30th Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

[Dirt_Dad]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

I didn't realize there was an office. I saw the building, but I figured it was a maintenance building.

 

[twodogs]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Yea, it has the history about how the Forest started, along with a film. It was pretty interesting.

 

[Cycledude]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

I didn't know they would just let u put up your own sign, when we were up there in 2007 they had a few hired folks to take care of putting up and taking down signs

 

[Checkswrecks]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Don't understand why the sign would have been so difficult to find. I checked in the office and they showed 78,000+ signs in 2013. Hard to tell how many there are now. I hauled the sign 6,100 miles to put up on a post. When I went to office to see how to go about putting it up they gave me a hammer and nails and told me where the open post would be, but no ladder. Lady said your on your own. :'( Had to stand on two rocks (which I had to hunt for) stacked up to get it hung about 8 feet up on a post. It appears they have lawyers in the Yukon too. And of course my riding partner, just laughed, gave advice and photographed the complete event. Wouldn't let me get on his shoulders, so much for friends.

Some slack partner you must have.



Oh - Hi Larry
::003::

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Day 12 Dawson City, YK to Fairbanks, AK - USA
Miles: 540

DM renamed road: Road of Doom

We're pleased we will be re-entering the USA on the 4th of July. Didn't plan it that way. In fact, we are several days ahead of where I expected to be at this point. In the past we would usually do little more than 400 miles a day, normally riding 9am to around 4pm. We have crushed that old pace. We've left earlier each day and just felt good about riding so we didn't feel the need to stop early most days.

First order of business today is to take the ferry from Dawson City over to Top of The World Highway. Once on Top of The World it feels an awful lot like the Blueridge Parkway if it were dirt. Nice road on a perfectly dry day. Lovely ride to the Alaska border.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBRq9o22SD8

We finally see the USA border in the distance.

Canada has been very welcoming and a great place to ride. It's a regular ride destination for us and it has always been a great experience. We enjoy visiting out neighbors to the north, but still it felt so good to be heading back to the USA. We arrived about an hour before the border was to open. This gave us time to chat with the Alaska resident in the car ahead. The driver told us where we were likely to find moose. We'll see... we have a 100% perfect track record of never seeing a moose. Hopes are not high.

Our first road in Alaska...USA...on the 4th of July...home. DM starts singing Proud To Be An American. It was a moment there.

Pavement gives way to a really nice dirt road. Very lovely road that is just fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj9-pU8_cFM

We stopped at Chicken for breakfast.

While at Chicken the sky really opened up. Another hard rain. It didn't let up when it was time to go, so we geared up and headed out. I had DM set her Traction Control to allow some spin. There are a few miles south of Chicken that are dirt...well at this point they are mud. Due to the construction they are not a flat mud, but a somewhat rutted and very slick mud. I could hear the tension in DM's voice. I picked a line that was particularly unfriendly and immediately told DM not to follow me. She picked a different line. I squished my way over to a different area of the road and heard DM tell me, "if you don't speed up I'm going to be in trouble." I quickly got out of her way. She continued to slip and slide along until the road turned to pavement, never going down. For the rest of the trip she would refer to the road south of Chicken as the "Road of Doom." So we're up to a Bridge of Death and now a Road of Doom. Both of which she did without dropping her bike. She may not like it, but she's doing great.

The road from Chicken rejoins the Alaska Highway as we head towards for Fairbanks. A bad idea on my part means we ride 80 miles past Fairbanks to Livingood, before we turn around and ride 80 back. An extra 160 miles today for no good reason. So much for my plan to stop doing long miles. I end the day less than satisfied with my decision to add more than 3 hours to the ride today. DM stays in good spirits and we order in pizza for dinner.

Oh, and for the first time ever, after hundreds of signs riding thousands of miles in alleged moose country, we finally saw a moose. No photo, but we saw one. They are real.

 

[~TABASCO~]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

SO AWESOME !!! Keep it all coming !!!

Thanks !

 

[VPS1]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your story and pictures! Really enjoying riding along! My wife rides an F700 and we have plans to get up there, from Florida it is quite the trip but she is very interested!

