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

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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.

The museum is a VERY nice facility…

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I guess I should warn folks now that I did no riding today and I’m only going to be posting stuff from the museum… so feel free to skip this if you’re not interested in the artsy-fartsy stuff I saw today.

One of my favorite sculptures of the day… it’s a life-size sculpture of a horse made of twisted and bent Alder wood branches. To me, it looks like a large rough sketch of a horse, but in three dimensions. Very cool.

The biggest bear I have ever seen… I had a hard time believing it was real…

Mastodon and Mammoth fossils

I wish this picture had turned out better, but this old BSA motorcycle was ridden by “Slim” Williams from Fairbanks to New York across the proposed route of an international highway.

The lighting in the museum was horrible, and you weren’t allowed to use flash… so sorry for the dark photos…

This copper “nugget” was uncovered during mining activity in 1936. It weighs 5,495 pounds.

Those “Baby Raven” sculptures were made of nails…

A modern take on traditional native artwork

I think this painting of Mt McKinley is as close as I’m going to get to seeing it… BOOOOOO!

An interesting exhibit called “The Place Where You Go to Listen” was very unique to say the least. You walk into this room and you’re immersed in sound and light… and what you see and hear is all linked to what is going on outside… at that moment…

Rather than trying to explain the experience myself, here is how the artist explains this work…

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I also watched a very interesting and informative film on the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis… which I learned are not two separate Auroras, but one… bouncing back and forth between the two poles of the earth… and they are virtually identical on either side. They showed pictures where two planes flew over each pole of the earth and took a picture of the Aurora Borealis and Australis at the same exact moment and compared the photos… they were virtually identical mirror images of each other.

But enough non-motorcycle related topics! Back to riding!

It’s been interesting riding around on the knobbies today… I get to try and diagnose a whole new slew of sounds and vibrations in an attempt to determine if it’s “normal” or if the bike is falling apart beneath me. Great! Just as I head out towards one of the most desolate and remote areas in North America. Good times!

Tomorrow I start working on my relationship with unpaved roads… and gravel… my arch nemesis and destroyer of rims. My first leg will take me to Coldfoot, AK, and then the following morning I will continue on to Deadhorse AK… Population - 4… LOL…

I have a tour out to the Arctic Ocean booked for the morning of the 9th so I can join the Polar Bear club and go in the freezing Arctic waters. After I return from the tour I’ll be heading back south towards Coldfoot, and then Fairbanks. So I’ll have four days to hone my dirt/gravel/mud/etc riding skillz.

I’m not sure what internet availability will be, so I may not be able to keep the posts coming over the next few days.

The dogs were obviously not starved for attention since most of them were distinctly disinterested in the people around them.

After the demonstration I hit the road and headed north to Fairbanks to Adventure Cycleworks to get knobbies put on the KLR.

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Adventure Cycleworks. They were gracious enough to allow me to ship the tires I wanted to use ahead of time and stored them for me at their shop. If anyone is interested, the cheapest place I found for tires shipped to Alaska was Rocky Mountain ATV (shipping was about $60 bucks for two sets of tires). It didn’t take all afternoon to change the tires, but Dan and I chatted about my trip for quite a while and I asked a lot of questions, which he patiently answered (I’m sure he must get asked the same questions about the Dalton and Dempster Highways every day).

While we were chatting I asked about my friends that I ran into at a gas station in the Yukon, Coleen and Mark, and he said they had been by the shop before and after their trip up to Prudhoe Bay. Apparently Coleen ran over something that punctured her tire and took a chunk out of her rear fender to boot. He said they were able to plug the tire and make it back to his shop where he attempted a more permanent repair. After installing a patch inside the tire he aired it back up only to discover a large bulge on the sidewall and they ended up having to trash the tire. He said that despite the mishap and damage to the bike that she was in good spirits, so that was good to hear.

So here’s the new meat on my bike… ready to be ridden down to mere nubs! BWAH-HAAA-HAAAAAAA!

I have to say… the bike looks pretty bad-ass with knobbies on it.

I was going to ride up to Prudhoe Bay tomorrow, but I learned that the Dalton Highway is going to be closed north of Coldfoot on the 7th, for 24 hours… so rather than being stuck in Coldfoot for a day I decided to stay an extra day in Fairbanks and ride to Coldfoot on the 7th, and then the rest of the way to Deadhorse on the 8th after the road opens back up.

Another MOOSE sighting!!! A mama moose and as Dorklord put it, a “mooselet”

Those white specs are Dall Sheep… you’ll have to trust me on that…

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A well-fed Arctic Squirrel

Some more white specs… aka: Dall Sheep

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Brown specs… aka: Caribou

I was a tad too slow with the camera to get a good shot of this fox…

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That’s about it… I never did get to see Mt McKinley… which was the only bummer of the day.

When I went to eat dinner I asked if there were going to be fireworks anywhere nearby and learned that there never are fireworks shows for the 4th of July because it never gets dark enough at night to be able to see the fireworks.

I left off in a very crowded Seward, AK… and when I woke up and walked outside my hotel room I noticed that a very large cruise ship had docked sometime during the night. So if I thought it was crowded before, that little town was downright packed now.

I did head to the Alaska Sea Life Center, but when I saw a long line and how many people were jammed in there already, I lost all desire to stay and check it out. I decided to just go straight to Kenai Fjords National Park and Exit Glacier. I wanted to get my stamp for The Kenai Fjords NP, but Visitors Center was down by the docks and I couldn’t find anywhere to park. Luckily, there was another Visitors Center at the Exit Glacier site.

The view from the Alaska Sea Life Center parking lot… not to shabby for a parking lot!

