Date: 06/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We got up at 2:00 AM and packed the bikes.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in time, two hours before the ferry leaves. After getting all the paper work done, we queued and waited for the ferry to arrive. The roads around Juneau are limited, the road from the ferry ends in 24miles.

This time is was not so easy to tie the bikes down, since there were only anker points on one side of each bike, which meant that my tie-downs were too short. Luckily, a fellow bike rider had some spare and lent them to us.

In the end we tied both bikes down and moved into our canine.

After we settled in we went to the deck and let the landscape pass by. Below are some pictures of the first leg to Sitka.

And then we arrived in Sitka and hopped on a bus for a guided tour.

First we visited the St. Michaels Cathedral which had an amazing interior.



This is even more impressive when we heard that the cathedral burned down to the ground. The towns people could not extinguish the fire since the water was frozen! Instead they formed a human chain and moved as many items as possible from the church to a safe area, even the heavy chandelier! From here we had a look at the fort and continued to the smallest National Park in Alaska. Part of the park were Salmon breeding grounds. The salmon on the right hand side are half a meter or larger.

We thought that would be an ideal spot to catch salmon, but we have learned that the salmon doesn’t taste nice when they start to swim upstream to bread. The salmon actually stops feeding. Close by was a park with plenty of totem poles. The tour guide told us that there are different types of totem poles, some tell a story, some show that the area is owned by a particular clan and some are at a house entry.


Some of the totem poles were located in a building with other artifacts such as masks or clothes.

Now it was time to head back to the ferry. In the mean time the tent city at the back of the ferry got bigger. I really like that the shipping company allows people to pitch a tent instead of insisting that they hire a cabine.

That night we went to bed early as we’d been up since 2 AM.

Date: 07/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a beautiful sunrise.

After taking these pictures I went back to bed, life can be hard. A couple of hours later we got up and went to the restaurant, having a great long breakfast, with plenty of coffee. In the meantime, fog started to appear which allowed for interesting pictures.

At lunch time we arrived in Ketchican, where we took a guided tour again.

We visited again a park with totem poles, this time we got more information. Some stories are owned by a wood carver, so nobody else can tell the story, some belong to a clan and some are public domain.

We also got some explanation about the carvings inside and outside of a house.

Not long after that we returned to the ferry and left Ketchikan. The sunset looked great, while a solid cloud front was coming from one side, we could see the sun disappearing in the part that wasn’t covered.

Date: 08/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We didn’t stop today at all, so it was a day for just sitting on the ferry and letting the landscape pass by. In fact, it was so relaxing that we only took pictures on two occasions, first when we saw some Wales and second at the sunset. I was a bit slow with the camera, so the whales had nearly disappeared by the time I took the picture.

The sunset took its time, so I got some pictures of it

Tomorrow we will leave the ferry and visit Dave, a fellow motorcycle rider we met at the Horizon Unlimited meeting last year. He offered us accommodation when we are in Washington state, so we happily accepted.

Date: 03/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, warm

Got up earlier, went to the lake to see bears, no success, but we saw a bald eagle on other side of the river.

We went back, made breakfast, packed up and sat on the veranda where we had Wi-Fi and did some communicating with Australia.

Around noon we went to town and had lunch before riding to the ferry. After we checked in we had plenty of time, so we thought we give the bear another chance to show up, still no success. But the river looked like the one from the John West advertisements , all the guys lined up and fishing for Salmon.

Later we went back to the ferry, hopped on, tied the bikes down and had a stunning four hour cruise.

The glaciers were just passing in front of us, one bigger than the next.

 

 

When we arrived in Juneau, we were intrigued by a large Glacier just behind the town which was something worthwhile exploring during our stay.

When we arrived in our hotel, it was around 22:00 and it started to get dark again. The hotel had some rustic charm and they tried to keep the interior as historic as possible. Well they changed the gas lights to electric lights, I think that might have been all 😛

 

Date: 04/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Rain, warm

It was raining the whole day. In the afternoon, we decided to get our raingear out and walk around a bit. We went to the harbour where all cruise liner moored. It is hard to see the sheer size of these boats until you get a bit closer to one.

