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Day1 Saturday July 16th 2005, 516 miles
I left Agoura Hills, California around 8:00 AM and headed North on the I-5 freeway, I then took the 99 north towards Fresno where I had to pick up 2 spare bolts for the front axle of my bike from BMW Motorcycles of Fresno. It was a hot day in Fresno, the folks at the dealership suggested that I take a hotel room and start riding at 3:00AM the next morning. This was the first day of my trip, Alaska was a long way away, I had to cover some distance and I having fun so I kept riding. I was glad for the hydration pack on my back from which took sips about every 20 minutes to avoid dehydration. The constant water intake and all the open vents in my riding gear allowed me to continue riding through the hot day.
I rode up the 99 to Sacramento where I continued north on highway 5. Did I mention it was a hot day, it was hot, the high temperature was 105 degrees F in Sacramento that day as I rode up the 5 freeway. I was hoping to make it to Weed, CA but by the time I got to Willows I had had enough. I decided to pull off the highway and I got a
room at the Motel 6.
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Day2 Sun July 17th, 685 miles
It was about 80 degrees in the morning at Willows. I checked the tire pressure, got on the road and made some good time. I passed through some beautiful country by Mt. Shasta and lake Shasta. I got to Oregon, passed through Grants Pass, Eugene, Salem and then Portland. Traffic was awful passing through Portland, it was crawling, and there was construction everywhere.
When I got to Washington State, I hit a lot more slow traffic and construction riding through Olympia and Tacoma. I was hoping to make it to Bellingham, WA where a friend had let me use his house for the night but it was not looking like it was going to happen. All this bad traffic slowed my progress and I was getting tired of riding in stop and go traffic so I pulled into a Motel 8 in Tacoma for the night. The friendly desk clerk let me park my bike in the number one reserved spot right by the front door which the bike really appreciated.
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Day3 Mon July 18th, 516 miles
Checked tire pressure, both tires were 1 psi less than I wnated so I pulled out the air compressor and pumped them up to 32psi in the front and 36psi in the rear. Today I plan to make it into Canada. It was Monday morning and those not fortunate enough to be riding were going to work. Riding through Seattle was again slow but once I got out of the city I was made good time. I passed Bellingham and got off the 5 freeway onto the 539 and the 546 to Sumas, WA then across the border into British Columbia, Canada.
Once in Canada I took hwy 1 to Hope, BC where I changed some currency and had a late breakfast. I then continued north through some more beautiful places, blue sky, partly cloudy and all around fantastic weather. From Hope I rode north on highway 1 to Cache Creek where I took highway 97, the Cariboo highway north towards Williams Lake where I debated whether I should call it a day or keep riding. I decided to get a little more mileage out of the day and rode on to Quesnel [Pronounced QWENEL] in British Columbia. I checked in at the Ramada Express, where they had a broadband connection. I hooked up my digital camera to the computer and was able to e-mail some pictures to my brother who was managing a website of my trip:
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Day4 Tue July 19th, 573 miles
Quesnel was celebrating their Billy Barker days festival. The temperature was 7 degrees Celsius in the morning when I got on the road again and there were thunderstorms forecast around Prince George, where I was headed. I rode north on the Cariboo towards Prince George where I turned West on the highway 16, the Yellowhead highway towards Kitwanga, BC. From Kitwanga the Cassiar highway, 37 takes you 450 miles north to the Alaska Highway. About half of the Cassiar highway is loose gravel or packed gravel and there are very few services or gas. It was about 5PM when I arrived at Kitwanga, I had to decide if I wanted tackle the Cassiar today. After asking the local gas station about the road condition I decided to ride up to Meziadin Junction which is 97 miles up the Cassiar and then take 37A towards Stewart which was off my path, where there were a couple of motels. This turned out to be a good decision because the 42 miles between Meziadin Junction and Stewart was some of the most beautiful scenery I rode through. A mile down this highway I saw a small bear on the highway, it ran off when it heard the engine as I was slowing down. About half way to Stewart I saw the Bear glacier across a small lake, this was an amazing site. Between Bear Glacier and Stewart, the hills are filled with waterfalls dropping from the ice packs and small glaciers above.
