The Lucky Devil’s Blog

Rather than trying to do several separate posts for each day… I’m going to do one mega-post summarizing the trip up to Deadhorse, Alaska and back down to Fairbanks.

I headed for Coldfoot on the 7th and I couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather. Look at the happy fluffy clouds!

The Elliot Highway was nice and scenic… but I was anxious to get to the dirty stuff.

My first glimpse of my constant companion for this leg of the trip… the Alaska Pipeline…

Finally!!! Some dirt and gravel road madness and mayhem…

Sadly, the vastness of the area on the horizon just doesn’t come across in photos

Still enjoying the beautiful weather… even though the dirt turned into pavement… AGAIN…

I stopped for a bathroom break at “The Hot Spot”…

…and I have to say, that the restroom there was just about the gnarliest I’ve ever used, and nearly knocked the current title-holder, located in Tijuana Mexico, off the top of my “grossest bathroom ever” list… but the fact that the bathroom had a door made it slightly better than the Tijuana bathroom, which had none. But the fruit smoothie I had was delicious and helped erase the memory of the outhouse.

Unfortunately, this picture does a poor job of conveying all of the purple “fireweed” on the mountain in the background. The whole mountain was purple, but it doesn’t appear that way in the photo.

Photos from Finger Mountain

Still a looooooooooooong way to go…

Made it across the Arctic Circle! The only bummer was the fact that no one was around to take a picture of me with the bike. One of the downsides to traveling alone… you never have pictures of yourself anywhere.

I made it to Coldfoot early in the afternoon… around 3:30pm Alaska time. My Zumo told me it would take over ten hours to get there… but it only took eight, and that’s including lots of breaks for photos and a long lunch break at the Hot Spot café. It felt weird to be done riding for the day so early… and it’s not like there’s a lot to do in Coldfoot with your extra time.

I went and visited the Inter-agency Visitor Center and got my stamp for the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve… and then headed over to the Coldfoot Camp Hotel. What a dreadful place. The employees were rude, and the room was dingy, tiny and outrageously expensive ($199 per night). After checking in and unloading my bike, I walked back to the hotel restaurant and learned that between 5 and 9 your only dining option was to eat the dinner buffet, which was $25. Not being a meat eater, paying $25 for access to a small salad bar was way more than I was willing to spend… besides the poor attitude of the employees wasn’t exactly making me eager to spend any more money at their establishment. I walked back to my craptastic room and ate a protein bar for dinner.

The next morning I went to get breakfast and it was the same deal as the night before… only eating option was the Breakfast Buffet, for $20. Again, I was treated poorly, so again I wasn’t eager to hand over any of my cash… so I ate a granola bar and headed out… but I didn’t make it very far. There was road construction beginning right outside the Coldfoot Camp driveway and traffic was being led through by a pilot vehicle. I was sitting and waiting for the pilot car behind a German fellow on a BMW GS that had a rear tire worn down to the wear bars. I pointed out to him that he might want to reconsider heading further north on those tires, but he scoffed at the notion of turning around and said he was not concerned about it. Allllllll-righty then… nothing for me to do but shrug and keep an eye out for him on the side of the road… which I did.

It was another beautiful day in Alaska (I really lucked out weather wise on this trip).

Heading for the Brooks Range…

Heading over Atigun Pass

Once past the Brooks Range, you pass through the Arctic tundra…

…and every time I would stop for a photo, I would get swarmed by mosquitoes and one would always end up in the shot…like so…

I arrived in Deadhorse around four and checked into my room at Deadhorse Camp. The gentlemen there were SUPER nice and made me feel at home… a complete contrast to my experience at Coldfoot. The room was really expensive ($199) but the rooms were much nicer, and certainly the people were nicer. Arriving early (again, my Garmin told me it would take over ten hours to get there and it took less than six) I decided to head to the infamous Prudhoe Bay General Store and the post office so I could mail some postcards.

I looked around the store for some Mechanix type gloves to use while working on the bike as I had already pretty much destroyed the one pair I brought and was quickly blowing through my stash of latex gloves and didn’t want to neglect doing bike maintenance because I didn’t want to get my hands dirty. I found some gloves but they were unable to ring me up because their computer system was down. I told the guy I would shop around some more and stop back buy the counter before I left to see if the system had come back up. A few minutes later, while I was upstairs looking for a Deadhorse sticker, the guy came and told me that someone had bought the gloves for me! Unfortunately, the guy had already left the store. Unable to thank him in person, I headed back to the gift shop and bought a Thank You card. I left the card at the counter and asked the salesman to give the card to him the next time he saw him. Thank you Butch… wherever you are!

I had only been in town about a half hour, but I was starting to really like Deadhorse! LOL…

After reviewing my tracks for the trip up, I decided that I was going to just ride back to Fairbanks in one shot, and not stay another night in Coldfoot or Wiseman. It was just too expensive. I guesstimated that it would take about 12-13 hours to get back, depending on road construction and weather conditions. Totally doable… and it would save me two hundred bucks.

I had to be up bright and early the following morning for my tour to the Arctic Ocean. It’s a shame that the only way to get access to the Ocean is by paying $45 for a “tour”… to top it all off you have to sit through a 30 minute video on how great the oil industry is and how environmentally responsible BP is. UGH… don’t get me started. But at least I got to see the Arctic Ocean!

