Flight to Denali

Sherry and I took a flight from Talkeetna to Denali.

               Landing on a Glacier. Four inches of new snow the day before.

Valdez and the Richardson Highway

Took the ferry across the Prince William Sound to Valdez and then up the Richardson Highway.

                                        On the ferry Aurora to Valdez, a 6 hour trip.

 Had the best Halibut dinner at the restaurant at the Best Western in Valdez.

                                          Valdez harbor.

                                                        Falls on the Richardson Highway

                                         High pass on the Richardson Highway

Sherry taking some photos.

Anchorage and on

Well I have been lax in keeping up with the blog. Doing this real time becomes quite a chore when you are so busy all day and often confronted with no connectivity in the evening. Sherry and I left Anchorage on June 26 and rode to Whittier in the rain to catch the ferry to Valdez.

I learned there is a saying about the weather in Whittier: if you complain about the weather where you are the response is, it's shittier in Whittier.

On to Anchorage

It's Thursday, June 23rd and I am headed to Anchorage on the Parks Highway. Beautiful scenery the whole way and I stopped in Denali National Park. Pictures don't do justice to the vastness of it all.

North Pole

After leaving Dawson City by a ferry over the Yukon River I rode the top of the world highway to Tok, Alaska. Unfortunately my cell phone with all the pictures of this portion of the trip was lost somewhere between Tok and my next stop in North Pole. Dave Yeager has a cousin there and she invited me to stay a day or two. So I visited Leslie and her husband Frank, and their 4 dogs and 2 cats. It was a pleasant change of pace.

 Stayed in this guest cabin in the backyard, thank you Leslie for giving up your "girl cave."

Slept in the loft, window open, it was great.

Frank smoked red salmon he had caught. It was fantastic.

Artic Circle

Decided to take advantage of fine weather and rode up to the Artic Circle on the Dempster Hwy in the Yukon. Sign here kinda disappointing. Looks like it is under repair. The Dalton sign is more impressive. Meet a bunch of folks on the way up that I was sitting with at the D2D banquet Friday night. We ended up camping together about  40 miles north of the circle. Very weird with no sunset.

                 Scenes on the Dempster

                 Damaged Artic Circle sign.

                   Camping by this stream.

                      Fellow motorcyclists

A Vermonter, two Aussies, me, wife of RCMP Officer who took the picture at about midnight. Nice fire was going.

Dempster Highway

Today I am heading up the Dempster toward Inuvik, NWT. Weather changes so quickly up here I want to take advantage of what looks like a couple of very nice days. The road is entirely gravel and best to do dry. It is about 250 miles to the Artic Circle which is my first objective, if the weather holds I will go to the end of the road to Inuvik. We will see how it goes.

 Last night gathering for the traditional Dust to Dawson midnight picture.

Dawson City, Yukon

                          Midnight

 Grounded paddle wheeler. In 1900 over 250 such boats were on the Yukon River, 3rd longest river in North America, they could navigate from the Bering Sea up river to Whitehorse where the train could be taken to Skagway AK with access to the Pacific.

 Free car ferry across the river to the Top of the World Highway to Alaska.

 View of Dawson City from the Midnight Dome.

 Parasail waiting for a breeze. They had a long wait.

 No wonder I couldn't find the beer store, they hid it here.

                         Fixer upper.

Motorcycle notes

For those of you who are motorcyclists here are some facts/thoughts about the trip so far. After 9 days of riding I covered 4027 miles. The longest was 562 miles which was on the plains of ND and MT. It is pretty easy to cruise at 80+ on route 2. My average was 425 miles a day. In Canada the highest speed limit is 63 mph but in rural areas I felt safe doing around 70. Outside of towns I have only seen 2 police cars.

Road construction: the roads have generally been good. I had to wait twice for 30 minutes at construction sites. I have come across numerous patches of road under repair that were gravel and dirt. They generally weren't an issue unless they were wet, then you felt the bike squirming a bit. On the Alcan there were long stretches of this, some up to 2 miles. If you stay in the tire grooves a street bike will make out fine as long as you slow down.

I have crossed a lot of wood plank and steel deck bridges with no issues. The long Teslin bridge had me squirming quite a lot, but a loose grip and a straight line and I made it ok.

Tires are Continental TKC70S an 80/20 road/trail tire. It is holding up well and hope to make the entire trip on them. There is some cupping on the front but it doesn't effect the performance. They worked pretty well on the Salmon Glacier road which was in real bad shape in some sections.

Here is a picture of the tires and the Teslin bridge.

The Yukon

Yesterday I entered the Yukon Territory by way of the Cassier Highway. Took the Alcan to Watson Lake for the night. So far I have ridden 4,027 miles for an average of 450 miles per riding day. Not much in Watson Lake except the sign post forest. Started by aGI building the Alcan during WW2 it is now truly impressive.