From Whitehorse up to Haines Junction was fairly uneventful. We stopped a few times to admire the scenery,as per these photos. One tends to see a lot of snow peaked mountains up here, and they are teriffic, but I will try to restrain myself. The wildflowers are just starting to flower, which adds an interesting dimension to the roadside verge. I have already alluded to the infinite number of trees up here, mainly spruce as we move further north, and I reiterate that, nice as they are, I am getting sick of looking at spruce trees but.
At Haines Junction I tried 2 ATMs and a bank to get some cash, and naturally enough when they consecutively failed to deliver any readies I got extremely annoyed. Meanwhile Roger followed some other guy, who he thought was me, out of town. The net result being that we each rode up to Beaver Creek independently. This was a long but quite spectacular stretch, skirting the very large Kluane Lake, a miniscule portion of which is reproduced below. There had been some severe washaways in this area, and there were some long sections of roadworks. I had a bit of a chat to some of the construction guys, and apparently the problem is when you get the sort of conditions they have had lately, namely rain on top of the snowmelt, it can produce flows of debris, ie mud, rocks and trees, with so much momentum it just bulldozes everything in its path, wrecking embankments and culverts. Again, I admire the persistence of these guys, who just put it back together. The other issue which we are just now beginning to notice, is frost heave. This is the freezing of water in the road base, with the subsequent expansion and lifting of the road surface, and when it finally melts, the road sinks again. To the road user, this is like riding on a roller coaster, but sometimes with long ruts in the direction of travel, that tend to grab the front wheel. In short, you have to watch it or you could go anywhere. A guy and his wife who we met that evening on a Goldwing with a trailer, said he very nearly flipped the lot. (Given the combined weight of his bike, his trailer and in particular his missus, such an outcome would contravene the laws of physics, but I took his point.)
So after a sleepless night spent in Beaver Creek swatting mozzies by the thousand, made all the more restless because it only got dark for about an hour- and if you can see'em, you just have to slap'em- we headed up to the border. This daylight thing is really weird. We are right on the summer solstice, ie the longest day. And they are really long. Bright daylight at 11.30 pm is hard to deal with. You shut the curtains, and it makes no bloody difference.
Anyway, after a few minor formalities at the border, we were back in the US of A as we crossed into Alaska. And all I can say is about bloody time too, it been a tough grind, either cold, wet and/or windy the whole way from Vancouver. And all plans of doing the Dalton Highway long abandoned, unfortunately. Here is where I would have put the triumphant photo of us entering Alaska, if I had taken one. There was a busload of geriatrics hogging the sign, and we didn't want to frighten them, so I'll take a rain check and get it on the way back. So just try to imagine me in front of a sign that says Welcome To Alaska. After continuing on to Fairbanks, which struck me as being a fairly rough sort of a joint, ironically the weather cleared up to the point where it was actually hot. And the mozzies really went berserk! So we decided to then head down to Denali NP, where we were lucky enough to spend a good day in the Park, albeit on a bus, and to get a reasonably good view of Mt McKinley, just before the weather crapped out yet again. Most people on the bus had cameras with lenses the size of bazookas, so the fact that the sparse wildlife was at least a mile away didn't really bother them. All I saw was a few dots on the horizon with my humble camera. We have seen almost virtually no animals since we reached Alaska, after seeing quite a lot in Canada, and we are puzzled by this. Have they all been shot, as I theorised when I saw the gun rack in the Bass Pro shop in Charlotte while buying my camping gear??
Today's ride down to Anchorage was very cold, about10 deg C, but with a severe wind chill. I was uncomfortable the whole day and to top it off, about 20 miles from Anchorage, it started to rain, and it hasn't stopped yet. Nor is it expected to for the next ten days, according to current predictions. Hope they're wrong. We will spend a few days here, and do some day rides in the area, then head back up to Tok, and go back the way we came in, on the Alaska Highway as far as Haines Junction, then down to Haines to get a ferry to Prince Rupert. We plan a stopover in Juneau, the Capital of Alaska, which paradoxically can only be reached by sea or air. It is a strange place for sure.
I have just clocked up 10,000 miles, and still have a lot of riding ahead to get back to California from up here. My immediate priority is to get the GPS working again. It has an on-board power supply problem, initially I thought it had just blown the fuse, but now we concur there is a short in the fitting that plugs into the back of the unit. So I have ordered a new wiring harness which should be here in a day or two. Thank you Amazon and UPS. Up yours yet again, Garmin.