Stay safe and enjoy!

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Thanks so much for taking the time to post your story and pictures! Really enjoying riding along! My wife rides an F700 and we have plans to get up there, from Florida it is quite the trip but she is very interested!

Stay safe and enjoy!

Thanks and congratulations for having a wife that rides with you. Most people don't get to experience that. I know for us it took a few years to iron out the details so we were each getting satisfaction from our riding together. Once that happen we've travel pretty well together. From Newfoundland to Alaska, she has been on every long trip I've ever done. Would not want it any other way.

Good luck on getting up there. We love to think back to 2007 when we were so amazed to be spending the night in a resort that was a whole 80 miles from home. We couldn't believe how far we had gone away, overnight, with only our bikes.

Times have changed.

 

[VRODE]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

A moose!! Finally! Good for you. Love the reports. Continue...having fun, being safe!!!!

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Re: 30 Anniversary Trip - VA to Arctic Circle and beyond

Thanks guys, glad you're enjoying it.


One thing I didn't mention about our "bonus" 80 mile ride up to Livingood was the road construction. It was actually a very fun road getting up there, but there was some road construction that caused the pavement to end a few times. The times the pavement ended to turned to an unfamiliar loose surface. Seemed like pulverized blacktop that was much finer than gravel, but not quite as fine as sand. It was spread like a mix that was a cross between gravel and sand. When coupled with the light rain we experienced it could move you around a little bit. After the Road of Doom experience earlier in the morning DM just wasn't appreciating the foreign feeling surface. It definitely got into her head.

On the return 80 miles back to Fairbanks DM asked me if I should just go up to the Arctic Circle tomorrow without her. I had to really think about my answer. I told her I didn't want her to do anything she didn't feel comfortable doing. I also told her I'd hate it if she kept herself from doing something that is within her skill level if the weather is good and she wanted to do it. At the hotel I pulled up all the images I could find of the Dalton. She looked at all of them and quickly decided it was a road that was easily within her skill level. If the weather forecast held up she wanted to go.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 13 - Fairbanks, AK to Arctic Circle, Dalton Highway, AK
Approx Miles: 400

Forecast could not have been better. No rain in sight and it was expected to be clear and in the low 70s. DM feels good and we head up to the Dalton.

This bucketlist road has a fearsome, bike eating reputation, but with dry conditions we found it to be the best maintained nicest dirt road we'd ever ridden. I've ridden a lot of dirt roads in my days. This was so smooth it may as well have been paved. DM initially was comfortable around 50 MPH but quickly got to a point where speed, whatever we wanted, gave her no concern. It was just a lovely, easy ride on a really pleasant road.

As you would expect, the pipeline is a prevalent feature of this road.

This place was a hoot. The Hot Spot Cafe. The owner appeared to have been an insult comic in another life. She hurled one zinger after another at me. She looked at the picture on the back of my credit card and said, "wow, you've aged horribly." She used DM as her straight person and just came up with more and more material directed at me. She was a lot of fun and it was a great place to stop.

Of course the goal of the trip...

On the way back I asked DM about the construction surface that had caused her confidence issues last night. She didn't even notice it today.

It was a long day, but probably the easiest long day we had on the entire trip. The Dalton treated us great. Yes, I understand it sucks when wet. But on a dry day. It's a outstanding road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhIWpI6Y14

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Few other notes about the Fairbanks area. The Fairbanks Regency was our first hotel on the trip where we stayed in for more than one night. It was nice to have a day without packing the bikes.

Fairbanks is definitely Adventure Bike Central. Gone are every other type of bike except dual sports and adventure bikes, at least as far as we saw. Looked like 60% BMWs, 10% KTMs, and 30% Super Teneres, KLRs, DRs, African Twins, and other. I'm sure there must have been some non-dirt worth bikes, but I didn't see them.

We returned so early from the Dalton that we had time to go to two different US Post Offices, and talked to four different postal clerks who eventually figured out how to send the hotel keys back to the Westmark in Dawson City, Canada. ::010::


Day 14 - Fairbanks, AK to Anchorage, AK
Approx Miles: 350

DD useless/short lived/ignored declaration: We can take it easy now. No more long days.

