Alaska 2012 - Day 7 & 8

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
	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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