Here's a few photos taken in the spectacular, awesome Denali National Park. Enjoy!
OK gotta go, its getting dark outside. That means it must be about 3 am.
At Haines Junction I tried 2 ATMs and a bank to get some cash, and naturally enough when they consecutively failed to deliver any readies I got extremely annoyed. Meanwhile Roger followed some other guy, who he thought was me, out of town. The net result being that we each rode up to Beaver Creek independently. This was a long but quite spectacular stretch, skirting the very large Kluane Lake, a miniscule portion of which is reproduced below. There had been some severe washaways in this area, and there were some long sections of roadworks. I had a bit of a chat to some of the construction guys, and apparently the problem is when you get the sort of conditions they have had lately, namely rain on top of the snowmelt, it can produce flows of debris, ie mud, rocks and trees, with so much momentum it just bulldozes everything in its path, wrecking embankments and culverts. Again, I admire the persistence of these guys, who just put it back together. The other issue which we are just now beginning to notice, is frost heave. This is the freezing of water in the road base, with the subsequent expansion and lifting of the road surface, and when it finally melts, the road sinks again. To the road user, this is like riding on a roller coaster, but sometimes with long ruts in the direction of travel, that tend to grab the front wheel. In short, you have to watch it or you could go anywhere. A guy and his wife who we met that evening on a Goldwing with a trailer, said he very nearly flipped the lot. (Given the combined weight of his bike, his trailer and in particular his missus, such an outcome would contravene the laws of physics, but I took his point.)
So after a sleepless night spent in Beaver Creek swatting mozzies by the thousand, made all the more restless because it only got dark for about an hour- and if you can see'em, you just have to slap'em- we headed up to the border. This daylight thing is really weird. We are right on the summer solstice, ie the longest day. And they are really long. Bright daylight at 11.30 pm is hard to deal with. You shut the curtains, and it makes no bloody difference.
Anyway, after a few minor formalities at the border, we were back in the US of A as we crossed into Alaska. And all I can say is about bloody time too, it been a tough grind, either cold, wet and/or windy the whole way from Vancouver. And all plans of doing the Dalton Highway long abandoned, unfortunately. Here is where I would have put the triumphant photo of us entering Alaska, if I had taken one. There was a busload of geriatrics hogging the sign, and we didn't want to frighten them, so I'll take a rain check and get it on the way back. So just try to imagine me in front of a sign that says Welcome To Alaska. After continuing on to Fairbanks, which struck me as being a fairly rough sort of a joint, ironically the weather cleared up to the point where it was actually hot. And the mozzies really went berserk! So we decided to then head down to Denali NP, where we were lucky enough to spend a good day in the Park, albeit on a bus, and to get a reasonably good view of Mt McKinley, just before the weather crapped out yet again. Most people on the bus had cameras with lenses the size of bazookas, so the fact that the sparse wildlife was at least a mile away didn't really bother them. All I saw was a few dots on the horizon with my humble camera. We have seen almost virtually no animals since we reached Alaska, after seeing quite a lot in Canada, and we are puzzled by this. Have they all been shot, as I theorised when I saw the gun rack in the Bass Pro shop in Charlotte while buying my camping gear??
Today's ride down to Anchorage was very cold, about10 deg C, but with a severe wind chill. I was uncomfortable the whole day and to top it off, about 20 miles from Anchorage, it started to rain, and it hasn't stopped yet. Nor is it expected to for the next ten days, according to current predictions. Hope they're wrong. We will spend a few days here, and do some day rides in the area, then head back up to Tok, and go back the way we came in, on the Alaska Highway as far as Haines Junction, then down to Haines to get a ferry to Prince Rupert. We plan a stopover in Juneau, the Capital of Alaska, which paradoxically can only be reached by sea or air. It is a strange place for sure.
I have just clocked up 10,000 miles, and still have a lot of riding ahead to get back to California from up here. My immediate priority is to get the GPS working again. It has an on-board power supply problem, initially I thought it had just blown the fuse, but now we concur there is a short in the fitting that plugs into the back of the unit. So I have ordered a new wiring harness which should be here in a day or two. Thank you Amazon and UPS. Up yours yet again, Garmin.
Here's a few photos taken in the spectacular, awesome Denali National Park. Enjoy!
OK gotta go, its getting dark outside. That means it must be about 3 am.
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