We Love You Elliot Highway, June 20th 2014

We've camped just off the road on a pipeline service road.  At 7:00AM we are jolted awake by trucks zooming by.  A guy stops to tell us that bigger trucks will be coming soon, so we pack up our gear as fast as we can.  It's just in time; as we roll out, a giant truck rolls in.  Figured that we would choose to camp on the only service road that they are actually using. Tired but alert for the moment, we're excited to start biking on the paved Elliot Highway. The morning ride has ups and downs but all are more gradual than the awful hills of the Dalton. More passenger cars start appearing among the trucks. We make it 20 miles before we have to pull off the road and take a break. We end up sleeping for 5 hours, exhausted from the night before. When it starts raining through the mesh of our tent we pack up and keep riding.  Just down the road we find a little shop with snacks and tourist stuff.  It seems to be the only establishment in a small 'town' called Joy.

the wonderful store in Joy

The people working there are very friendly and tell us all about other travelers that have come through. As we eat giant double chocolate chip muffins, our friends Daniel, Katrien and Manu roll in! They tell us how they almost hit a giant black bear who was crossing the road as they were coming downhill! We stay and talk for awhile, and learn that 43 miles down the road is a truck stop with amazing pie.  We decide to keep biking and try to get there.

What follows is what can only be considered a fairytale ride.  The road is paved with dense forests on either side.  It's warm and breezy enough to keep the mosquitoes away.  The rain is gone; only a few white clouds dot the sky. As we ride from 8:00PM-12:00AM, we experience the full beauty of the sunset and the midnight sun. At first the road brings us up and down, but the grades are far more gradual than the Dalton and we make good time. High on sugar and loving the beautiful weather, we feel like we're flying. Then the road starts going downhill and we coast for mile after easy mile. The last 3 miles is straight uphill, but at the end we find Hilltop truckstop where we are able to fill our water bottles and pitch our tent. We're 16 miles outside of Fairbanks and tomorrow is the solstice!

End of the Dalton, June 19th 2014

very sticky mud.  Everywhere.

riding into some storm clouds on the pavement... before the gravel

After a good night's sleep we wake up to find our friends Daniel, Manu and Katrien just arriving at the lodge.  We eat breakfast with them and then, with the help of a large wrench from the lodge, we're able to bend back my frame.  With the help of Manu we're able to bend back and pretty much fix the back derailleur! He works in a bike shop in his spare time and his expertise was very much appreciated. All morning is spent fixing and cleaning our bikes. Mud is everywhere! As we sit down to lunch, another cyclist walks in.  Her name is Jessica and she's from Cambridge, biking towards Vancouver. We share stories, then start off biking together. She's already biked 45 miles or so today so she stops to camp early on and we keep  going. Our goal is to finish the Dalton. It's 4:30PM and we have about 46 miles to ride. The first part is good biking, long, well graded hills that are paved. We ride in and out of rain and around the edges of thunderstorms. Then the road turns back to gravel mud. It's not as bad as the previous day but the mud is still sticky and rough to ride on in the on and off rain. The hills get steeper and and steeper.  We go over at least 6 long gravel mountain passes. The uphills are slow, and the downhills slippery, fast and rather scary. It's around 3:00AM when we finally reach the end of the gravel. We're more than exhausted.

the Dalton Highway

On the bright side, much of the ride was very beautiful. We saw 3 different rainbows and during the never ending sunset-sunrise, the clouds painted spectacular pictures in the sky. We saw rays of sunlight illuminating misty valleys, heard multiple red-tailed hawks crying out across the mountains, and saw the first woodpecker of our trip. What a ride.

American Three-toed Woodpecker

On the Dalton Highway...Still, June 18th 2014

Don't get me wrong, I like the Dalton.  I like its remoteness.  I like its scenery.  It seems like a trail at times, with cyclists at all different points, always a chance to meet interesting people!  But today was rough.  Yesterday's very steep ups and downs continued today and were supplemented by rain and, subsequently, mud.  Very sticky, grainy mud, due at least in part to the stuff that's put on the road to keep the dust down.  It wore away at our brake pads and rims, and Tam's chain got stuck and somehow pulled her derailleur into her rear spokes; she was able to stop and extract it before any huge damage was done, but unfortunately, the part of the bike frame that the derailleur attaches to was bent. 

bent derailleur hanger

We got it working, but Tam now cannot shift her rear derailleur without risk of entangling it in the spokes and wrecking the wheel.  So tomorrow and the next day might be slow due to Tam having to walk up the frequent, very steep sections, but, as I said to Tam earlier when she was worried about taking an extra day to get to Fairbanks, it's hard to get slower than the 3 mph we've been doing up these hills.  We're trying to get to Fairbanks for the summer solstice, which gives us two days to go the remaining 134 miles.  50 miles or so until pavement, so I hope the rain stops or tomorrow will be a slog.

