slightly and we pulled off for a few minutes to take a photo. We heard there was a place to get second breakfast at Happy Valley (even showers).  However, dreaming of the refueling activity, we were disappointed to see a mostly abandoned area.  A kind gentleman let us refill our water bottles and allowed us to set up the tent to enjoy a lunch break.  It was now HOT!  We fell asleep quickly under the shade of the tent, but woke up when the sun crept over the tent and heated everything up.




Off again to cover more mileage. We stopped again for a dinner.  Again, the bugs were only bad when we stopped.  However, we were super fast in putting up the tent.

We continued to bike to our destination for the night.  However, after climbing and finding out that were still 15 miles away and hungry again, I got discouraged.  It was getting later and we were not close.  I hit a wall. I saw a truck zoom by.  I asked James, "Can we flag down a ride?  I am not feeling great."  "Yes!" He was hungry too.

A few more miles, then we flagged down this caravan of two pilot cars and a huge "oversized" load.  They agreed to take us a few miles further to where we planned to stop.  We hoisted the backed bikes on the flatbed truck.  Then we rode in both vehicles because they were jammed packed with gear.

Dinner break: Yep, we were exhausted!


We enjoyed another flurry of the generosity of food and water.  We heard the truckers over the CB and they were finding the best place to drop us off.  They decided to take us to the top of the hill because it would be harder for the trucks to start out from the bottom.  They have more weight to carry than I was!

However, my driver said they were riding all the way to Coldfoot.  Hum...I thought we could just enjoy a bug-free ride there!  So, my driver asked James if he wanted to go there??  But, he said, "No hunny, this is the reason why we came-to bike." So, we had the short 10-minute drive in a comfortable truck.  We unloaded the bikes and enjoyed a fast ride down the hill to our river camping spot.

James was given by the generous truckers PIZZA, juice, peaches...etc!  He was just thinking how great a pizza would be and BAM--we got some.  We even had fun spelling our word of the day with the snicker bites.



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