We stopped at the Arctic Circle again for pictures with the sun at a different angle.
While at the Arctic Circle marker again, we met a German couple from Dresden on a BMW 1150 GS that they had been riding since March. They had their bike air freighted to Mexico and they have been riding ever since.
We stopped for lunch almost all the way to the Yukon River Crossing at the Hot Spot Cafe where we were greeted by a terrifying Toy Terrier. We were planning on purchasing fuel a couple miles further on the road at the crossing. It was a good thing because the Hot Spot Cafe fuel pump was not working. No fuel but good pulled pork sandwiches.As we were leaving two guys rode up together looking for fuel, one was on a Harley from Budapest Hungary and the other was on a Triumph Tiger. They had just come through 2 miles of slippery slop from the Yukon River crossing. They found out there was no gas at the Hot Spot and they were totally bummed and almost crying that they would need to go through that 2 mile stretch of slippery snot two more times in order to purchase fuel. We thought, “what a couple of crybabies. We went through there yesterday and it was bad, but nothing to cry about.” (We hadn't realized how much worse it was compared to yesterday.)
They were contemplating re-crossing that section of road 2 more times to get gas and continue on north whilst we headed south through that two miles. It was ridiculously BAD. There was equipment actively wetting and moving/grading the thick mud and gravel with Semi-Trucks driving through the gravel leaving huge ruts in the mud. It was one vehicle wide in most places and the oncoming trucks didn't care if you were already there. Eric had a couple of tank slappers and almost down incidences because he chose the wrong ruts to follow and then slowed-down! Jennifer chose the correct ruts and kept it in second with plenty of RPM and slid around through most of it without any tank slappers. We both had our worst almost down incidents at the end of the grading area when we had to ride over/through big loose piles of the wet muddy gravel. Very scary and we understood why the 2 guys up the road wouldn't want to do that again! The bad stretch ended at the Yukon River crossing again and we made it to the gas station. We took a little time to mentally recover from that 2 mile stretch while Jennifer both laughed and cried simultaneously.
There was no rain yet when we filled-up at the Yukon River crossing. We filled up and then headed for Fairbanks.
A Bobcat/Lynx crossed the Dalton right in front of us. Just staring at us as he gently loped across the road. The rain started during the last 20 miles of the Dalton and it rained on us all the way to Fairbanks and then all night long.
We rolled into Fairbanks ready for a break. Eric's right side windshield adjuster knob and bolt had shaken loose and fallen off sometime along the Dalton Hwy, so we stopped at Home Depot and bought a bolt, two fender washers, two rubber washers, a star lock washer and a wing nut and installed them; all was then secure.
We went to a car wash and attempted to wash some of the road mud off our bikes, but it didn't do as well as we had hoped.
We checked in at the Ranch Motel located right across the street from the car wash. We were hungry but tired so we ate Beef Stew and Oatmeal in our room for dinner.
