Bike ride - Day 9

Riding into the midnight sun (almost).

The first 41 miles from birch lake to Delta Junction were mostly easy, uneventful, and without a lot to stop for. I rolled into town pretty early and stopped to get a burger but ended up with lasagna instead when I saw that was the days special. Although Delta was my planned stopping point I decided to ride another 27 miles to Donnelly Creek while the weather was good and left town about 6:30. It took a lot longer than I expected because of a very strong head wind and a tense encounter with a moose. I ended up getting the tent up about 11 pm... The evening ride was far more scenic though. 

The pipeline crossing the Tanana River. This is first suspension bridge I remember seeing as a kid and I've always thought it looked awesome. 

The confluence of the Tanana and Delta rivers. It always looked to me like the Tanana was flowing into the Delta rather than the other way around. The former is larger, but it takes on the caracteristics of the later down stream from here...

Riding into Delta. 

This looks flat and easy, but the wind had me down to 7 miles an hour for most of it. 

I stop to read more signs riding than I do driving. It turns out that as we'll as providing a handy visual of the headwind these read flags mean the military is doing live fire training exercises. So much for wild camping on the side of the road...

This took me an hour to cross. It was a nice night aside from the wind though. 

I like this view of the pipeline. It really is a marvel of engineering. 

Not shown: ten minute stand off with a curious moose before a semi finally cam along and scared him off. I saw seven moose for the day including two mothers with calves a nice looking bull and two younger ones that were a little too curious about the bike for comfort. 

Camp at last!