We head to Danali National Park.

We are wondering if we are jaded at this point. Danali is...nice, but we're feeling unimpressed. I guess after Glacier, Banff, and Jasper, we are hard to impress. We want to like the tallest mountain in North America, we want to say wow, but it's just not in us.

We debate taking the Danali Highway. 130 mile dirt road that is supposed to be great, but we're losing steam. It is not at all clear if there are hotels on the other side, and we don't feel like riding forever trying to find one. We know there will be hotels near Anchorage, so despite my gut telling me I want to do the Danali Highway, we point the bikes south towards Anchorage.

It was a long and pretty dull ride to Anchorage. We eventually get to downtown Anchorage and find a parking lot to do a hotel search. For some reason all that is showing up are places that are well over $200 a night, or places where you don't feel safe parking a bike. I don't know why all my apps were failing to find any place reasonable and acceptable, but they were. After spending way too much time with my nose in the phone we decide to ride south until we run into hotels on the outside of town.

After driving south for a while it is becoming clear this strategy is not working as hoped. Anchorage does not sprawl and thin out like the DC area as you leave town. Anchorage just basically ends. We stop, turn around and head to the nearest fast food place with wifi. More hotel searching finally turns up something that will work. We head across Anchorage one more time and call it a night much later than I had wanted to do.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 15 - Anchorage, AK to Butte, AK
Approx Miles: 165

I wake up about 4:30am just like most every other morning on this trip. DM is still asleep. I'm having a bit of a quandary over the next move. Up until the Arctic Circle there was a clear goal, and something that had to be achieved. Now I'm feeling a bit rudderless. Really don't know what to do and we still have about a week left up here. I had had booked the flight home out of Anchorage a couple of months ago. Change fees are painful enough that I'm not going to move up the departure date. Just not sure what to do.

As I lay there I start doing some math. Home is x number of miles away. How many miles would we need to do per day to ride home and forget the tickets and save the planned (expensive) cost to ship the bikes home. No, that's way to many miles per day to sign up for. What if we rode to the lower 48 where shipping cost are much, much lower. No, still cost a good amount to ship and would need to buy tickets all over again. I don't know what we should do. I think maybe we should take a break and not try to figure this out on the fly. When DM woke up I proposed taking a few days off. I don't think I got to finish explaining my thought before she was saying she'd love to take a break. We both knew we needed it.

We booked a cabin north of Anchorage. But it was 6:30 in the morning. We needed to do something today so we get to the cabin at a reasonable time. I had seen something about a glacier in one of the travel books. It wasn't all that far south. Let's go check it out, then go to the cabin afterwards. We pack up and head south.

WOW! To be completely honest, up until this point Alaska hasn't had all that much for scenery. All that changed on the Seward Highway. The farther you ride, the better it get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb2qx0erwRQ

On the way back we stop at an amazing store/gallery of wood carving. I've done a lot of chainsaw work in the last year, but nothing like this guy. Amazing artistry.

Take a minute to look at this next one. It's very well done.

We have lunch at a BBQ place along the Seward Highway that has a very nice view.

After lunch we head up to the cabin B&B.

This place is awesome complete with a stocked refrigerator, full kitchen, a living room, bedroom, washer/dryer, and our own guest garden. After all kinds of hotels, big and small, cramped rooms or more spacious, it was fantastic to unload and have plenty of room.

We are not B&B people. In fact in over 30 years of marriage this is our third. The first two being on the Newfoundland ride due to necessity. If all B&B places were like this we'd stay at them much more often. The owner here had no interest in making breakfast for anyone, so they stock the fridge and cupboards with breakfast food and leave it up to the guest to make their own. Perfect for us.

We did run out to the grocery store in Palmer for a supplies so we would not need to leave for the next 3 days. Ready to hunker down.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 16 - Butte, AK
Miles: 0

Slept in until 8:00am...didn't think I could do that. Most ambitious thing I did today was open the door to feel the outside temp. Took a 3 hour nap. Watched a lot of news. Never heard of OAN network before. Did absolutely nothing productive today. It was nice.

