On Wednesday, the 24th day of our trip, Dan and I drove to the small town of Fox and turned onto the Steese Highway. We drove over the Cleary Summit and dropped down to the Chantanika River.

This was an interesting area with old dredges and mining equipment left in various spots. We had a fine lunch at the Fairbanks Exploration Gold Camp, enjoying one of it’s-a-small-world moments. The owner recognized Dan from his days in Ketchikan many years ago.

We spent a good part of Wednesday saying goodbye to some very nice people in Fairbanks. It was somewhat sad to know we would be heading back to the Lower 48 the next morning.

Thursday started out fairly nice but turned to heavy rain in the afternoon. We drove all the way to Whitehorse, staying on the Alaska Highway by driving to Haines Junction before turning east to Whitehorse. (On our trip north, we left the Alaska Highway and journeyed through Dawson City, missing Haines Junction.)

As much credit as I gave the Canadians for their smooth highways on our trip north, the permafrost “heaves” in the Alaska Highway for our first 60 miles into the Yukon Territory were terrible.

Fog was our visitor on the morning of the 26th day of the trip. We hit the road early after filling up the gas tank. (I had quickly became tired of paying the huge amount of taxes levied on gasoline in Canada.)

It wasn’t long until we hit heavy rain again. In the afternoon we passed through Watson Lake and into British Columbia.

Stopping at the Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park, Dan enjoy a swim. The Park had been closed on our way north due to the late hour we arrived.

The scenery along the Park’s footpaths ranged from wildflowers to a moose. After leaving the Hotsprings area we saw 10 to 15 bison near the road. These were part of a large, free-ranging herd of bison.