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.