On the plus side, we had the most fantastic dinner tonight at the Yukon River Camp.

Yukon River - almost done with the Dalton!  photo credit: http://home.earthlink.net/~studio1photo/dalton.htm

We weren't planning on having a full dinner, just something small, but while we were trying to decide on a side of fries or a salad with our veggie burger, our waitress, Ashley, to whom we had talked briefly about our adventure, decided to bring us both one of each!  On the house!  We were astounded and enjoyed every bite of the warm, flavorful food.  Our post-dinner plans involved eating dinner again, this time our regular (and always delicious) couscous, soybeans, and olive oil, so when Ashley came by asking whether we wanted some pie, I said thanks but that it probably wasn't in the cards.  Then she listed the options: blueberry, cherry, rhubarb, and something else.  They sounded so good I just had to ask how much a slice was.  She thought for a minute and smiled.  "On the house.  Now which one?"  Tam and I quickly discussed our preferences.  "I'm thinking blueberry," she said.  "I'm thinking cherry," I said.  Then Ashley said, "I'm thinking one of each!" and walked away.  We sat there laughing and again enjoyed every mouthwatering bite of our pies, a la mode of course.  Ashley likes adventure and wants to encourage that kind of thing, she said.  I am certainly encouraged, full, and content with a great finish to a long day.

Mountains and Mosquitoes, June 17th 2014

After a rough night of sleeping on uncomfortable rocks and waking up to the sound of trucks that I thought were bears, I wake up and go talk to the other cyclists camped by us. One is Daniel from Sweden, also planning on going south to Argentina, and the other two are Katrien and Manu, from Belgium, planning on going somewhere in Mexico. All three are very friendly. The leave earlier than we do, but we're sure that we will see them down the road. The biking starts off with small but steep ups and downs, but slowly these become big mountains and valleys. The mosquitoes are out of control.  Going slow on the uphill, I am completely mobbed. Any section of exposed skin is destroyed by bug bites. My ankles and hands swell up with the bites and feel like they're on fire.  The first big hill is called Gobblers Nob, the second is the Beaver Slide, and the third is Finger Mountain.

Beaver Slide up ahead.  Those dots ahead in the road are Manu, Katrien, and Daniel

We see our friends at the top of the Beaver Slide, stopping to camp for the night. Thankfully, near the end of our day it turns windy so most of the mosquitoes go away. We pitch our tent at the top of Finger Mountain on the edge of a beautiful nature trail.

It has a large, protruding rock that looks like a finger

A Bear-y Exciting Encounter, June 16th 2014

We wake up early to bright sunshine and people visiting Clutch's museum. After projects and more stories we leave for Coldfoot. At Coldfoot we get our food package and order a salad for some nutrition. Then we're off biking on the Dalton again, heading towards Fairbanks. On the way we meet a friendly guy going to Deadhorse who is from Slovenia! The road is pretty hilly and our legs are hurting, so we stop early.

What follows is the bear episode as written by Danny:

We were camped earlier tonight at the convergence of two roads, the one coming from the main road about a quarter mile away, and the rough service road that parallels the ever-present Trans-Alaska Pipeline.  Other than the open area in which we placed our tent, thick brush surrounded us.  At one point before bed, while Tam was writing the day's summary in her journal, she turned to me and said, "Ssh!  Listen."  I was reading, so I wasn't making too much of a ruckus as it was, but I cocked my head and listened.  I heard the hum of the mosquitoes and nothing else.