Rained all day. Don't care.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 17 - Butte - Mantanuska Glacier - Butte (cabin day 3)
Miles: 120

DM decided she wanted to hang around the cabin to do laundry and continue to rest a sore arm. I'm fresh after taking yesterday off and ready for a nice short ride over the Mantanuska Glacier.

The Glenn Highway is beautiful.

I love this next photo. I have never seen a place where you can "Play on a bulldozer." That's awesome.

When you see a sign for "Slide Area" I'm pretty sure they are talking about this.

The Mantanuska Glacier is located on private property. For $30 you can ride very close to the glacier and be walking on it after a 10-15 minute hike.

I found it to be very interesting. When I saw people with big spikes on their shoes I wondered how my simple motorcycle boots would handle the icy surface. No need to worry. This is not slippery ice. It has a bit of crunch when you step on it and I never found any traction issues. The surface is uneven, and there are unmarked crevasses around. While the crevasses were not wide, they were definitely big enough to easily swallow a person and I was happy not to temp fate by jumping over them. Walking a glacier was not something I had ever expected to do in life, but I'm glad I did.

Close up of surface

Riding on the glacier property turned out to be the most interesting off pavement riding I did on the entire trip. It certainly wasn't challenging, but after more than 6K miles of pavement and nearly perfect dirt roads (excluding Chicken) this was a nice change of pace. It probably only lasted 6 miles, but it was refreshing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygf4iJyDuq8

It was great to get out on a beautiful day for a short ride. A truly terrific place to visit on a short ride.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 18 - Butte to Anchor Point to Seward
Approx Miles: 390

The hardest day.

The cabin has been great. It allowed us to take a much needed break, recharge, refresh, and figure out our final few days in Alaska. One thing we decided was not to go to Valdez. That was the original plan, but between weather forecast and $300 per night hotels, Valdez was scrubbed. The weather mattered because we wanted to do a glacier cruise. The hotel mattered because we did not want to do the cruise in our motorcycle gear, so we wanted to be close to the harbor. With Valdez out, Seward was back in the picture.

While researching Seward and the Kenai Peninsula I read about active volcanoes that cold be seen from the western side of the peninsula. Definitely want to see those. While looking for the best place to see volcanoes I came across Anchor Point, AK being a spot to see multiple volcanoes and being the farthest west you could travel on the North American road network. Any road farther west first requires a boat or a plane. My thoughts immediately go to needing to ride to Anchor Point. After all, how could we ride this far, be so close to the end of western travel on the continent and not go there. It's now a must do.

We leave early under bright blue skies.

Blue skies turn gray. The Seward Highway is not much to look at today. Despite the weather, it is still the most heavily patrolled road we've seen on the entire trip. I guess they have so many gawkers on this road it's necessary to try to keep everyone moving safely together on this busy road. When the road splits we head towards Homer rather than Seward.

It doesn't take too long for us to be out of the mountains and back to flat ground. This is clearly RV move day. The road is infested with an endless parade of RVs. We've seen a lot of RV and trailers on this trip, but with ample passing opportunities they really haven't been a problem. Today is a problem. Fewer passing opportunities, the need to pass 7 or 8 vehicles at a time, slow drivers not using the pull over lanes, the idea of a heavily patrolled road, and gray weather all conspire to make this a painfully slow, boring, long ride out to Anchor Point.

It felt like a very long way to go to get a picture of a sign.

It was also so gray today that we never saw any of the volcanoes.

The ride back was pretty much the same as the ride out. We ended up passing groups of vehicles 4 and 6 at a time. We never bothered to stop for anything other than gas the entire day. By the time we got to Seward we both had less than ideal attitudes and were ready to be off the bikes. When the hotel check-in process turned out to be a chaotic comedy of incompetence somehow it just fit today's experience.

