just trying to catch up on posts. this is from wednesday until thursday morning.

our plan was to drive the denali highway and then take the tok cutoff up to the alaska highway and stop in watson lake. didn't happen exactly like that.

the denali highway is about 137 miles long. and it is not paved. well it is paved for about 3 miles on one end and 8 or so on the other. we were at the end with 3 miles paved. i think we got about 26 miles into the road before we decded to turn around and drive back up to fairbanks and head to watson lake that way. amanda had gotten out the gps to see what the quickest route to watson lake was and the denali highway wasn't even showing up!!! it said it was quicker to just turn around and backtrack a couple hundred miles.

so we headed for paved roads!

on our way back through fairbanks we stopped at the store to get some sandwich supplies and then headed back out on the road. we crossed the canadian border with no problem and then headed to where we were planning to stay.

Destruction Bay on lake luane.

we pulled into the motel parking lot and went to the door. it was dark. we went to the restaurant part. that was dark. we drove around the building to see if there was a night entrance. nope. so we sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do. do we have enough gas to make it to the next gas station or possible motel? no. would any be open on this road at this time of night anyway? probably a big no. so. we pulled over to the side of the lot and tried to get some sleep until morning. oh, did i mention that it was snowing? yeah. and we saw a wolf running around too. we, well i never got much sleep so by the time the place opened in the morning and we were able to get gas i was in no shape to drive so amanda drove us to whitehorse while i tried to sleep in the car which i never can do it seems.

we stopped in whitehorse for some coffee and grabbed lunch at a nice little indian place. we were the only people in there and he was just setting up the lunch buffet which consisted of rice, chickpeas in some sort of sauce, curried veggies (which i figured out were from the bag of mixed frozen veggies you can buy at the store! and they were so good too!), yellow curry dal and some naan. oh and he also put a cd on which was one song that lasted about 20 minutes. yep, it was an indian dance club song and it kept reminding us that 'this is the remix' in case we forgot we were listening to the same song still. it was a pretty good song. i can't really say if it was a good remix or not because i have never heard the original. which i am sure was much much shorter.

when we were heading into watson lake we saw a roadsign for the hotel we were planning to stay at. at the bottom i saw some of the best words ever.

jacuzzi suites.

exactly what we needed after that long cold night in the car.

i had never been in a jacuzzi before and man, do i want one now. my back never felt better. i slept like a log. the other nice thing about the jacuzzi suite is that it had a full kitchen so we were able to make pancakes in the morning!