Day 11

Ugh. Graham was up at 4:00am - can't wait to get going. I try ignore him for a bit but then ask how the mosquitos are outside the tent. "No mosquitos out here", then I heard Risto say "no mosquitos, not one." So I crawl out of the tent and within seconds get swarmed. They are swarming everywhere, seemingly millions of them. Graham tells me he has land for sale in Florida. Funny guy.

We have about 240 miles to ride to Deadhorse and there are no services. No gas. No food. Graham has never been able to get this far on his gas so we agree to ride slow and conserve gas. If he needs it Risto or I can let him use our reserves. We also want to ride slow because we don't want to crash or damage our bikes. If anything goes wrong we may not make it to Deadhorse for the Arctic tour, or maybe not at all. We talked to a guy on a new Yamaha Tenere who blew a fork seal a hundred miles south of Deadhorse and had to abort his trip and head back to better roads.

We get things packed and the rain starts, so we delay a bit to pull the rain gear on. Its just moving in and maybe we can get ahead of it. We do, although its close. The drops are huge.

The Brooks range is magnificent.

 

 

Atigun pass is spectacular.

There road construction. Very rough roads and big rocks that make the tires slip sideways. We try to avoid anything that looks like it may puncture the tires. There are slippery sections and I see Risto ahead of me struggling to keep the bike in a straight line with his street tires.

The scenery changes. There are no trees here.

I noticed a neat little gravel road that went up a hill and it looked as if there may be a view from the top. Risto followed me and didn't notice a berm and took a spill. Yikes. The right-side mirror broke off and he scraped up the fairing and bag. No injury though. We propped it back up and duct taped the mirror back on and continued to Deadhorse. It was hard to believe that mosquitos could be worse than the campground we that morning, but it was bad...

While we worked on Risto's mirror I realized why everyone asks where I'm from. My license plate is completely dirty and covered with mud.

 

We finally arrive in Deadhorse. We don't know where Graham is but we didn't see him on the road. The windscreen is so dirty you can see through it. I'm dusty and feel filthy, my fingers hurt, my toes hurt, I'm tired. We need to find a shower and something to eat.



 

 

We find the Prudhoe Hotel. This is a wonderful place - for a guy maybe. :) Shared bathrooms and showers. Feels more like home than most hotels. Free cafeteria meals. It's so dusty and dirty in Deadhorse that they require booties to be worn over shoes. You get them in the entrances. We love it here! :)

We eat, shower, and get ready for Arctic tour bus.

Day 10

Cold this morning. The motorcycle thermometer shows 39 degrees but at least its not raining. The thought of getting back on the bike right now makes me shiver. Got my jacket on and crawled back into the tent to eat a protein bar and wash it down with redbull. The plan is to drive for a bit to another hot spring Graham heard about before we head out on the Dalton Highway or the Haul road as the locals refer to it.

Last night at the Chena Hotspring Graham found a guy who works at Prudhoe and milked him for local knowledge of Deadhorse. We now know where we can get gas with a credit card, where to stay, and how to get to the ocean. We also heard that the hotspring may be closed so we decide to head into Fairbanks and stock up on food and water and skip the hotspring and head north.

The round trip from where we are now will be about a 1000 miles with most of the road being dirt and unpredictable depending on the weather and construction.

We headed north from Fairbanks on the Elliot Highway. The views are spectacular and the road twisty. The Heidenaus feel good this morning and I've wondered before whether the bags or footpegs would touch first on a tight corner, and found that the centerstand actually makes loud scraping sounds before the bags or footpegs touch.

 

 

Our next stop was at the beginning of the Dalton Highway. From here it would be 414 miles to Deadhorse - its not really a city but the name of the support system for the oil pumping on the North Slope.

The area by the sign was muddy. It was a real soupy slippery mud and I wondered what were in for.

The road is very dusty. Visibility drops to next to zero when the trucks come by. Depending on the wind direction, passing is very difficult, and some of the muddy sections make the bike wander in and out of the ruts. We stopped at the Yukon River Inn to get gas and ate lunch.