The Radiance of the Sea already looked quite impressive from the back, but from the side you could see that they even had lifts to bring passengers onto their deck.

 

We went a bit further into the touristy area, where they had plenty of Jewlery stores. They were really empty, but looking at the size of these ships, I can imagine that all the shops are full if one or two of the cruize ships arrive. We found a large bear, so we took the mandetory pictures.

 

Since it was still raining, we decided to go to the pub and have dinner there. Here we realized that we would miss out on one of Juneaus main attraction, the Goldfish Race… Bummer 😉

Date: 05/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, Cloudy, Rain, warm

In the morning we looked out of the window and it was still raining, but looking at the weather forecast gave us hope, the rain should stop in the afternoon. So we took it easy, had a loooong breakfast and got ready around noon to visit the glacier. When we arrived at the glacier the rain stopped and the sun started to poke through the clouds. The view onto the glacier was stunning.

We walked around and found a board walk leading away from the Glacier, which made us curious. It was leading along a small lake to a tiny river and there were bears fishing for salmon. It was a mother with her two cubs, we were excited.

 

Below you can easily see the salmon in the water.

And then we found a porcupine, it was sitting in a tree. Somebody showed it to us, otherwise I would have missed it. I didn’t know that porcupines could climb trees. On our way back to the glacier we found a young porcupine munching grass on the side of the board walk. We could have a close look at one and could find out where its head and tail was :D.

 

We decided to get a bit closer to the glacier. The size is always deceiving, so I zoomed into the water fall on the right hand side and you have the people as a reference.

 

After walking along the park for a while, we decided to buy some food and nibbles for our three day ferry trip. Val and Wombat mentioned that the prices on the ferry were a bit steep. We went to a shopping centre. I liked the totem poles at the drive through pharmacy.

We bought what we needed and also got some credit for my mobile phone. The plan is to use it when we try to sell our bikes. Getting a connection with our supplier was not as easy, I had no reception in our room, but some on the road. So here am I standing, on the road to refill my phone account. Sigrid thought it looked funny.

By the way, have a look at my outfit, BMW boots, jacket and T-Shirt, the only thing missing is the bike. Gaila actually infected me with that thought, she lent her F650 to me… Evil 😉 But I digress…
After I managed to refill my phone account without getting run over by a car, we went on a short sight seeing tour. All of the sudden I found proof that the Roswell incident was true – an Alien was staring at me from a shop …
but he didn’t say “Don’t run I’m your friend!”  (Joke from the film Mars attack and from our Network games).

We were not sure why they put the alien there, it was an empty shop for rent, the only item in the shop was the figurine 🙂.
Finally we went back to the hotel, since we had to get up at 2AM to get to the ferry.

Date: 30/07
City: Whitehorse, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 633
Cumulative kilometre: 56401
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm

We relaxed yesterday, so we were up early… Like, really early. Around 4 AM we decided to have a last dip in the hot spring. We were the only ones there, great, the whole hot spring for us.

When the sun came up, we decided to go back to the tent. We met a ranger and he told us that we just missed a Moose with her calf. I’m not sure if there are really moose around or if they just say so to tourists to make them come and look for the mystical creatures J

We had breakfast and packed up the tent and went on our way. Just around the corner from the camp ground we found this sign and then a Bison herd not far from there.

 

We arrived in Watson Lake, this time the weather was great. So we decided to have a closer look at the Sign Post Forest.

On our way back to Whitehorse, we had a brief stop at a nice lake. Sigrid couldn’t resist testing how cold the water was.

Just before Whitehorse we could see a bit of a rainbow, so we slowed down to allow the rain ahead of us and took our time to get there.

Today we also had to stop a couple of times to clear our visors and when we had a look at our front light, we saw why.

After settling in our rooms we went our for dinner, in a restaurant that a couple of people suggested to us. The food was great and we enjoyed the evening.

 

Date: 31/07
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 440
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

Today we were aiming for Haines. Since it was only around 400km away, we did not rush. Below is Sigrid in thinking pose. I must admit, this road is one of the most beautiful roads on our trip.

Not long before Haines we went over the Canadian/Alaska border and were on our last stretch of road in Alaska.