Stewart, BC lies across the border from Hyder, Alaska located in the pan handle, this small town is located at the base of a tall mountain range, the tops of which are almost always covered in low clouds. A local couple with a two year old Lab stopped to chat while I was unloading the bike, they had just moved here in the winter. They pointed out that there are, mine shaft high up in the mountain where miners looked for gold during the gold rush. |
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Day5 Wed July 20th, 435 miles
I was ready to leave around six thirty in the morning but I had to wait for Chad to open up his gas station so I could fuel up. This morning there was a whining sound coming from the fuel pump indicating some dirt in the fuel filter. I rode East on the 37A back to the Cassiar highway. I had breakfast at Meziadin Junction, it had started raining already and this rain would continue on and off throughout the day. From Meziadin Junction I headed 59 miles North to Bell II which was the next gas station. The road was getting muddy and slippery, the 500 pound loaded GS was fishtailing and there was still 300 miles to go. It took a few miles to get comfortable with the handling of the bike under the road conditions and rode on. There were low clouds, it was raining most of the time and you seldom saw other traffic on the Cassiar. I rode on to the next gas stop at Dease Lake. It was around Dease Lake that I came around a bend and there was a bus sized RV in the ditch to the right of the road. The front of the RV had been ripped open and there was an older woman sitting inside with blood all over her face. Two other motorists were helping and I pulled over to assist, a trucker also pulled up ran towards me and asked me to ride up four kilometers to a construction site where they would have radios or a satellite phone and let them know that they needed help. I rode up the highway to the construction site, asked if they had radios and told them about the accident. She pointed to one of the others and said that he was a trained first responder, they shutdown the equipment and went to the accident. There were now several other people at the accident site, there was nothing else I could do so I continued on my journey. A few miles up I passed an ambulance heading towards the accident. I got gas from Dease Lake and some miles later rode into a hail storm, the ice was the size of peanuts but boy was it loud inside the helmet as it came down. Towards the end of the Cassiar highway I saw a sign welcoming me to the Yukon Territories of Canada. The front of my bike was covered with the remains of a thousand mosquitoes and various other insects that lost the game of Chicken with the bike. The underside of the bike was covered in mud which contained Calcium Chloride which is used to control dust on the gravel roads. I would wash this off at the next car wash to avoid any corrosion. About 6:00 PM I came upon the Alaska Highway, I was tired and I headed east out of my way towards Watson Lake. Watson Lake was a very small place but it is famous for having a Sign Post Forrest where road signs from all over the world are nailed on to hundreds of posts and arranged like trees in a forest. At the Northern Lights Center in town there were public internet terminals you could use. |
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Day6 Thursday July 21st, 698 miles
I got up in the morning and it was raining again. I headed West on the Alaska Highway towards Whitehorse which is the capital of the Yukon territories. Did I mention it was raining, yes it rained continuously for the next 200 miles.