the hum of the mosquitoes is sometimes a roar

"Hmm," she said, "I thought I heard something."  We continued doing what we had been doing.  Tam finished writing and was about to read it to me when I asked her to hold on a second.  I thought I had heard something, something small.  Probably wasn't anything.  We both lay still for a moment, and this time we heard definite sounds from outside.  Some breathing, some panting, something outside the tent.  Something big.  Tam turned to me, her voice quavering, "What do we do?"  I thought back to my previous run-ins with bears and to our conversations.  We had discussed this exact situation a few weeks before.  "Well," I said, trying not to display how scared I felt, "we should talk.  Loud enough that it, bear or moose or caribou or whatever, knows that we are here, but not so loud that we scare it."  So we talked.  We dictated our every thought and every action for what seemed like ten minutes.  Most importantly, we discussed our next step.  "Should we go out there?  Maybe it's just a curious moose."  We listened again.  Nothing except the mosquitoes and the pounding of our hearts.  We decided to go out together and investigate.  We pulled on our shoes and slowly unzipped the vestibule.  I was expecting to see whatever it was right there, but we looked around and saw nothing.  We debated packing up and moving; if only we knew what this animal had been!

We decided to pack up and move anyway, and as we were doing that, I looked south, down the pipeline.  "Uhh, Tam?"  "Yeah?"  "There's a grizzly bear over there."  "What?"  She hadn't heard me clearly.  "There's a bear over there."  We looked together at a bear, unmistakably grizzly, standing in the open by the pipeline about 100 yards away.  It was a smaller bear as grizzlies go, maybe 350 pounds, with a beautiful light brown coat darkening to black on its rump.  It started to walk towards us.  My heart was racing.  Even a small grizzly bear is not something you want to mess with.  We talked quickly about what to do.  This, again, was a situation we had discussed previously.   It's extremely rare that bears attack humans unless surprised or provoked, but we looked around anyway for things to defend ourselves with if need be. We didn't have bear spray or a gun, as common sense is always more effective (and they hadn't had any at the Deadhorse General Store), but I had carried a strong stick for the past five days; what I would give to have that now!  There were some large branches under the pipeline, maybe twenty feet away, but that was too far.  I picked up the woefully minuscule twig at my feet.  "Hey!" I yelled at the bear, waving my arms.  "Look, I have a stick!"  Tam started waving her arms and yelling at it.  "Yeah, Danny's got a stick!  We're humans!  We're big!  Go away!"  The bear was unfazed.  It started walking faster towards us, then broke into a trot.  Against all impulse to run (NEVER run from a bear), we stepped towards it, yelling louder and gesticulating more frantically.  "No!  Bad bear!"  Tam put on her bike helmet and I followed suit, feeling like Paris about to battle Hector.  Still, we knew that bears often charge falsely just to see what kind of animal they're dealing with.  Sometimes they're just curious.  I certainly would be curious, had I lived my whole life in the woods and just stumbled upon two bipedal organisms clad in bright red and yellow.  Anyway, this one stopped its approach about 50 feet away behind a shrub, and stood on its hind legs to get a better look at us.  We continued yelling like idiots, laughing nervously while waving our useless weapons and shouting whatever we could think of.  "We're large!"  "And in charge!"  "I have bug spray, bear!"  "You definitely don't want that in your eyes!"  After a long pause, it turned around and walked away, pausing to look back every few steps.  Phew, I thought.  "Let's get out of here," said Tam.  We continued packing our things, definitely more hastily than before, while continuing to yell, and I glimpsed the bear in the brush, closer than it had been before.  It had circled around to our side.  Before I had been anxious, but now I was downright scared.  What may have been curiosity now seemed to be bordering on predatory stalking.  We must have set a record for fastest camp breakdown, and then we walked our half-packed bikes to the road, yelling and glancing over our shoulders.  We didn't see it again; who knows whether it ran off or followed us.  After riding a few miles up the road, we pitched our tent next to some other cyclists on the banks of a large river.

Unfortunately, in the rush of trying to get a large bear to go away, I didn't get any pictures.  It looked something like this:

Wiseman, June 15th 2014

We wake up to sunshine and a light breeze on top of Vermont Dome. We pack our stuff and head down the saddle.  It's open ground and smooth hiking until we get to the valley of Acme Creek. Then it's talking, singing, and bushwacking through trees and brush until we fall out on an old winter trail next to the small mining town of Nolan. It's easy hiking down the flat-downhill road to Wiseman.

