NTA Day 31 & 32

We departed Chicken mid-morning and headed south on Taylor Highway to its junction with the Alaska Highway, about 60 miles to our south.  The Taylor is paved south of chicken, but is broken, with long stretches of gravel and numerous frost heaves.  It is slow going and requires absolute attention to the task.  We reached the Alcan at about 11:30, turned west and stopped at Tok for fuel.  There is a pretty RV park at Tok, but it was still early in the day, so we decided to continue on to Delta Junction.  That's when the fun began.  About thirty miles west of Tok, we decided that the dogs needed a break, so we pulled into a roadside pullout with a path to an overlook where the river below could be seen.  There was a highway truck parked at the pullout, probably there for the purpose of emptying the trash bins.  As we walked down the path, we heard a loud crunch, and instantly realized the the highway truck had backed into the Jeep.  Three expletives later, we were examining the damage, which quickly appeared to be limited to a taillight lens.  We probably would have told the worker, who was a very nice lady named Deb, to "have a nice day, go and sin no more."  However, she had already called her supervisor, so the paperwork began.  Thirty minutes later the Alaska State Patrol arrived, along with a second local police car to examine the damage and file their reports.  Moments later, Deb's supervisor pulled up, obviously in a very foul mood.  Poor Deb.  Processing everything took well over an hour, and seemed to us to be a disproportionate response to a broken taillight lens.  And now, with that paperwork on file, we still have to deal with Geico.   So we headed west toward Delta Junction and an RV park that had a really good looking ad.  Wrong!@#$@!!&*!!  It turned out to be a total dump.  So we got our money back and headed northwest for Fairbanks.  We decided that we'd go to the Riverview RV Park, which is actually in the town of North Pole, on the southwest side of Fairbanks. It had been raining for the past 100 miles, and as always, we were dutifully following the great directions provided by our high-dollar Garmin RV 770 GPS.   The unit is specifically  designed for use in vehicles with limitations inherent in such vehicles, e.g., you can't back up when you have a vehicle in tow. We turned left at the light, as instructed, and promptly found ourselves in between blast fences staring into the eyes of the sentry at the gate to Fort Wainwright!  No way to turn around.  The sentry was understanding, however, and allowed us on base so that we could locate a suitable area to do a U-eee and GTF outta there!  Another left, another half mile down the road, and the park magically appeared.  Whew!  Glad to be off the road.  Milepost 5167. Day 32 we caught up on laundry and rode around Fairbanks a bit.  Not a lot to see.  It looks, at least in the summertime, like a typical lower 49 city with a big military influence.