We were all packed up and on the road around 10am. The sun was shining, but we had a pretty good headwind for most of the day. The big rolling hills continued for most of the day. Joe and I rode ahead and planned to wait for the Michaels at Northway Junction. After about 10 miles of riding, we hit a pretty long section of construction. The sign guy let us go through right away even though all the traffic was stopped in the direction we were going. We didn't have any major problems going through, but at one point the pilot truck leading the oncoming traffic started coming our way. We had to ride really fast to get to a spot that we could pull out of the way. It was kind of fun actually; all of the construction workers were waving and smiling at us. There was quite a bit of gravel on the road which wasn't very fun to ride on, but it could have been worse. When we made it to the Junction, we were happy to find out that they had some groceries at the little convenience store. Joe and I bought a loaf of bread and pb and jelly for lunch. We ate at the table outside of the store and enjoyed talking with a couple of people from the area. One guy was from Tok and drove a bus that went back and forth from Northway to Tok. The other guy, Keith, was a Native Athabascan who had lived in this area his whole life. Keith was really funny, so we had a lot of fun talking with him. When the Michaels got there Keith made the joke about the size of Texas vs. Alaska. The Michaels got some tator tots for lunch from the little kitchen part of the convenience store. Keith offered to buy Joey and I an order of them too! We politely turned down the offer, but he insisted we get them anyway. They sure were a wonderful treat! With happy bellies, cameras charged and plenty of riding time left, we hit the road. Since we had only done about 16 miles before stopping, we had a lot of miles to do in the afternoon. The wind continued to slow us down and the road had a lot of pretty big hills. The gravel patches of road also continued for quite a while. I don't understand because there would be a beautiful smooth asphalt road and then these big patches of gravel on top of it. It definitely didn't make it very fun because we were just engulfed in a huge cloud of dust every time a car went by. Between the terrain, the gravel, and the hot sun, it was a pretty hard ride today. Joe and I rode ahead again since we knew that the Michaels had planned to make it to Tetlin Junction. After about 50 miles, we pulled off to the side of the road because we had CELL RECEPTION!!!! We spent about an hour and a half talking to family back home. A few people slowed down to make sure that we were ok and not broken down. A cop stopped to do the same thing. When we were just about finished, a cop stopped, apparently the same one that had stopped earlier. Apparently we were in his usual spot to watch traffic because he asked us how much longer we were going to be there. It was pretty funny, we thought there was just a LOT of cops in AK, but it was just the same one over and over again as he drove back and forth waiting for us to leave. So, we kept riding, even though the Michaels hadn't caught up yet, so the cop could have his spot. The junction was only a few miles down the road from where we were. There were only a few closed down buildings there from a cafe and gas station that had gone out of business. We rode down the road for about another mile before we found a spot to camp. We pushed our bikes up a pretty steep embankment to a nice open flat area that was really sandy. It was a pretty good camp spot. We got our tent set up, made some mac and cheese for dinner and got a fire going while we waited for the Michael's. The mosquitos were annoying, but still not as bad as in BC. A few times we thought we heard people talking, so Joe would run to where he could see the road, but there was no one there. When we finally heard the Michaels right near us, we yelled to them so they could find us. It turns out the voices we were hearing was them; they were just down the road having dinner on the side of the road. We were all pretty excited to have cell service. Michael called home and we even got to use the internet a little through Papa Mikes "MiFi" box that works on cell reception. We ate toasted marshmallows and went to bed pretty excited that we would be in Tok tomorrow. We rode 53.42 miles today.
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