After two nights in the one-horse town of San - one tarred road, one half-decent hotel, no supermarket, lots of dust - I felt I deserved some good luck.
Within a few years, the pack-horse trail had been widened into a proper road, stretching 368 miles from Valdez to Fairbanks, and the Richardson Highway was born.
He said accidents during over-taking and crashes involving vulnerable road users such as horse riders and cyclists were also more common in the countryside.