It was cold and I was glad for the heated grips on the BMW and the electric heated vest. Both of them together barely kept you from the cold. I stopped for gas at Teslin where to my joy I found the bathroom had a hand dryer which was perfect for warming up. I stepped outside and saw two other BMW GS', I started talking to the riders and learnt that they left San Diego on Saturday morning and they were also heading to Alaska. We rode together to the next gas station and the next. When we got to Haines Junction in the Yukon at about 5:30PM, we gauged each others willingness to continue riding and then decided to ride together all the way to Alaska. We had dinner at Destruction Bay in the Yukon and we called ahead to reserve the last two rooms available at the snowshoe motel in Tok, Alaska. I do not have the words to describe the part of the world that we rode through for the next hundred miles; this was the Kluane Lake and Kluane Wilderness area. We rode and rode and rode into the night, however it was not dark, and the sun was up. The sun was up at 10:30PM when we crossed into Alaska and into a different time zone, I set my watch an hour back. It was about another 100 miles to Tok. We arrived at midnight, Alaska Time and the sun had just set. Everything was closed so we went to a convenience store where we bought some nachos and microwaved a cup of Ramen noodles. |
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Day7 Fri July 22nd, 225 miles
We thought about riding to the Arctic Circle today, but that plan soon changed. We rode together to Fairbanks, Alaska only about 225 miles from Tok. In Fairbanks we checked into the nicest hotel of the trip so far. This was the Aspen Hotel, Rick went to the pool, I took a nap and then uploaded some more pictures from the business center. We walked across the parking to have a nice dinner at the restaurant that looked like a castle. This was an easy day, the plan was to relax today and prepare for the trip to the Arctic Circle tomorrow up the Dalton Highway which was another challenging and rough road. |
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Day8 Saturday July 23rd, 564 miles
Feeling a little nostalgic this morning, I looked at my bike, and it seems incredible that I rode it out of Southern California a week ago and here I am in Alaska. We asked some locals about the road to arctic and the availability of gas along on the way. We learnt that there was gas at Fox and at the Yukon River Camp. Rick who is a master planner called ahead to the Yukon River camp to confirm that they had gas and that they were open. This was an exciting day; we were going to ride to the Arctic Circle.
We rode North on the Elliot highway through Fox, and past Livengood where we turned onto the James Dalton Highway, the Haul Road. Almost immediately the road or lack of it got very interesting, gravel portions interspersed with packed gravel and some asphalt. Out of the blue came about three miles of black wide asphalt with some sweet curves. It was like a race track as Rich described it. There was some of this type road on the Elliot Highway earlier too. Large trucks carrying everything from logs to industrial equipment bound for the oil fields on the north end of Alaska would approach at high speed and you have to pull over to let them go and wait for the dust to settle a bit before proceeding. We made it to the Yukon River camp in good time that morning and we decided to have a big breakfast, I ordered the Haul Road Special. We got gas from an over ground tank and a single pump with two hoses out in the open. Using the honor system you have to note how much you pumped and then go inside to pay. The word around the gas pump was that there was gas at Coldfoot for those riding to Prudhoe Bay. By this time we had seen the Trans-Alaska pipeline several times as it meandered and crossed under the road at different points. We continued to ride north towards the Arctic Circle.
The road was graded gravel and mud, packed gravel and loose gravel almost all the way. I watched my coordinates on my GPS as we got closer to the Arctic Circle. The latitude reading increased slowly up to 66 degrees and 33 minutes and with in a few yards was the turn off to a sign that is probably one of the most photographed places in Alaska. The mosquitoes also know this and they were present in large numbers to great us. We took our share of pictures including one I took holding the Acorn which is a local paper that may publish your travel picture if it shows you holding it up. This was the northern most point of my trip and from then on it was all south for me. As we pulled out onto the Dalton highway I looked north towards Prudhoe Bay and wondered when I'll be back to ride all the way to the Arctic Ocean.
On the way back some of the roads were being sprayed with water and Calcium Chloride which made for some slippery riding. We made it back across the Tundra to the Yukon River crossing to fill the tanks for the ride back to Fairbanks. As soon as we got there we looked for car wash to scrub the mud off the bikes. After the wash I parted ways with my two companions, I had to ride South to the Denali National Park area to meet Laura. Rick and Rich were going to stay in Fairbanks before heading out to ride more of Alaska and Canada and then eventually ride back to San Diego. |
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Day9 Sun July 24th, 0 miles
Laura and I took an eight hour tour of the Denali the National Park. Mount Denali which is 20,320 feet high makes its own weather and is hidden from view for 75% of the visitors. We were fortunate towards the end of day that the cloud cover cleared to give us a magnificent view of the mountain. |
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Day10 Monday July 25th, 240 miles
Rode to Anchorage Alaska to complete the last leg of my planned ride. I was very attached to my BMW R1150GS by this time. We had been through so much in the last few days and here we were 4,450 miles later at the end of our journey...sob. |
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Day11 Tuesday July 26th, 2005
I took the bike to the local BMW dealership to have it crated for shipping back to California. I said goodbye to it and walked away.... |
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