We woke up at 8:30 am to the familiar bright light outside, packed, and joined the tour bus which took us to the airport. The airport was chaos, with nearly 80 people packed into the tiny terminal checking in, waiting, or standing. We decided to start the boarding line on our own, which was a smart move, and very soon we were in the plane and settling in for our flight, Alaska Airlines Flight 144, which took off by 9:45 am.
          The view was great at first, but low clouds were everywhere, so there wasn't much to look at from the airplane except blue sky for much of the flight. These broke around Fairbanks and we got to see a lot of the northwest city as we banked over the University of Alaska campus and landed.
          By 11:30 am we had the car ready to go, and stopped at the Burger King on Airport Rd for lunch. This was a bit frustrating as on leaving the drive-thru we found they had omitted the fries, and the girl at the counter was sarcastically apologetic. I fueled up and reserved a room in advance at the Gateway Motel in Haines Junction. The weather was cool (upper 50s) and partly cloudy as we headed southeast.
          We stopped at North Pole, Alaska so that I could mail a few supplies back home and send a couple of postcards. In the post office lobby I was confused by normal mail drops in the building that said "Fairbanks Postmark" and "North Pole Postmark", both of which were clearly marked "Undeliverable Mail". I stood there for a minute trying to decipher this cryptic Soviet nonsense, and finally gave up and took my mail outside and put it in a curbside mail drop. Even on a Sunday afternoon North Pole was infested with hurried, impatient drivers with shiny new pickups and SUV's. We gladly got back on the road and continued southeast.
          West of Delta Junction around 2 pm we saw a spectacular multivortex dust devil in one of the fields near the road. Around 4:30 pm we reached the Yukon-Alaska border and went through Canadian customs, which took about 20 seconds and was friendly and swift.
          About 35 miles northwest of Burwash we spotted a black bear near a construction area (no one was there but us). The bear crossed the road behind us. We continued southeast, stopping only at Burwash so Shannon could take over driving. Traffic was very light and we skirted by Kluane Lake again under mostly cloudy weather, when became more and more cold and cloudy as we moved southeast. About 6 miles west of Haines Junction another large black bear was foraging near the road. We stopped to watch him -- he was eating grass! He was always observing what was happening on the road, though; whenever a car passed by or we moved, he would look and then resume his eating. We watched him for about 10 minutes then arrived at the small Gateway Motel at Haines Junction around 11:30 pm.
          I did find that the Gateway Motel is one of those rare places that uses an awful PBX-style office phone system. This is okay for typical guests, but you cannot hook up your laptop to it without a PBX adapter or an acoustic coupler (thankfully I had one handy). Everything else about the hotel we liked, including the convenient laundromat and 11 am checkout time.

Miles driven today: 518
Business ratings (0-4 stars): Burger King, Airport Rd, Fairbanks AK * 1/2 (order error, attitude)
Alaska Airlines, BRW-FAI AK * * * (good service, legroom)
Gateway Motel, Haines Junction YT * * * 1/2 (good motel, PBX phone system)