The German fellow, Klaus, with the bald tire was also on the tour… so I found out that he did end up getting a flat tire just as he was pulling into the parking lot of the Arctic Caribou Inn. I also found out that he wasn’t even carrying a flat repair kit with him… no plugs… nuthin… so he had to take the bike over to the tire repair shop in Deadhorse to get it plugged. When we got back from the tour he checked his tire pressure and it was down to just 10psi overnight, so the plug wasn’t sealing and the tire had a slow leak. He wanted to try and ride the bike back to Fairbanks but was weary of going alone so since I had already planned to ride all the way back to Fairbanks anyway, I offered to ride behind him for the trip back. I didn’t have plugs, but I had a compressor and a tube and tire irons if worse came to worse. We hoped that the leak would be slow enough that we would only need to stop and inflate the tire every couple hours.

After filling up with gas (I never would have found this gas station if Klaus hadn’t showed me where it was)

we started heading back south. His GS had a fancy schmancy tire pressure monitoring system so at least he could keep an eye on the pressure without having to stop and check it manually. We were also fortunate to still be enjoying good weather… rain combined with his bald, leaky tire would have made things a lot more unpleasant… especially if we were having to stop a lot to inflate his tire frequently.

Shortly after leaving Deadhorse I started having some bike problems of my own. The KLR started surging badly, like it was running out of gas, but there was plenty of gas in the bike. It never completely stalled, and it would always start right up, but then it would start surging and lurching randomly throughout the day. There didn’t seem to be anything specific causing it… it would do it uphill or downhill, and then it would stop for a while only to start doing it again a couple hours later.

We stopped for a break on the Atigun Pass and I gave the bike a quick lookover to see if I could find anything wrong… a kinked vacuum line, a clogged vent tube, etc… I didn’t see anything.

To that point he had only lost five psi, so things were looking up. He mentioned that if the tire continued to hold pressure that well all the way back to Fairbanks he planned on running it all the way back home… to Michigan! C-R-A-Z-Y. I was actually speechless.

When we stopped for gas in Coldfoot, Klaus check his tire pressure and it had only gone down 7psi all morning, so things were looking good for getting to Fairbanks without having to stop to inflate the tire periodically. I looked over the KLR again, but was unable to find anything visibly wrong with the bike. So we both crossed our fingers and hit the road again.

We both made it back to Fairbanks in one piece, and the KLR was still running… just with this new intermittent problem. When Klaus and I stopped for gas in Fairbanks we went our separate ways and I implored him to go get a new tire before riding home. I gave him the address to Adventure Cycleworks and hoped he would do the right thing.

Yesterday I took the bike back to Adventure Cycleworks to have the mud, crud, and calcium chloride washed off of the bike… and to get a professional opinion about the intermittent surging issue that had developed on the trip back from Deadhorse. Dan seemed to think that I might have gotten some bad gas, or some water/moisture in my gas tank. Every other possible culprit we could come up with would mean a constant problem, or a problem under certain conditions, like under load… not one that comes and goes seemingly completely randomly. He drained the float bowl, and told me to keep draining occasionally with the petcock on reserve to try and get any water that might be in the tank out.

I also inquired about Klaus, curious to see if he had shown up to get at least one new tire put on. Dan told me that he did come in that morning and bought a set of Anakees. Whew… no more worrying about Klaus.

After my bike was cleaned up I headed back to camp and spent the afternoon switching between KLR forums and tinkering on the bike. I took the side covers off and the seat off and checked all the carb vent tubes from end to end, checked the vacuum tube from the carb to the petcock, checked other random things, poked around, drained the float bowl again, and couldn’t find anything wrong with the bike. I did other maintenance while I had everything apart and my air filter was completely encrusted with dirt. I don’t think this was causing the problem, but it certainly wasn’t making the bike run any better.

This morning I planned on taking the bike for a spin to see if any of my poking around had improved things. I was telling a gentleman on Goldwing a few tents down from mine about my troubles and he said that he thought it was bad gas as well. He said that he had the same issue while riding around Alaska before… which is why he now packed Seafoam! YAY! He poured some in my tank and I let it sit for a while and then off I went to Chena Hot Springs to see how the bike was running.

Seafoam is a magical elixir because the KLR ran great all day! Woo-Hoo! Since the bike was running great, I was actually in the mood to wander around Chena Hot Spring a bit. I took the tour of the Ice Museum.

That brings me up to date, and I’m ready to hit the road again tomorrow. The weather looks good, so I’m going to head east and try to ride the Top of the World Highway… since I had to skip it earlier.

Soooo… my Dalton Highway summary/parting thoughts:

• I didn’t need to carry gas.  I filled the can in Fairbanks and carried it the first day only.  I never even needed to switch to reserve at any point along the route.
• The road had WAY more pavement than I was expecting.
• Knobbies tires were unnecessary, but were nice.  If the weather had been worse, the knobbies would have been needed more… but otherwise, it was overkill.  But, given my very limited experience riding dirt and mud, it was confidence inspiring to have them.
• I have officially slain my dirt and gravel road demons.  I actually had fun riding on the dirt and gravel, and the mud was a hoot too.  The large front wheel of the KLR rolls right over potholes that would have me pulling over and checking my rims on the FZ6.  I wish I had taken a KLR to Mexico.  That trip would have been fun instead of the bone jarring and nerve racking experience that it was.  Just the wrong tool for the job.
• Use the OTHER gas station in Deadhorse.
• Don’t stay at Coldfoot Camp… if I were to do it again, I would go up in one trip, and back down in one trip… of course bad weather and road construction changes everything.  I only made good time because of the perfect weather.