The view was just great, one Glacier after another and the mountains got higher and higher as we came closer to Haines.

On our way we found this nifty device in the river. As we found out later, it is a Salmon counter used by the fishery department to get an estimate of the number of Salmon coming up the stream. According to these numbers they decide the length of the fishing season.

After trying a couple of hotels and getting put off by the prices, we decided to camp. We pitched the tent and went out for dinner to a restaurant overlooking the harbour and this view from our table:

After a great meal we drove to a small river where the brown bears were fishing for Salmon. We got lucky and saw a bear catching a couple of salmon. As it got darker, it got more difficult to get a good picture, so we decided to try again tomorrow.

Date: 01/08
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

The view from our camping spot looked nice, particularly in the morning.

But when we tried to extend our stay by two days we had a case of dejavue. Our camp spot was booked and we had to move. Since we had training from the hot springs, we moved quicker than last time. The new site was a bit more secluded in the forest, but didn’t have the view onto the lake.

The rest of the day we planned a bit more on the rest of our trip. It looks like we can borrow Hugo’s BMW, so we had a closer look at what we would like to see in Europe. In the evening we went bear watching, this time without any success. Well tomorrow is another day.

Date: 02/08
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

In the morning our camping spot looked even more like it was in an enchanted forest. So we made our breakfast and went to town for food shopping.

Below is the view from the Main street in Haines, isn’t it beautiful?

Later we went back to the lake and had a look for bears again. This time we picked another spot where we meet Aniemike, a girl from Holland riding her KLR650 and travelling slowly through Alaska. Previously she travelled through Australia and other parts of the world before she started this longer journey.

We talked for a while and went back to our campground. We didn’t see any bears today either. Tomorrow afternoon we will get onto the ferry to Juneau, which is just four hours from Haines.

Date: 20/07 – 21/07/2013
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 512
Cumulative kilometre: 54311
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm/ Cloudy, cold, rain

It was raining during the night but when we got up it stopped. What this really shows is that if you sleep long enough the weather will be fine. So we packed our bikes, said goodbye our host and set off to Tok.  On our way was the Mantanuska Glacier, so we stopped and took a picture of it.

We continuned until Delta Junction where we filled up the bikes and had something to eat. At this precise moment it started to rain heavily, lucky that we were inside. The rain stopped after a while and we continued, following the dark clouds in front of us. The nice thing about following clouds is that you don’t get wet and you can see usually a rainbow. On the picture on the right you can see it – look to the end of the road.


The disadvantage is that the great mountains around you are covered in clouds 🙁


When we arrived in Tok, it looked pretty dark and started to rain. The weather looked the same the next morning, so we decided to stay a day before we take off to Chicken and Dawson City, which would have the last bit of planed gravel road of our trip.

Date: 22/07
City: Dawson City, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 291
Cumulative kilometre: 54602
Street: One lane paved, dirt road
Weather: Sunny, warm

Waiting a day has paid off. The weather today was gorgeous, not too hot and not too cold – just right. The landscape and the road were fantastic.

We arrived in Chicken and went to the old town. Downtown Chicken consists of three shops and a toilet block, the population in winter is fifteen. So first we went to the statue in the central plaza of chicken.

Our next stop was the famous saloon, which was five meters further down the main street.

I guess people must have been very drunk when they left the saloon, have a look at what they left behind…


Well after all that food and coffee, Sigrid had to go. What better place to visit, then the famous Chicken toilet block.

After we were refreshed, we felt ready to take our last dirt road challenge, the top of the world highway. We had heard all sorts of different stories, from terrible road up to easy to ride, so we will find out. Have a look at the view from the highway.


The road up the Canadian border was ok, we were still expecting something worse.

The road on the Canadian side seemed to be even better, it was dry and as good as a highway surface and we arrived the boundary from Dawson City in no time.

Only a couple of miles later, the dirt road ended and we worshiped the bitumen again. That was the last bit of dirt road, well, I should say planed dirt road, in North America. And it seemed that we have manged it without even breaking a limb… 😛  Time to celebrate!

