Summary

The entire trip was 7700 miles over 23 days. Risto, Graham and I rode the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay, the Taylor "Top of the World" highway, the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, and the Campbell Highway from Carmack to Watson Lake.

Follow trip starting on Day 1

Day 23

I still had about 550 miles to go to Spokane. The scenery along Highway 5 is awesome.

I rode an hour or two south of Valemount and stopped for gas and a coffee break. This raven almost took my keys from the table. I rescued them before it got them but it kept an eye on me for about 10 minutes.

Went through Vernon. A very nice drive along the lake. Was hot. Over one hundred degrees.

I stopped at my brother-in-laws place in Kelowna for a quick visit and to cool off a bit. Then started the last leg to Spokane via Highway 33. Very scenic.

A few miles from US border.

After I crossed the border it got dark. This was the first time on the entire trip I rode in the dark. North of here the sun shines at night.

Day 22

One of my glove liners had been giving me grief for the last week and it finally fell apart so before I left Grand Prairie I looked for a new pair but didn't find anything so I continued to Grand Cache where I pumped gas and took a break.

There was another biker there that had a motorcycle I didn't recognize so we talked a bit. He had purchased a Harley Davidson engine and built the motorcycle around it from parts he purchased or made. We visited on the curb for about 30 minutes. He was from Dawson Creek and had a Yooper accent with a pronounced "eh". Real friendly guy... a few others came by and looked at the bikes.

A nice lake I stopped at. No bugs here.

My goal was to reach a hot spring either in the Banff area or maybe even Radium and stay the night there. So I started into the Jasper park area and had stopped for dinner in Jasper.

Turned out that they had just closed all the roads south of Jasper due to fires so had to detour west about 90 miles and then turn south. Never did get to a hot spring.

Stayed the night at Valemount.

Day 21

Day 21 would be the day that we split up. It would be less miles for each of us to get home if we went our own ways from Fort St. John. We rode there and ate lunch, did some last maintenance and checks on the bikes for the last day or two of riding and we said our goodbyes.

While Risto and Graham continued in a more westerly route, I continued alone to Dawson Creek. I took a side road to find a bridge that had been built for the original Alaska highway. It was a completely wood bridge with a curve in it.

In Dawson Creek I looked for and found the signpost indicating the beginning of the Alaska Highway.

Then called ahead and made a reservation for room in Grand Prairie for the night before I left Dawson Creek. It was a hot day for riding.

Day 20

We left the Liard Hot Springs and soon found ourselves in British Columbia. Graham was way ahead as usual but Risto and I stopped at Muncho lake and smoked a cigar.

We stopped at the gas station at Toad River and had coffee with cinnamon rolls. The ceiling in the cafe had over 9000 hats attached to it.

Risto wanted to show us a moose wallow where he had hunted before so we drove back a few miles and up a small logging road to his tree stand. The moose come here to eat the mud which apparently has minerals they need. Its pretty hard to walk in there. You have to jump from one clump of grass to another to avoid the deep ruts left by the moose. Graham climbed up to sit in the chair.

 

Earlier while we had been at the Toad River Cafe someone had reported a roll over accident a few miles south. This is a bad place to have an accident! The EMT crew that responded was from Fort Nelson about 200km away!

We also noticed a truck pulling a trailer with a wrecked BMW motorcycle in it. Turns out this was the same motorcycle that was involved in the accident that the truck driver told Graham about a few days back. The rider had broken a shoulder, broke 7 ribs, and punctured a lung. There is no EMT response on the Dempster so the truck driver had given him a ride to the Inuvik hospital where he gor pneumonia. He was finally airlifted to Spokane a week later for surgery.

It poured rain the rest of the day into Fort Nelson where we decided to stop for the night.

I tried to update the blog from there. Even though they advertised high-speed ADSL Internet, the uplinks from the city must have been via satellite. Not very useable.

Day 19

In the morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then serviced our bikes, airing the tires back up, lubing chains, washing windscreens, etc.

We wanted to see the sign forest that we had passed last night, so we went back. Weird place... I'm not lost... just following the signs...

 

We were going to try make it to Liard Hot Springs for the night so we continued south. There was one area that had bison wondering around.

I noticed a two rut trail leading into the bush so we followed it to a river where Risto checked whether there were any fish. No bites.

