Heading South

     My ride started in the heat. Then the road Gods smiled on me and I rode for four days in cool comfortable weather. But now on my way south I've been riding in wet, rainy weather. Yesterday I rode the 150 mile from Haines Junction to Haines in a constant rain and sometimes windy conditions. It was still very beautiful, and all in all I had a great time.
Now I'm waiting for the ferry to take me to Bellingham, Washington. More updates when I reach a good wifi connection. Back in the lower forty-eight Friday morning.

Haines Alaska

Denali Hwy between Cantwell and Paxon

Dalton Highway

  Planning for a trip like this is essential, that is until it rains all night and it turns the Dalton Hwy into a mud cross, an event that I have zero experience at. But there I was, a short distance from Fairbanks and already putting on my rain jacket. What I didn't, and couldn't know was that it had been raining all night just north of Fairbanks where I was staying with friends, waiting for a window in the weather.

Riding the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay has been on my list for sometime now, so when I turned onto it from the Elliott Hwy I was excited, but also nervous. I'm a pretty caution person, and my intuition has may times payed me back in aces, but yesterday morning, in the rain, there was no time for contemplation. I was riding a muddy, sloppy, mess of a road, and not to sound dramatic, but just trying to survive.
The Dalton is a narrow road filled with pot holes, and if it was in my back yard, and if I had been with a few buddies, yesterday would have been a laugh. But the Dalton is a working highway roamed by speeding semis hauling loads in and out from Prudhoe Bay. At one point early into the fifty-six miles to the Yukon crossing, I round a left hand bend, start up a steep hill, and heading at me is a speeding big rig taking up most of the road. Mud sprays several feet from its churning tires, and behind it is a cloud of muddy water and flying rocks. Its like seeing a huge charging beast coming at you, and it prompts the same emotion and flash of fright. I pull as far right as I can, but because I'm going up a steep muddy hill I don't want to stop. When he passes me I duck my head at the last instant to keep my face shield from being coated with mock, and I feel the wind blast hit the bike. This happens to me several more time before I reach the Yukon.
Once past the bridge, and seated in the restaurant with a cup of coffee, I weigh my option. The Arctic Circle is sixty miles away. Wiseman, where I have a place for the night, is about one hundred and thirty. While there I get talking with another motorcyclist, Paul Smith, who is heading for the Arctic Circle, and so I decide to at least get to there.
The rain had stopped for the most part, but I do get another cold shower at Finger Mountain Wayside, and from there to the Circle I ride in a light drizzle. All this time the landscape around me is dark, devoid of color and feature, unwelcoming.

Paul and I at the Arctic Circle.

Once at the Arctic Circle the rain stops, and after lots of picture taking, the clouds begin to lift revealing the broad landscape to the south I have ridden through. But to the north the clouds still hang low and lay on top of the distant mountains. For sometime I think about which way to go. I get no positive feeling about going further north and so turn south.

Rae thanks for the Jack.

Alaska Highways

  All the days have run together to create a montage of rivers, ragged far off mountains, and rolling forest of dwarf trees. The yellow dotted line connects the points, and in places the vistas are so immense, and the air so clear, that you can almost see the next point a hundred miles away.

From Watson lake we rode, we being two new friends Steve, and Dennis, to Skagway via the small town of Carcross. At Carcross the character of the scenery changes and the light takes on a sparkle, an almost magical quality that adds to vast landscape as it changes to high alpine. We ascend for almost forty miles through a landscape of bench lakes, meadows, and small wind combed trees bent by a cold wind the knocks us around. Above us clouds swirl around huge mountains with hanging glaciers. From miles away the wind blows a short lived rain shower at us. We cross White Pass, the modern equivalent to Chilkoot Pass, which is northwest, and the site of gold mining history. Then we descend a deep, steep walled canyon with waterfalls that cascade from dark gashes in its walls and that meet a roiling river in the canyons bottom. Then, in what seems like and impossibly short distance, we reach Skagway.

Reno to Fort Fraser Canada

Hot. Thats what this trip has been. Hot asphalt, hot air, and hot rider. And what have I seen...plenty.

After a fun night with Dean and family in Bend, Or. I started north with the intention of riding a short distance to the Columbia river. The ride to the gorge is beautiful. High plateaus and farming, alfalfa stretches to the horizon. I pass a scene that could be from an Andrew Wyeth painting - small farm house, with barn all set in a wheat field. On my left in the far off distance lurk snow curved volcanos. Then on the horizon dozens of wind mills take shape. After an hour of being battered by the wind I make it to the river, but I can't stay, it's too awful. I feel like I've rode in to a crime. The once mighty Columbia lays in bondage by dams. Roads jammed with tourist gawk at the "Beauty" And wind mills mock the rivers existence. Hours later I make it to Yakima, Wa. It's over 100 degrees - I get a hotel room.

The next day is very long, Yakima to Cache Creek, BC. about four hundred and thirty miles, but now I'm well north of the border.

On the fourth day riding I pass through Prince George and spend the night in Fort Fraser at a camp ground. Then the next day I make it to Stewart.

More Later.

Alaska.

Tuesday morning, the bike is loaded. I'm lost for words. So what's the idea? Ride three thousand miles to Fairbanks, then another four hundred and eighty to Prudhoe Bay. Alaska, the Brooks Range and its north slope, to Deadhorse, have been part of my imagination for years. And now that the day to leave is here...