 

A bit further down the road we stopped at the Yukon River to take the ferry to Dawson City. Dawson City is located on the other side where the Klondike feeds into the Yukon River and this was the place where they found gold in the late 18oos. Maybe we find some as well 😀

We found a nice hotel, the Midnight Sun Hotel, settled in and had a look at what we could explore tomorrow.

Date: 23/07
City: Dawson City, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 291
Cumulative kilometre: 54602
Street: One lane paved, road
Weather: Sunny, warm

In the morning we joined a guided tour through the town. It was great. There was a guide showing us around and then a lady appeared, dressed in a historical dress, at different location and told us how it was in the olden days. The restored buildings were in immaculate conditions, all restored as authenticly as possible. Below is a picture of the bank. By the way, the mesh wire in front of the teller was apparently not to prevent people from stealing money, it was mosquito wire attuned to the humongous ones that live here J

Then we had a look at the Red Feather Saloon, where I couldn’t resist having a drink – I’m only posing, honest 😛


Then we went to the post office, which was amazing. Have a look at this building, but keep in mind that in winter you have up to -40 degrees, and they didn’t know much about how to insulate a house. The amount of wood to keep this building warm during the winter was enormous.


I like the original safe in the middle.

After the walk we went back to the hotel, and I had a look what was going on in the street. When I was looking down I saw two BMW’s pulling up, both with European number plates. We met a bit later and it turned out that it was an Irish couple and their friend. They had shipped the bikes from over from Ireland. We were all keen to get to see the Cancan dance performance in Gertie’s Diamond Tooth salon, so planned to meet each other there.

In the evening we went up to the Midnight Dom. The view was spectacular and there was a huge bench – called the top of the world bench – which we had to try out.


I tried to make a picture of the two of us, by putting the photo camera on the bike and set the self timer to 10 sec. The bench was on a small hill, so I had to run up and sit down before the timer expired. On the left hand side you can see one of my multiple attempts to make it. There was always a second missing. The righ picture was taken by somebody else, which we asked after I was completely exhausted 😀


When we returned, it was time for CanCan Show. We found out that there were three difference performance every night, so we thought we have a look at the first performance and go home. After we entered the Saloon I found gold, Yucon Gold, ice cold in a 700ml bottle 😀


We found Lessli, Ilean and Gerald and organized a table after the first performance was finished. We did lots of talking and after the third performance finished, they started to close up already… well it was close to two o’clock after all. So we took a last picture and departed. Below is Lessli, Ilean and Sigrid, me and Gerald.

After finding all that gold, we will start a bit later today and ride towards Whitehorse.

Date: 16/07
City: Trapper Creek, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 488
Cumulative kilometre: 53425
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a dip in the hot spring in the morning which felt great! Unfortunately it made us both somewhat more tired, so packing was really slow. After we finished packing we took a couple of pictures of the surrounding before we started. It looked like some people ran out of gas and couldn’t return to Fairbanks 🙂


The day was sunny and warm, the roads were easy and the landscape beautiful. The landscape got more interesting once we passed denali park. The park is known for its hiking sites in summer and skiing\dogslide activity in winter.


We were jawning the whole day which must have been the result of the swim in the hot spring this morning. So when we filled up the bikes in Trapper Creek, we decided to call it a day and finish the last 186km tomorrow.

Date: 17/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 186
Cumulative kilometre: 53611
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a pleasant ride and took our time to see if we would find some Moose. We stopped at plenty of swamp and lake areas but couldn’t see any. Well I guess we have to wait until we are in Anchorage, apparently they are in the parks quite frequently.

We went to an accommodation that was recommended by some German bicycle riders we met in Fairbanks. When we arrived, Wilber – the owner – told us that he had a wireless router but didn’t know how to connect it, so we thought we make ourselves useful. We went food shopping and then to a restaurant visited by many locals, as suggested by Wilber. On the corner was a gift shop, have a look at the name 🙂


The restaurant was great, you could watch the chef prepare your meal. That was the first place since quit a while were the oysters were affordable, and as everyone knows with oysters one must have a glass of champagne 😛


After we went back, we connected and configured the wireless router, which brought memories back. Do I really have to go back to work, can’t I just keep travelling???