 

 

 

 

After lunch we were hanging around talking shop with other bikers when a small motorcycle made a u-turn on the dirt road and pulled into the parking lot. It was a Honda CBX250 with large plastic bags hanging off it, and an unsealed lawnmower gas can strapped to the seat. This guy got off and incredulously we asked where he was from. "I'm Federico from Argentia." Wow!!! He had ridden that little motorcycle from South America and wound his way around the US and had over 30,000 miles on his trip so far. He had already ridden the Dempster Highway to Inuik and was looking for other interesting places to go and chose Prudhoe Bay. From here he was planning to ride to the east coast and take a ship it across the Atlantic to continue his riding in Europe. All of us tough guys who had been comparing tires, windscreen deflectors, big rocks and mud stories, etc, were feeling pretty silly. We may have as well been on a trip to the corner grocery store to get a gallon of milk. We talked with Federico for about 20 minutes. We went to look at the pipeline for awhile so he got ahead of us, but I caught up and rode with him for a few minutes. Impressive.

 

 

We stopped at the pipeline for some pictures and talked with a lady from BLM about the road and what to expect ahead. She was a wealth of information.

Our next stop was at the Arctic Circle! The bugs were ferocious there. We took a few pictures and Graham entertained us by wheelying back an forth across the Arctic Circle.

 

In Fairbanks we talked with a guy at the laundromat who told us where to fish off the highway and when we found it Risto caught supper.

We stayed at the Marion Campground a few miles north of Coldfoot. It rained a bit off and on, and mosquitoes were so thick it was hard to breath.

Day 9

Slow day today. Risto and I stayed at a cheap Travelodge motel in a sketchy part of Fairbanks but the motel was OK. Graham spent the night in Denali. After breakfast Risto went to get a new back tire mounted and ended up replacing the chain too. Northern Power Sports gave some great service and got him in right away because we were traveling. I caught up on some work stuff, and Graham drove back into the Denali Part to get pictures of the mountain because it had  cleared up overnight.

We did some laundry and then found a Safeway with a Starbucks.

It was a warm day - maybe 70 degrees. We had our coffee and for awhile I sat in the parking lot in the shade of the motorcycles and ignored the stares of the people driving by. They probably felt sorry for the poor guy sitting on the asphalt under a dirty motorcycle but they don't realize we wouldn't trade this for anything. We also met a few guys that had ridden up from Texas and were on their way back down to Anchorage to get their bikes serviced. Panniers seem to have a magnetic attraction to others.

We had agreed to meet Graham at 4:30 at the Chena Hotsprings about 60 miles east of Fairbanks for the evening. On the way out we kept our eyes open for a good camp spot to stay the night. The land around the river valley in the area is waterlogged and most of the likely camp stops would be swampy. One logging road looked promising because there was a long winding hill but when I explore a moose blocks the road. It was real difficult to turn the heavy BMW around on the rutted hill, alll while keeping a wary eye on the moose.

Chena was unbelievable - better than any other hotspring I've experienced. It was a hot 106 degrees and there were even hotter spots in part of it. It had a gravel bottom and cold fountains and very powerful warm fountain that was a real massage if you stood under it. Chena also has a landing strip a few hundred feet from the entrance to the pool.

We enjoyed the pools for a few hours and had dinner there before we left.

 

 

After the hotsprings we drove to a pullout by a river close to the resort, sprayed on the bug spray, and set up camp. I did an oil change there too. At the Safeway had purchased an aluminum cake pan to drain the oil into and with Risto's assistance was able to get the drain oil back into the empty bottles without making a mess.

It was midnight and still felt full daylight when we crawled into the tents.

I'm over 3000 miles this evening.

Day 8

We tried to get on the road from Pete's cabin but Graham's bike had an oil light on. The level seemed a bit low so he added some but then for some reason it read way too high. He had to remove the skid plate and drain some of it out. We don't know why the oil light was on but it appears to be normal.

It was real cold, about 40 degrees. At one of the stops someone told me that this wasn't typical. Again the scenery between Glennallen and Wasilla was spectacular.

The road to Palmer was great fun. Was real twisty and hilly. I was following Risto and was jealous of his Triumph with the sticky street tires and the horsepower he had. The BMW is great fun but not a crotch rocket and the increasingly squared shape of the Heidenau Scout tires makes them howl and wobble disconcertingly in the corners. Graham has different dual sport tires and is scraping his boots in the corners.

