Back on the Cassiar highway we had one good bear viewing but were told we would see loads, on the North Klondike highway people said we would see lots of Elk, we saw none. The Yukon has an estimated population of 10,000 bears but it's a vast wilderness. All us touring want to see wildlife at the side of the road but it's just the luck of a draw. We heard a guy in the visitor centre in Dawson city stupidly complaining that he had seen nil wildlife during his drive from Whitehorse, whilst one lucky lady saw up close a 1000 strong herd of Caribou. Alaska is also another huge wilderness with no guarantees that the wildlife will make roadside guest appearances. Our next section Tok to Fairbanks, several people told us we would see Moose. We re-iterated what we had been told about bears and elk but they said you will see moose. We did but only a small one without those magnificent horns as it was a female. We kept on looking but we didn't see anymore, we did however have great views of mountains (some snow-capped). En-route we reached the end of the Alaskan highway - built during the 2nd world war so troops could easily be deployed to Alaska if the Japanese invaded. We have only driven a few sections of the highway so far which is 1422 miles long in total (and that's just one road, there are many, many more spanning the width and length of North America). The shortest route for traversing Britain (Land's End to John O'Groats) is only around 870 miles - It's big over here. Just short of Fairbanks we took a break at a place called 'North Pole'. We stopped here a while as believe it or not here they have Santa's house and Santa's Reindeer antler academy. We could only count eight Reindeers, when we enquired we were told Rudolph was off training. In Santa's house it's Christmas every day, I almost had to drag Donna out. Neither of us sat on Santa's lap for our photo but many grown adults did! Fairbanks our next destination you will have heard of if you've watched 'Ice Road Truckers'. It was a real let down. It is a city, with tower blocks, dual carriageways, lots of traffic lights and lots of traffic. We got caught in rush hour which wasn't fun. We restocked on beer and was shocked when asked for I.D. at the checkout! True or false we were told everyone has to show ID when buying alcohol as Alaska has a high death rate because of alcohol abuse, anyone convicted of alcohol related crime or disorderly behaviour gets a red stripe in their ID which means they can no longer buy alcohol. Whether this is true we don't know but the next day we bought wine from elsewhere and weren't asked to show any ID! There was no decent hiking near Fairbanks so we visited Pioneer Park - A historical theme park. It was 10.30 in the morning and nothing was open, it didn't really matter though, the paddle steamer needed a good lick of paint (and you couldn't go inside at all), the reconstructed Gold mining village which was made up from actual historical buildings that had been re-sited here looked tacky and too glossy in comparison to Barkerville & Dawson city. In under 30 minutes we had seen enough and didn't even bother to take any pics. We had planned for the afternoon to take a 3-hour cruise on the 'Discovery' steam paddle riverboat. It was 65 US Dollars each, the boat looked impressive at a distance but up close we could see the interior just comprised of line upon line of plastic chairs on every single deck. Then all the coach parties started coming in, masses of them. It was not what we expected and we decided to save our money for something more enjoyable. The best thing about Fairbanks was the RV park and a BBQ dinner. The Wi-Fi connections seem to be getting worse, uploading photos to our blog is becoming a time-consuming process. We had a lovely green pitch to park up at but was probably the furthest away from the Wi-Fi signal. We took a stroll with our laptop and phones to the toilet block where there is a reading room with a stronger signal. No one else seemed to use this room and it was like being in a zoo as everyone going for a pee leered at us trough the windows. Donna saw someone walking a dog wearing sunglasses! An old lady came in to see what we were up to and what the room was for. After interrogating us about our extended holiday she insisted on hugging us a lot and telling us she loved us. She really wants to go to Germany but is frightened about it being unsafe, by the time we had shown her our tandem ride photos from Germany last year she had forgotten that we were English and wanted to visit us in our German home. Several hugs and 'I love you' later she left us before her husband came looking for her but not without giving us her address in Nebraska and asking us to visit. Our 'North Pole' stop was only an hour but it outshone a day in Fairbanks by far. Time to move on.