When we arrive, we visit the Boreal Lodge- Heidi's place- to get some snacks. The main store is a large open room with artful decorations and all sorts of handmade, home-produced things for sale.  We buy ice cream bars and some jam made from wild low-bush cranberries (lingonberries) just canned yesterday! We talk to Heidi and her lovely shop assistant about hiking, exploring and collecting the local rocks to make jewelry.  I'm given a beautiful necklace with a quartz stone which I have been wearing ever since.  The generosity of these people is tremendous.

Us with Clutch

Heading out of Wiseman we meet Clutch, an older gentleman with a fantastic fluffy white beard.  He offers to give us tent space for a night and a ride to Coldfoot in the morning in exchange for help with a few projects. We gladly accept. We end up setting up a large tent with tables and chairs underneath, setting up cots, and shoveling sand to make another level area for a tent that we had all the parts to but no directions for how to set up. This was all to get ready for some visitors and parties Clutch is planning for the summer. In exchange, not only did we get our tent space and a ride, we had showers, got to do laundry, and had amazing sourdough pancakes. Most importantly, we got a lot of stories. The stories started in Clutch's little museum, a small log cabin with tons of artifacts from the mining days inside. "If you can't grow it, mine it." Clutch loves geology and history, and even though neither of these are my favorite subjects, his passion and excitement about sharing made me excited as well. He tells us about local rocks, how he and his grandma are both in the ice hockey hall of fame in Fairbanks, about the Zamboni he built with paint that changes colors, and a ridiculous reality TV show he was on. The stories are too many to write here, but if you're interested, I can tell you more someday.

Clutch's yard around 1 am

Clutch's museum

Coldfoot, June 11th 2014

We get up around 10:00AM to be greeted with cold wind and rain.  The frigid headwind makes biking unpleasant, but the forest on either side of us is lush and glistening with the rain.  The streams are gushing happily with the fresh rainwater and the mountains loom mysteriously, shrouded by clouds. In some ways it is still a beautiful morning. It's only 13 miles to Coldfoot, where we find a mud pit full of trucks and ramshackle buildings. Luckily, one of these buildings is the lodge which is actually quite nice.  We walk out of the cold into a small, cozy room lit with Christmas lights and

Coldfoot restaurant. photo credit: http://www.tripadvisor.com

painted with murals of winter scenes. We meet Keith at a table, just sitting down for breakfast. Then proceeds a delicious breakfast of large buttermilk pancakes, the rest of Keith's toast and hash browns, as well as large white chocolate cherry cookies. We have a wonderful breakfast, exchanging stories and math problems. After the meal, we pick up our food packages and talk to another biker who has just rolled in named Nathan.  He has an awesome lightweight set-up on his bike that I'm definitely

Nathan is an incredible photographer - check out his website at www.nathanlanephotography.com

going to keep in mind for future travels. After repacking, we say goodbye and head across the street to the Visitor's center, which is beautifully designed. It looks completely new and has a theater,

the beautiful Arctic Interagency Visitor Center

interactive displays, and tons of information. Here we meet Heidi, an incredible lady who grew up in Wiseman and now runs her own business there as well as working for the National Park Service.  We spend all afternoon looking at large laminated maps, planning where to hike and talking to her about everything from winters in the far north to pipeline construction. At 8:00PM we go to the daily presentation in the theater. Tonight it is about the first people in this region who came looking for gold. The presentation is very well done. We learn how big steamer ships froze solid in the river their first year, and many got 'cold feet' and turned back, traveling overland to go back south. The few that stayed developed a strong community.  To get through tough times they danced and played music, and they had to learn how to do everything themselves. The gold explorers also met the natives.  Some assimilated into the community and helped it thrive with their local knowledge.  Unfortunately many also got sick from diseases the pioneers brought with them.

After the presentation we meet Mel and Kelley, world travelers. They generously offer to drive us a few miles up the road to the starting point of our backpacking trip.  We leave our bikes locked at the visitor's center, grab our packs and go.  They bring us on a small tour of Wiseman and show us a small church built in honor of a native woman who used to live in the area.  The outside is a bit ramshackle, but inside it is carefully, and beautifully decorated, warm and cozy.  A small gem in the forest. Then they take us up the Nolan road (a mining road) and drop us off in a valley amid tremendous mountains.  (Thanks again for the ride!)