Date: 18/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 53611
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

Okay, today was dedicated to Moose spotting. So we went to the tourist information to get some ideas about good spotting sites.

 

Apparently in winter you can find Moose in the streets of Anchorage, they prefer the cleaned roads to the deep snow. When we walked through the streets, we didn’t see any moose, I found only a Grizzly bear, but I managed to outrun him.

Some natives were so interested in watching me be silly that they didn’t move any more….

Sigrid found a Reindeer but that was not too exiting either.

Ok, on our mission to see a Moose, we went up on a parking lot where we had a great view over Anchorage, so it would be easy to spot a moose in the town. The view over Anchorage was great. I didn’t know that Anchorage had so many mountains close by.


Anyway, we couldn’t see any moose on the road, so we decided to visit three different parks. On the first two we didn’t see any moose at all. We came up with different theories why, maybe, there are no Moose and they created these animals only to boost tourism, like Nessy from Loch Ness or the Wulpertinger. And then, in the last park, we saw it. A moose on the side of the road, can you spot it in the picture below? It is right in the middle of the picture, in the middle of the fallen tree, on the left side of the power box.

Okay, here are pictures with a zoom.


I guess that moose didn’t get the memo otherwise it would have gone before we arrived 😛

To be honest, I think it may have been the a guy from the tourist information wearing a moose costume ;).

Anyway, mission acomplished, we have seen a free roaming moose!

 

Date: 19/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 188
Cumulative kilometre: 53799
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

Today we decided to have a look at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. The centre takes care of animals that wouldn’t survive in nature. The animals are not in cages, they are in large fenced in areas. The road to the centre was beautiful, meandering along the Turnagain Arm, which is part of the Cook Inlet. It reminded me a bit on the great ocean road, well with tall mountains in the background.

.

On one viewpoint we read about the Boring Tide, which occurs twice a day. The wave created can reach up to 6 feet (1.8m) and floods the whole inlet in one hit.

Unfortunately you need a very large difference between low and high tide and the next one would be in six days, too late for us. So we continued to the Conservation Centre and here we found some moose. We could look at them close enough to ascertain that these are not guys in a moose suits 😉
Well, they would have a long shift with 21 hours of day light 😉

Moose are much taller than I expected, they are the same height as horses.


There were also some Black Bears and Grizzly Bears. They look cute, but I’m happy that a fence was between us.

The grizzly got some pieces of Salmon as appetieser, I guess that would be enough to eat for me for a week.


Another Grizzly was just relaxing in the water before having a look at the visitors….


We also saw some Musk Ox roaming around.


And then was there the Lynx and the Bald Eagle.


That was a great start of the day. Our next goal was to go up to a shoulder of a glacier and touch it. The best opportunity was the Byron Glacier, not even 70km from here and only a short easy way to walk. Off we went. After getting information from the tourist office and making a small detour, we arrived at the parking lot of the Byron Glacier Trail.

After a short walk, we had a great view onto the glacier.

And here we were, at the edge of the glacier and our Diddles as well.


On our way back we made a stop at the Portage Lake, have a look at the view.

Sigrid made a new friend in the Tourist Information.

On our way back to Anchorage, we stopped at a lake on the side of the road. Sigrid had to put her feet in, this time she couldn’t stop smiling because she was completely frozen, even her face 😛


On our way back we stopped at a wet land with a great board walk, hoping to find some Moose. We didn’t see any Moose but two Bald Eagles, which was great. What a day, tomorrow we will start our trip direction Dawson City, maybe we’ll find some gold in the Klondike river 😀

 

Date: 15/07
City: Chena Hot Springs, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 105
Cumulative kilometre: 52937
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

We packed our bikes, had breakfast and took a couple of pictures of Sven’s Basecamp Hostel, our home for the last couple of days.

When we said good by, Sven just disassembled his IPhone to put a new screen in. I would be interested to see if he got it assembled again, after seeing all the tiny screws and connectors that he had to undo….

After saying good bye we were on a mission, we went to the northern most Irish pub in the Americas; the Big I.

