Category: Roads
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Interior Alaska, Part 7 (Richardson Highway & More)
Next we explored the one remaining direction outward from Fairbanks that we hadn’t seen before, heading towards the southeast on the Richardson Highway. This day-trip took us about a hundred miles down to Delta Junction, where we turned around and came back. I’ll describe points of interest along the route sequentially starting from Fairbanks. In…
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Interior Alaska, Part 6 (Dalton Highway)
We made it to Coldfoot by airplane and now we started the long drive back to Fairbanks. It seemed daunting. Most of it would follow the Dalton Highway starting at Mile 175 (route), with the remainder on the Elliott Highway. The James W. Dalton Highway is a rugged working road, built in 1974 specifically to…
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Interior Alaska, Part 5 (Coldfoot)
I’ve always wanted to travel north of the Arctic Circle. I came pretty close to it in Iceland but even there I fell a few degrees short. So this was a major objective of the latest journey. My wife got her half-marathon in Fairbanks, I got my arctic visit, and we both shared our bucket…
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Interior Alaska, Part 4 (Parks Highway)
Fairbanks is by far the most populated area of Interior Alaska so it made a great base for launching day trips. Our first adventure led southwest on the Parks Highway. I assumed Denali National Park and Preserve and the Denali State Park influenced the highway’s name. However, it actually referred to George Parks, an Alaska…
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Interior Alaska, Part 2 (Downtown Fairbanks)
We rented an Airbnb house in the historic part of Fairbanks. However historic doesn’t necessarily mean old because Fairbanks only goes back to the beginning of the 20th Century. So a lot of the earlier structures are 1930’s or 1940’s wood-frame homes. A lot look older than their age. The elements are harsh in Interior…
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Arc of Columbus, Part 2
The quest to add new Ohio spots to my county counting list continued, padding my efforts from earlier in the day. The wide arc I took around the perimeter of Columbus swung from north, clockwise, now approaching due-east. The route now led into Licking County. Getting Licked Licking wasn’t completely unfamiliar because I’d been there…
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Taming the Frontier, Part 2
The drive up to Michigan was something I did for myself, and I visited a number of historical and cultural sites along the way. But I took the trip to drive a kid home for the summer and now I had a passenger for the rest of the ride. So I front-loaded most of the…
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Indiana I-69 Time Zone Crossing
If you’re driving along Indiana’s portion of Interstate 69, say from Evansville to Bloomington, you are going to cross a Time Zone boundary. It happens between Mile Markers 37.5 and 39.0, about forty minutes north of Evansville at normal highway speeds. But please note that the situation gets genuinely weird as you cross between zones…
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Inland Northwest, Day 4 (Lewis & Clark Country)
We were now officially between races. A day earlier I ran a half-marathon in Pendleton, Oregon and I had to do it again in Clarkston, Washington the following day. So this was the rest day, or at least it was for me. Most participants in the Mainly Marathons Northwest series repeated the Pendleton race a…
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Inland Northwest, Day 3 (Let the Races Begin)
The main reason we went to the Inland Northwest was to run some races. It also became an excuse to experience a part of the country I hadn’t explored much. Either way, the first of the races was finally about to begin. The Oregon Race We walked through the dark to a park along the…