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We woke up the next day hearing the good news, that we'd
likely be able to make some good progress this day.
The weather conditions on the start of the flight were
seemingly similar to the day before, but the visibility
and ceilings were a little better. We headed back
North up Williston Lake and soon enough we were overflying
the place that we had turned around the day before.
The views were awesome, with many beaver dams, and some
cool water colors with varieties of minerals in the
water. The further North we got, the more
mountainous it became, and we had a really great and
beautiful flight to Watson Lake.
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Watson lake was a neat little airport, and we all got
topped off with fuel and back in the air as soon as we
could. If we were going to keep the rest of our
hotel reservations intact, it meant almost covering 2 full
days worth of legs, in one day. The weather kept
improving as we went along, and after Watson Lake it
became really beautiful on the way to Whitehorse. We
also were finally in view of the Alaska Highway, giving a
little less worry if something were to go wrong.
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Coming into Whitehorse, the airport is much larger than I
expected. They handle some carrier traffic there. We
were able to get self-serve fuel right away, but I became
keenley aware of something I forgot to do before the
trip. Usually I call the credit card company and let
them know where and when I'll be traveling, so I don't get
declined on the trip. One of the other pilots also
hadn't done it, and as he went to pay for fuel, he found
he couldn't pay. Luckily he got another person to
use their card and we went on our way, but I used the time
at Whitehorse to call in and make sure I was going to not
be refused.
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Whitehorse was also a place where we had to do a ground
delay, due to our eAPIS filing time for crossing the
border into the U.S.A. again. Yes, this whole
concept of timing the crossing is a royal pain, and it
causes you to really have to plan your timings. The
night before, Dale had laid out the plan for today, and
given us the timings to enter on our re-filed eAPIS, so we
all had the same exact times, and it ended up working
really really well.
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As we flew from Whitehorse to Northway, we got to at least
attempt to land on the Alaska highway, but it was too busy
with RV and car traffic, so we gave up and kept heading
on. We ended up getting into higher country along
the way, and met up with the cloud ceiling again, with
more rain, but this time even though we were at 300' it
was a WHOLE different thing, because we had the Alaska
highway below us to follow, and a few minutes later we
were headed downhill to lower country towards Northway,
where the ceilings continued to improve. As you
cross into the USA, you actually can see a brush-cut
border where Canada meets the US. Pretty cool.
There were moose in the area, and we caught one on camera,
swimming across a small lake. When you look at the
lakes below you, many of them you can actually see lines
of all the moose tracks along the bottom.
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The Northway stop was a particularly exciting one for the
family, as it marked the completion of visiting and flying
in all 50 states! The RV-10 itself had now landed in
all but Hawaii...since first flying it 6 years ago.
Never had I even thought at the time that I'd be visiting
all of the states, but the RV-10 is such a great traveling
machine the goal just kind of came before us.
We waited on the ground for Customs to clear us, and we
had a great customs experience with the guy from the USA.
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After leaving Northway, we could have made it for fuel,
but rather than have it be close, we decided to stop at
TOK, just a few miles up the road. The group of
Globe Swift's was going to stop there due to range
limitations, so we blasted off ahead of them so we could
top off and get out of their way, and Dale met us in the
air as we departed TOK.
We zipped along having a great flight to Fairbanks,
crossing over the Alaska pipeline along the way. The
Fairbanks airport is a very cool airport to see. The
field is absolutely COVERED with GA airplanes, many of
them high wings, in the tiedown area, and there is also a
whole pond and area for floatplanes to land and
camp. Very cool little airport!
It had been a real successful stretch of a trip, making it
all the way from Mackenzie in one day...a bit over 7 hours
of flying, but we were there!
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In Fairbanks, there are some things to do, and if the
weather had been better, we may have even flown North to
the Arctic Circle or Prudhoe bay, but the weather wasn't
agreeing, so we spent some time on small things, and
relaxing around Fairbanks, and North Pole Alaska.
North Pole goes all-out to be the big Santa Claus town in
the US, with nearly every pole painted like a candy
cane. Really neat to see. Inside of Santa's
shop we did some gift shopping and saw a hillarious letter
to Santa that we just had to take a picture of.
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That evening we had a paid-for dinner at "A Taste of
Alaska" where Dale had set up Earl Hughes, a great singer
who's sung with some of the greatest, to play for
us. Earl is a great guy and they played many great
songs. It was surprisingly to me, a very awesome
night of fun and I was so glad we got the chance to do it.
Also, see below that it was pretty cool that around some
of the bigger cities we actually had some hits on our APRS
so there indeed is a small amount of APRS coverage in
Alaska!
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