We hike along the road for a while finding fresh bear tracks and scat.  After a few miles we walk down through some brush and find ourselves in the land of the tussocks. We quickly discover why they are called ankle-breakers.  But I love them. The diversity of life and colors found in this vegetation remind me of the underside of tidal rocks I researched on the Maine coast. It's late and cold so we eat dinner and set up the tent.

our tent on the tussocks

Atigun Pass, June 10th 2014

From the time we got up this morning, our thoughts were on one thing: Atigun Pass.

Tam being a sheep

It's the highest point on the Dalton Highway, at over 4,000 feet, and it marks the official entrance into the mountains.  I was a little worried about it; I had seen pictures of snowstorms on the pass in July.  The "Snow Removal Equipment Ahead" signs weren't encouraging, nor were all the trucks we passed coming from the pass with their windshield wipers on.  But we kept on moving anyway through a rolling valley, prepared to start going up at any time.  That valley eventually ended, and we saw our road ahead going up and a sign announcing the pass.  It didn't look so bad, but it turned out to be pretty steep and sustained, maybe 12-14% grade on a muddy gravel road for a few miles.  So it took us awhile to get up, but upon arrival at the top we agreed that, for all the hype, it wasn't so bad.  We even saw a group of Dall Sheep on the way up!

Me at the top of the pass

It's like a picture. Seriously.

We then came down out of the pass into an incredibly picturesque valley.  Snowy mountains on either side framed the braided river alongside which we rode.

Tam biking through the mountains on that amazing road

Spruce trees now lined the road as well, welcome friends on our journey.  Interestingly, the sign marking the farthest north spruce ("please do not cut"), stands maybe 50 feet south of the farthest north tree.  Global warming, or bad sign placement?  I don't know.  With the trees came mosquitoes, hordes of them, but we barely noticed because the road was paved for twenty miles or so!  A nice surprise.  14 miles to Coldfoot tomorrow, where packages of food should await.

photo credit: http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?30053-Heading-for-the-Horizon-2012/page7

Mud and Hills, June 9th 2014

We wake up late and rather dehydrated, and we don't end up leaving our campsite until 12:00.  Keith has already left for the day.  It's beautiful weather and much warmer.  About 10 miles down the road we meet another biking couple, Missy and Scott, who are biking to Key West.  They're very friendly and they have their dog with them.  They tell us how they bought a cheap van for $800 then drove up to Deadhorse and gave it away.  Moving on, we keep biking over hills and into valleys.  The road is in extremely bad condition; it's super muddy.  Around us it starts to rain, but it's sunny in front and behind us.

Norm's "office"

Due to the mud, my bike is in the lowest gear on the flat sections, and we're moving slow. The first twenty or so miles takes us four hours.  We reach a construction zone and meet Joe.  He tells us how he's paid a lot of money just to stand there, and that we're required to get a ride in the pilot car for the next fourteen miles.  I'm glad we do, because the road is thick with mud and there are plenty more giant hills.  More importantly, we meet Norman, who drives the pilot car and loves his "office." Born and raised in Alaska, he loves everything about it.  He tells us, "People ask what it's like to live in a small isolated corner of Alaska.  We have to look out for each other and take care of each other."  He was a great guy with a good perspective on life.  After our ride, we bike on and enter the mountains.  Spectacular views all around. We get our tent set up just as it starts to pour.

Cool Riding, June 8th 2014

Keith

We wake up on our gorgeous gravel bar, far from the road and next to a beautiful embankment made from thick, colorful sediment.  The day starts with us biking with our friend Keith.

chilly!

It's very cold, and we struggle to find the proper balance of layers to wear while riding.











The low lying clouds reflect in the lakes of the tundra and seem to sandwich us and our road between them. Early on there are a few stretches of flat paved road that feel wonderful to bike on, but soon we are back to gravel.

tundra lake

Brooks Range

In the afternoon, it warms up a bit and the clouds start to clear. We get our first views of the Brooks Range in the distance.






The road is no longer flat; we start climbing up hills, then winding down through flat river valleys. Our ride ends with a giant gravel hill named "Oil Spill Hill." Exhausted, we find a spot to camp by the river and drink silty water.