Me visiting the Big-I from the street 🙂

Now we have seen both southern most (Ushuaia) and northern most (Fairbanks) Irish pubs. We continued for an hour before we arrived at the Chena Hot Spring. First we booked an entrance pass for the ice museum, on the way I saw a brown bear…

Then we marched to the ice museum. At this outside temperature it was hard to imagine that we could freeze, but we took our Gerbings Jacket and Gloves, which was a good decision. Here is the building from the outside.

And here is the inside. Everything is made of ice, even the chandelier.

There were three different bed rooms to visit, each with a different theme.

Outside of the bed rooms there were some ice sculptures. Below are two pictures of a rose in an ice ball, on the left with flash and on the right without.

Below is a knight fight, pictures taken from two different sides.

Have a closer look where the right knight got hit by the lance of his opponent.

Below you can see chandeliers and a tiger with a skull.

And there was the fire place, hand when you got cold hand ;-).

And the ice bar where you could purchase a drink in a hand carved glass. We didn’t want to try it, but then.. the bar tender was freezing.

I tried to get a good picture of the chirstmas tree, but none of those really showed it properly.You could either see the tree with the different colurs or us.

After all that freezing, we got changed and hopped into the hot spring, finally warm again.

Tomorrow we will start to make our way to Anchorage, the largest town in Alaska.

Date: 12/07 – 14/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 52832
Street: Street
Weather: Sunny, warm

We started the day relaxed, had a nice breakfast and started the tedious task of cleaning the bikes. The pressure cleaner got rid of the big chunks of that dried calcium chloride, but most of the bike was still dirty and some screws and the chain showed the first signs of rust. So we went to a shopping centre, bought some cleaning utensils and got to work. It took the rest of the day before we finished (before and after shots below).

The next day we started to have a look at the rest of the trip. It was really hard to make a start, we don’t know when and where we can sell the bikes, so we don’t know when and from where we fly to Europe. We also tried to get a price for a round the world ticket, which was not trivial either. In other word, we spent a lot of time but didn’t get anywhere. That was the moment when Lutz, a fellow guest at Sven’s from Germany, asked us if we would like to join them to go to a beer festival. He had already organized a dedicated driver, Rachel. She arrived yesterday from Switzerland and will work here for two Month. We were ready in no time and off we went. Rachel hadn’t driven one of these huge American Pickup trucks and their powerful and sensitive breaks. She got it under control before any of us got sea sick 😉
Here is Rachel in front of the huge car (V8, 5.7L).

On our way to the Beer Fest we found an old German Fire engine from Kaisersberg used as advertisement for Beer.

And here is our crew on the way to the beer fest.

With the entrance fee you got a glass and vouchers for 10 beer samples. I guess there must be around 500 different beers from around the world here, they even had Coopers!

After we sampled a couple of beers, I started to hear some familiar sounds; there was a marching band in Bavarian outfit playing some well-known drinking songs.

The Beer Fest closed at 10PM, have a look at the daylight J

We went to the car but first Lutz needed some Cigarettes. They were available at the pub opposite of the Beer Fest. The pub is called the Howling Dog and is some sort of icon in Fairbanks. Since it was not dark, it couldn’t be time to go home yet, right? So in we went finding live music and … Volleyball.

At the bar all sorts of different things were hanging around, hats and numberplates …. 🙂

A bit further down was a live band playing while outside a volleyball game was going on. It must have been around midnight when the photo on the right was taken.

We left around 2AM and it was still not dark 😀

Let’s ignore the next morning… the afternoon was great. Rachel and some others bought food to make tortillas. Everybody did a bit and a great meal for the whole group was prepared in no time. And it tasted great!

Tomorrow we will leave Fairbanks and ride to a hot spring nearby.

Date: 10/07
City: Wiseman, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 373
Cumulative kilometre: 52399
Street: Muddy dirt road
Weather: Cloudy, Fog, Rain, Freezing

Today we decided to start riding back. I really liked that the sun does not set here. Below is a picture that we took at 0:30 AM, no flash J.

In the morning we had breakfast and took a couple of pictures of our hotel, just to give our readers a feeling of what it looks like. The hallway, the eating area, our living room, bed room and our bath room.



In the entrance there was an area, where you had to put shoe covers on or change your shoes before you entered the hotel. I guess that was done to avoid having all the dirt in the hotel.