I don't have many pictures from today. If one of the other guys has some I'll try post them here. It was rainy cold and wet and we just kind of kept moving. Mt McKinley was obscured by clouds and we didn't see much of the Denali Park. One of the park roads was closed while we came through due to flooding.

 

Graham has a friend staying at an RV park in Denali so we stopped there and walked down to the Prospector pizza place for dinner. Graham will stay the night in the Denali area and Risto and I push to Fairbanks. We have a day off tomorrow and are planning to service the bikes and maybe head to one of the hotsprings for the evening.

Everything is waterlogged and dirty. But in Risto's words, this is the "mostest" best trip ever. I agree.

Day 7

Woke up to rain again. Pete suggested we use his Suburban to make the trip to Valdez and that he could come along. Excellent idea. We had breakfast in Glennallen. Told stories and laughed a lot.

Then we drove down to Valdez. Were able to visit about old times. We stopped an took a lot of pictures.

The fishing trip didn't work out because Pete's brother Mark needed more time than we had to get the boat ready but is was fine. We four-wheeled in the hills and got stopped by an avalanche that had come down in the winter. We climbed it and messed around in a fast running creek. Cabella guy was there too.

Pete had just pulled one of his abscessed front teeth himself with a pair of vise grips with electrical tape on the jaws for grip. He said it hurt.

Then it was back for another sauna with roasted sausage on the sauna stove rocks. 





Day 6

We left Whitehorse on a sunny morning but some heavy crosswinds made it cold. We drove through Haines Junction. The mountains were awesome there.

Our first stop was at Kluane Lake. It was a huge beautiful lake and Risto spotted a trail leading down to some sort of weather reporting station and we were able to get down to the beach with the motorcycles.

Risto made some coffee.

Graham worked on his electric suit controller. We were able to figure out which solder joints to short with a screwdriver to turn the heat on.

 



 



After we left there we had an awesome ride through the Yukon. Its a very remote area with a lot of mountains and we stopped frequently for pictures. We ran into some road construction where we took a break waiting for the pilot car. Graham took a nap, I polished my visor, and Risto smoked a cigar.

 

 

 

 

After the pilot car came we followed it into the gravel construction area. I was in the front of the line and the pilot car wanted us to move to the other lane across a foot high gravel berm. It was real treacherous crossing it and I wondered how a few Harleys behind us would do with it. We found out later that a 75 year old guy wiped out trying to cross it.

 

It started raining pretty hard but we finally reached the border. Risto and Graham were carrying handguns which made it interesting getting through. The customs official loudly questioned him why he would want to carry a large revolver into the United States of America. The paperwork was in order so they were allowed to continue.

 

 

 

After we crossed the border while we tightened our raingear, a woman we met earlier at gas station riding a BMW pulled up behind us and asked for help because her oil light was on. The oil was a quart low and Risto had a quart that we poured in for her. Everything seemed ok after that so we moved on. 

 

Our first stop was for lunch at a gas station on the Alaska side that was out of gas, or their pumps weren't working.

 

 

 

We had a burger and talked with some other wet bikers. The lady sitting on the bench

 

 

 

shot the bear this bearskin is from

 



 

from the back seat of this Cadillac.

 

 

We heard that all the lodging was full for a hundred miles each way be we decided to push for Tok anyway. When we arrived there the weather was nice and sunny. There was cell service so we caught up on business.

 

 

The Tok campground and the hotels were all full. We were hoping to meet an old friend and go fishing at Valdez the next day so we thought we would drive another 150 miles to Valdez for the night.

 

The same woman who had low oil at the border pulled up and asked if she could join us for part of the way because she was headed for Anchorage. She was interesting because she was out by herself, returning from Inuvik. She was a tough little lady who rode a motorcycle thousands of miles in awful conditions and was so happy and smiling talking about it.

 

 

She followed us to Glenallen. It was 40 degrees and pouring rain and she had problems with her heated jacket on the way. But she hung in there. Wow.

 

It was getting late and none of us wanted to keep going but there was no lodging in Glenallen available. By chance we got in touch with our old friend Pete who was about 50 miles west of us in an RV campground. He told us to come there for the night so we climbed back on the motorcycles for more cold soggy riding. It was worth it though. He had a cabin warm and a sauna hot for us.

 

 

 

 

Graham experienced quite a culture shock. Finlanders and saunas.

 

Tomorrow we would head to Valdez.