Just hung out for awhile and took a break. Graham took the opportunity to update his journal.

 Then a few miles further down the road we pulled off again and rode an even smaller road and found a waterfall. We climbed to the top of a bluff to a vantage point about 50ft off the water and just laid there for awhile.

We arrived at Liard Hot Springs and we setup the tents in the campground. Risto made some amazing dinner from some rice, corned beef, sausage, with a can of chili added.

Then we headed for the springs. This was the hottest springs we had been at. It was also different because the hot water flowed in at one end, and there was also a cold water spring somewhere below. It made the top of the pool real warm but the water at the bottom was cooler. A very nice place!

Day 18

On Day 18 we left Dawson City and rode the Alaska Highway south and stopped at the Moose Creek Lodge for breakfast.

While we were there a bus stopped in and a bunch of tourists from the midwest fanned out and it got busy. There was also an interesting guy in the parking lot waiting for a helicopter! He was running a large mushroom picking operation, sending millions of pounds of mushrooms to Japan. He had pickers in the forests finding mushrooms which were processed at drying location he had setup locally, and then shipped by air overseas. Some of the pine? mushrooms were immediately sent fresh via air to Japan. He said some of the pickers could make four to five thousand dollars a day in cash for the mushrooms they found.

We continued on until we saw this creation at the side of the road. It was a Mecedes Unimog that a German couple had transported from Germany to tour Alaska. I had never seen one of these, but Graham had recently owned one. They were traveling with another Swiss couple and we visited for awhile with them. They were headed for the Dempster and were very interested in any information we had on road conditions

We continued following the Yukon River until we came to Carmacks YT. After we filled the gas tanks we discussed whether we should continue down Highway 2 to Whitehorse, or whether we should bypass Whitehorse on Highway 4 to Watson Lake. The map showed it to be a dirt road and we debated whether we wanted more dust, but when the question was posed "when will we have a chance to ride Highway 4 again?" we headed down the road to Watson Lake.

The first 200km was tar road and very scenic. There was little to no traffic. We stopped at this beautiful lake to boil some coffee and roast some sausage.

It started to warm up so Graham went swimming again, even though he figured it was colder the Arctic.

I dozed off and Graham laid on on the picnic table bench to dry off and warm up and he fell asleep too. Then out of the blue he yelled "OUCH I STABBED MYSELF IN THE CHEST". What a way to wake up. He was on his hands and knees holding his chest with blood dripping between his fingers. Yikes! He had been whittling something when he dozed off and then in his sleep swatted a mosquito on his chest but was still holding his knife. Fortunately it wasn't very deep or serious and we got it cleaned out and taped up but it reminded us of how remote we were, and there really wasn't any way to get emergency medical help out here. We were probably 200 hundred miles from the nearest medical facilities.

We crossed the Ross River canyon on our way to Ross River for gas. This would be the last gas for almost 300 miles.

 

 

After this Highway 4 turned to dirt. The road was only about 12 ft wide in places and no shoulders. In some places the vegetation and trees grew to the side of the road.

Because we felt even more isolated than we had at any time in the trip we decided to "leapfrog" to provide more safety especially to the bike bringing up the rear. It was so dusty that we couldn't really ride together and had to space up to a mile to avoid the dust. The problem was that if the rider bringing up the rear happened to crash or experience a breakdown, no one would know. We were also far enough out that there was almost no opportunity to turn back too far because gas was limited. So the rider in front would ride for 10 minutes and stop - wait until the others passed by - and then resume from the rear.

It was almost about 350km of dirt road to Watson Lake, with the last section being tar road. The road construction we went through was worse than anything we had experienced. It seemed like it was more of a farm field or mining excavation than a road. We were routed through muddy sections that were very rutted and deep. It was amazing that Risto got through this with his street bike. He said later he thought he was in for a face plant.

We got into Watson Lake late. The skies were really pink.

It was cold when we got in and noticed a hotel with a lot of motorcycles in the parking lot and took this as an endorsement so we pulled in for the night.

It was my turn to sleep on the floor. It was getting quiet. "Hey Graham." "Yeah?" "Where's your knife?" "Its on the table over there. Why?" "Just checking..." "Oh sheesh..." hahaha... roflol