Everything felt much better after a shower, and a nice diner here

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 19 - Seward Kenai Fords Tour
Miles: 0 (bike)
Miles: 101 (boat)

Great boat tour of the glacier and animals around the area. Perfect weather day. The boat captain said this was a rare day in the rain forest of Seward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQmPn6ePwE

 

[Blind Squirrel]

Riding on the glacier property turned out to be the most interesting off pavement riding I did on the entire trip. It certainly wasn't challenging, but after more than 6K miles of pavement and nearly perfect dirt roads (excluding Chicken) this was a nice change of pace. It probably only lasted 6 miles, but it was refreshing.

What tires did you run for this trip?

 

[Dirt_Dad]

What tires did you run for this trip?

Mitas E07.

Will be posting final trip total mileage and photos of tires at the end of the report.

 

[Dirt_Dad]

Day 20 - Seward, AK to Anchorage, AK
Approx Miles: 135

It's a short ride to Anchorage so we try to hang around later at Seward. No sense in getting there before they will let us check into the final hotel for the trip. Of course when you're used to getting on the road around 7:00am each day, even staying somewhere until 9:00 feels pretty late.

We decide to try some of the "scenic" roads around Seward. Nash road turned out to be pretty dull from a scenic standpoint, but somewhat interesting if you're interested in nautical equipment.

The road to Kenai Fjords National Park had more natural beauty.

I thought we were too far south for anything related to the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, but I saw a sign and I had to follow it. Was disappointed when it ended here.

We headed north towards Anchorage. One last stop at the same BBQ place we enjoyed so much on day 15. After lunch we continue north. I am starting to feel real mixed emotions about turning in the bikes tomorrow. They have been with us everywhere we've gone and allowed us to have this magnificent trip. They have been 100% reliable companions. Somehow it feels wrong to turn them in. I know it's just metal, plastic, and rubber, but I'm just not ready to give it over to the shipper. Even DM who is very ready to go home is feeling some emotion about turning in the bikes. It just feels like we're doing something wrong.

We park the bikes at the front of the hotel and check in. About an hour later I call a taxi to take me to the airport to pickup a rental car.


Day 21 - Anchorage, AK
Approx Miles: 4

I ride DM's bike over to the shipper, Alaska Classic Motion. DM followed me in the rental. After parking the bike I jump in the rental with DM and go get mine.

Ron, the owner was a great guy and spent plenty of time explaining the process.

The crates the bikes will call home for the next few weeks.

He setup a ladder so I could look at a KLR he had just crated before the top went on.

Ron really made me feel at ease that we had selected the right company for taking care of our bikes. He shared a few horror stories of what has happened to people using some of the other transport methods I had considered. He was also a wealth of information on what we could do for our final day in Anchorage.

We leave and head over to Lake Hood, to watch the busiest sea plane airport in world (so someone said). There is a tower built to watch the planes at the lake. Access to the tower comes from buying a ticket to the Alaska Aviation Museum. I live very close to the Smithsonian Museums and my expectations on an aviation museum is very skewed.

I have over 600 hours of single engine land airplane flying and 0 hours on the water. Watching the planes take off and land on the water was very interesting. I considered trying to get a flight around the pattern, but it looked like that would cost me far more than I was willing to pay. I decided just to enjoy watching others enjoying their planes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFGi3_cXgRE


It was a nice Alaska way to end the trip.

Day 22 - Anchorage, AK to home
hours: 10.5

Flight out of Anchorage left at 2:30pm on Friday. We landed at Dulles Airport at 5:00am Saturday morning. Our daughter was parked at the front of the airport (I didn't think that was possible). She has seen us do so many long bike trips, but this one capture her imagination in a way we had never seen before. She gave us a big "YOU DID IT!!" She was excited and impressed. It was a wonderful reception. We went to breakfast then she dropped us at home. We went directly to bed since neither of us can sleep on a plane.

Real life has resumed.


A few specs from the trip.

My Trip 2 shows the mileage north of the Lower 48.

DM's Trip 2 shows her total mileage for the trip.

My GPS for the trip. It was with me most of the time. Did not have it with me when I was using DM's bike to run out to get photos or food (she has a more roomy top case for running to town).

My rear tire (mitas E07)

My front tire (mitas E07)

Total route