When we took off it was drizzling a bit, but no comparison to the rain that we had when we arrived. The road was mostly dry and it was so easy to ride! After a while we had to pull off the road to let the truck pass with an oversized load. There was no room for us on the road 🙂

As we started to get higher up it started to get foggy.

And the fog became denser and denser, up to the point where we could only see a couple of feet.

Here is Sigrid at road works, where we had to wait for a pilot car. I guess the car was for the road works – not for the fog 😉

After we went over the pass we could see the clouds that we were riding through.

The fog was gone and we even got some blue sky! It was so easy to ride the Dalton Highway without the rain. 😀
We found nice accommodation in Wisemans. This time we booked it a day before, so we didn’t have to get the expensive rooms.

 

Date: 11/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 433
Cumulative kilometre: 52832
Street: One lane highway, dirt road
Weather: Sunny, Cloudy

Eleven miles down the road was Coldfoot. It has the only petrol station for a long time. Below you can see the other accommodation available in this area at around 200 per night.

The weather today was beautiful, so we took it easy with plenty of stops and lots of photos.

Me trying to be arty 😛

After a great ride we arrived at the Yucon River Camp, our next petrol stop. There we meet Bjoern and Trinelise from Norway. That was the first time that I met somebody with the same name as me! We talked for a bit before we continued to Fairbanks.

On our way back we only had a couple of road works and all of them watered the road moderately. We arrived at the Dalton Highway sign much earlier than we thought. The ride back was really pleasant, completely different to the way up. It felt like we were riding on a different road.

On the way to our hostel was a pipline exhibition. We missed it on our way up to Dead Horse. I was always wondering what the metal pipes left and right of the pipline were. As it turned out, these are heatpipes with radiator fins at the top. They should ensure that the permafrost under the heated pipe doesn’t melt and prevent that the suppot structure sinks into the ground.

There was also an exhibit of PIGS, units that are sent throught the pipline to clean it. On the left an old model on the right a modern one.


Next stop was Sven’s Basecamp Hostel, and it felt like coming home! After we settled in our room we started to celebrate that we really made it to the top and back without breaking any bones again.

As I found out, the celebration didn’t stop there 🙂

Date: 07/07
City: Wiseman, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre:
Street: One land highway, dirt road
Weather: Sunny, warm/ cloudy, drizzle

When we started from Fairbanks there was still thick smoke in the air, which made it hard to see the surrounding mountains.

After 100km we arrived at the Dalton Highway.

We were surprised that the highway was in such good condition, it was even partially paved. A couple of hours later we arrived at the Yukon River Camp, one of the few places where we could get petrol.

The camp was built near a bridge over the Yukon river. When we went to the river bank, we noticed that there was a barge on land, not sure what the story was, maybe they are waiting until the river is flooded to get the barge back into the water :P.

When we left the Yukon River Camp, we noticed that the road deteriorated and we got more and more average gravel stretches. A couple of hours later we arrived at the Arctic Circle, from here on, the sun won’t set at night.

Not long after that we arrived in Coldfoot, the last petrol station before Dead Horse. So we filled the bikes up and drove to our accommodation in Wiseman.

Date: 08/07
City: Dead Horse, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre:
Street: One lane highway, dirt road
Weather: Cloudy, fog, rain

During the night I could hear the rain pounding on the roof for an hour. That was bad news; if the road is wet it will be very slippery. When we got ready, there were still clouds around, but the ground didn’t look too saturated, so we hoped for the best. When we started, it started to drizzle, and when we drove over the pass, the visibility was really bad; the road was completely covered in fog. It didn’t get better the whole day, it was either drizzling or raining or we were in fog. The road was very slippery and the spray from the road covered our visor in no time, so we had to stop and clean them frequently. On one of these stops, Sigrid’s bike refused to start…. Oh Oh the starter motor didn’t make a sound…. After multiple attempts we -finally- got the bike push started. What a relief!

On any of the subsequent stops we left the bike running.

When we finally arrived in Dead Horse, the temperature must have dropped quite a bit, our Gerbings were on full blast. That made it just berable but not really warm.