On the Road! June 7, 2014

Taking off from Anchorage on the last of our flights to Deadhorse, we could hardly contain our excitement. Or at least I was excited; Tam was sleeping, again.  I wish I had her ability to sleep anywhere!  Anyway, I made sure to nudge her whenever something really interesting presented itself below us, through the airplane windows.  The main attraction of the flight was Mt. McKinley poking its head through the clouds, along with its baby siblings Mts. Foraker and Hunter.
We ogled at those three mountains for almost the whole flight into Fairbanks, and after a short stop, we were back in the air.  Breaks in the cloud cover allowed us glimpses at the Brooks Range and the tundra below; the amount of snow was intimidating.  I thought I could see the road, paralleled by the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, below, and it appeared to be a dark line on the snowy tundra.  We couldn't help but wonder what we had gotten ourselves into.  Then the pilot told us on the intercom that it was snowing and 31 degrees in Deadhorse.  Gulp.

No matter.  The bikes arrived, and while occupying one of the two rooms in the Deadhorse airport to unpack and put the bikes together, we discovered that we weren't the only people crazy enough to be starting a bike tour that day.  We enjoyed for a few hours the company of Keith, a professor and

mathematician who would be biking to El Paso, and Madeline, a grad student who would be biking to Fairbanks.  After packing, we all headed outside.  Clearly, seeing bicycle tourists is not an everyday occurrence in Deadhorse, because, while still in the parking lot, we were asked numerous times from where we had come.  "Right there!" we would say, pointing to the airport a few hundred feet away.

Deadhorse, located in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, is not your typical town.  It exists for the purpose of the operation of the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, which, according to Wikipedia, provides more than double the amount of oil than the next largest U.S. field, in Texas.  Still, the oil is finite.  12 billion of the projected 16 billion potential barrels have already been extracted, and production is on the decline.  I would surmise that the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field's decline is a major reason for the controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the pristine wilderness to the southeast of Prudhoe
Bay.  Regardless of my stance on oil drilling, at this moment I was thankful for it, because the road that we would be taking south, the Dalton Highway, was built in 1974 for the sole purpose of servicing Deadhorse, and was opened to regular joes like us in 1996.  Unfortunately, that road doesn't go all the way to the Arctic Ocean unless you work for an oil company or you pay a tourist company a bunch of money to take you there.  So we left the airport and, instead of going to the beach, headed for the General Store.

I'm not sure why we went to the General Store, but Keith wanted to go so we followed him and toured the town.  There are tons of connecting streets that we had no business going down (I had no interest in oil drilling), so the store was a bit tough to find.
We made it there eventually, filled up on water, poked around the (surprisingly) impressive selection, then headed out.  Keith stayed behind to wait for the post office to open, so Tam and I biked out of town with Madeline.  The snow, thankfully, had stopped, but the Dalton Highway was a mucky, muddy, mushy, mire.  By mile twenty, my legs felt just as mushy as the road.  Madeline seemed to be doing better, because she rode ahead and was out of sight by maybe mile four.  She had mileage goals for each day and less flexibility with her shorter tour.  We, on the other hand, preferred to stop every few minutes to look at birds.

Pectoral Sandpiper

With its abundance of water and light, and few humans around to mess things up, the Arctic tundra is a prime nesting spot for birds.  Many species migrate thousands of miles to nest there each summer; each little pool is a prime piece of real estate.  Thus you can understand how excited I was to be there!  I tried not to stop too often, but they were EVERYWHERE.  A number of them were new species for Tam and me, and I tried to remember them as well as I could so I could research them and write them down at the end of the day.  I'm not one for keeping bird lists, but I decided after our last bike tour, on which I saw three new species, "life birds," if you will, that I would keep a comprehensive list of the birds I see for our whole trip.  If you're interested, that list now has its own page on the homepage of this blog.  I ended up seeing over 20 species that first day, and I'm sure I would have recorded many more had I been more knowledgeable about the area's birds.

wolf print

Back to biking, that long first day.  The road dried out a little bit as we biked, so some sections were better than others.  Still, at the end of the day, our bikes and the outside of everything attached to them were caked with mud.  Anything less wouldn't have been genuine North Slope Alaska, so, even though our bikes were covered in the stuff, we weren't too bothered by the grime.  We called it quits after 36 miles and prepared our dinner on a little side road.  As the couscous was hydrating, Keith, who we hadn't seen since Deadhorse, biked up and decided to join us in stopping for the day (there is no night).  We set up camp together on a gravel bar about a quarter mile off the main road.  In spite of the large wolf prints less than 50 feet from our tents, it was a great campsite and I slept soundly.  A smooth beginning to the journey.

great campsite