The bikes were covered in Calcium Chloride, which turns hard if it dries, as you can see on the engine block.



We had problems to open the zipper of our boots, I guess I have to find a pressure washer to clean at least the oil cooler and the fins of the engine block.

We were happy that we made it in one piece! These were the most difficult 400km of our entire trip. After we checked in we had a look at the weather, forecasted was ‘a possibility of snow’…. We decided to stay another night…

 

Date: 09/07
City: Dead Horse, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre:
Street: Muddy dirt road
Weather: Cloudy, snow, rain

Got up at 4AM, had a shower and then we had breakfast in the food area and took a picture of our motorcycles, it was daylight after all!

At 9AM we made our way to the camp where the bus to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean would leave from.

On the way to Prudhoe Bay we passed the Prudhoe Bay National Forest 😛

 

Finally we arrived at the Arctic Ocean and we got ready for our Polar Bear Challenge – a dip in the Arctic Ocean. Somebody from the bus was nice enough to take a video and a picture of us when we were in the water.

Both of us were happy when we were back in the heated bus, it was a cool experience though :P.
Since we fullfilled our dream to travel from Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia, we thought it’s time to share a bit of the journey with the following video, enjoy.

In the afternoon we meet Jacob, he organized a pressure cleaner for us, so I could free the fins of the engine and the oil cooler.

We also found the petrol station and filled up both bikes, so they are ready for tomorrow.

Date: 03/07
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 622
Cumulative kilometre: 50894
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, rain, cold

We packed our noble steads and were hitting direction Tok. We had breakfast/lunch at Otter Falls Cutoff, a gas station with a nice road house. As we found out, we were not the only hungry ones.


The squirl tried to get into our food bag, but it didn’t succed. On the way we passed the Kluane Lake, well have a look yourself.



On the way to the border we came across the first road works where they sprayed Calcium chloride. When we stopped we realised that our gear and bikes looked now like real adventure bikes.


Not long after the road works we hit the Canada/Alaska border.


Since the sun doesn’t set early, we had plenty of time to get to Tok. Here we meet Houston and his parents again, the motorcycle riders we met a couple of days earlier in Dease Creek.

Date: 04/07
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 50894
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, cold

Today is the 4th of July, the USA independence day. There are great celebrations all over the USA, mostly with fire works at night. Having said that, here in Tok, there won’t be any firework; they have enough problems with wild fires in the morning, so they discourage people from having fireworks. Below you can see the smoke covering the sun.

And there is the midsummer night sun, we would not see much of the firework in bright daylight anyway. So we watched the street parade with Houston and his parents. We even got some loot: candy!


Later we went to the country fare, down the street.

I like the vegetable race and the pole climbing.


The pole was covered in soap and some dollar notes hung higher up. If you can get them off the pole they are yours.

Date: 05/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 326
Cumulative kilometre: 51220
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy

Our goal today is Fairbanks, the last town before we go onto the Dalton Highway. At the petrol station we meet Michel and Jeanie, a couple riding two KLRs, we talked for a while and then took off .

It so happens that we find other motor cycle riders at petrol stations. I guess here we are in the middle of the high season and there are not too many towns before the Dalton Highway.

On our way to Fairbanks we had to pass through North Pole. No question we had to stop here to see Santa 😀


They even had a christmas tree for Australia, have a look at left picture at the tree in the middle, it is upside down.


Not long after we arrived in Fairbanks at Svens Basecamp hostel, where we got a warm welcome from Sven and his sister Nadja.

Tomorrow we will get new rear tires for both bikes. We organized that a couple of day before, so they are waiting for us J

Date: 06/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre:
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a slow start, Bjoern made breakfast in the kitchen


and we slowly made our way to Adventure Cycle works, where we met Dan and Shawn. They were very patient and didn’t mind me asking questions while they were working.


They replaced both rear tyres and my front tyre. As it turned out, I was lucky since my tube nearly had a puncture, so it got replaced straight away. In addition they recommended a different tyre, Heidenau K60 with a better pattern for off-road riding.

Back in the hostel we looked at the weather forecast and decided to go tomorrow, since it should be sunny for the next couple of days.