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Exit Glacier Road…

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There were a few different trails you could hike to get right up to the glacier, but hiking around in ATGATT isn’t fun… and if I get sweaty from activity in my riding gear, it gets SUPER cold when I get back on the bike and start riding again. With this in mind, I did the shortest hike (1 mile) to view the glacier from a distance.

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After Exit Glacier I headed north to my next destination: Denali National Park. I must be getting spoiled to spectacular scenery because I thought Parks Road was a snoozer, and didn’t offer much in the way of scenery until you start getting near the park.

I arrived too late in the evening to head towards the Visitors Center and inquire about tour tickets, so I just headed to the nearest campground and called it a day.

The following day I went to the Visitors Center first thing in the morning to try and get tour tickets, but they were all sold out for that day. I was able to get a ticket for the next day so I bought a ticket and spent the day in the Visitors Center watching movies about the park and then wandering around the Denali Boardwalk. I also took a sorely need nap… I’ve been finding it difficult to fall asleep at night because of how bright it is. I wish I had packed a sleep mask.

I didn’t take many pictures of the ride out of Valdez since I posted so many on my way in…

Crossing over the pass was “interesting” since you enter and ride through the clouds, and visibility drops dramatically. I kept my fingers crossed that there weren’t any critters in the road because the brakes on the KLR are less than stellar.

Worthington Glacier

The further north I traveled, the more patches of sunshine I started to see breaking through the clouds

Nothing but blue skies on the Glenn Highway

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Once I entered Anchorage I decided to make a little pit stop and do some shopping…

I decided I wanted some sheepskin insoles for my boots to try and help my toes stay warm… or at least warm-er. Barbara was super helpful and even gave me 20% off my purchase because they had a sale starting the next day that I was going to miss. I can’t wait to try out my new warm-n-fuzzy boots. After Anchorage I headed south on the Seward Highway

..and of course the further south I got, the more dreary the weather became

When I arrived in Seward I got a quick reminder that it’s a holiday weekend. Every campground was full, and I had to visit several hotels before I found one with a room available…. and of course the room was outrageously expensive. The town is full not just for the 4th of July holiday, but also because there’s some annual footrace up a big hill. After visiting the Alaska Sea Life Center here in Seward, then the Kenai Fjords National Park and Exit Glacier, I’ll have to head back north because, although it was very nice to have a break from camping, I cannot afford to stay in a hotel another night.

Some local/native artwork outside the local community college

Valdez is a very small town, and yet it has two museums! I visited both, the first being the Maxine & Jesse Whitney Museum. The Whitney Museum has a very large collection of Native Alaskan art and artifacts…

…and a bunch of stuffed animals.

Poor seal…

Even the state bird, the Willow Ptarmigan, is not safe in the animal dioramas…

I walked over to he Valdez Museum and saw this lifeboat

The boat was from the M/S Prinsendam, a luxury cruise ship that caught fire after sailing through the inside passage. 80 people were adrift in the Gulf of Alaska for 12 hours on this little boat. Pulling and pushing the levers back and forth would turn a propeller to power the boat.

“The Perry” one of the only vessels to survive the “Good Friday Earthquake” of 1964, the largest ever recorded in North America. This little boat also helped clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

A beautifully restored old fire engine from 1907

The Hinchinbrook Lighthouse lens. The Fresnel lens was made of brass with 68 glass prisms. It weighs 1,600 pounds and could be seen for 22 miles.

The infamous Alaskan Fur Fish (the Alaskan equivalent of the Jackalope)

The original Richardson Highway road sign

Check out the road conditions back in the day…

A piece of the hull of the Exxon Valdez

Parkas made out of bear and seal intestines… blech!

That’s about it. I spent the rest of the afternoon writing the posts and uploading photos… of which there are a ton because I had time to kill. I’m not riding tomorrow either, just going on the 8 hour kayak trip. Hopefully it wont rain.

It rained all morning, which meant no picture taking for the first half of the day. Which was a shame, because despite the weather, the scenery was gorgeous.

I arrived at Wrangell - St. Elias NP and at 12:32pm Alaska time I officially earned my IBA National Parks Tour Master Traveler Gold Award!!!

…and I did a Snoopy dance in the Visitors Center.

A fishing wheel at the visitors center… apparently, the natives have been using these for over a hundred years to catch salmon, which are so plentiful the wheel just spins and catches the fish and plops them into a basket. No fishing necessary.

The Wrangell Mountain range

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The following pictures are from the 111 miles of the Richardson Highway from the Wrangell National Park to Valdez, AK (when it wasn’t raining and I was able to take pictures).

My first spotting of the Alaska Pipeline

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I arrived in Valdez and set up camp at Bayside RV Park. Every evening they throw fish out and get some of the local eagles to come down and get some free food. It was amazing to see them come from waaaaaaay off in the distance and swoop down to snag the fish. The golden eagle showed up first.

The bald eagles were dificult to photograph because they wouldn’t land and were so quick. I took a bjillion photos and didn’t manage to get a clean shot of any of them.

This was the best picture of the bunch, and it’s crappy…

After the eagle feeding I walked to get some dinner and explore Valdez a little bit.

The port of Valdez

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While eating dinner and reading a local travel guide I saw this picture…

…and decided that was something I had to do. So I went and booked a Glacier Kayak tour with Anadyr Adventures here in Valdez. The first opening they had was for Wednesday morning… so I get to spend a day in Valdez seeing what there is to see and catching up, again, on my posts and photos.

I took this picture at almost 1 o’clock in the morning… there’s over 18 hours of sunlight every day. I’m glad I brought a clock with me on the trip, because you can never tell what time it is based on daylight.

I had to stop for a cheesy tourist picture while heading out of Whitehorse.

A restored 1960’s DC-3 outside the Whitehorse International Airport

Then I was off down the Alaska Highway on a beautiful, sunny day…

When I stopped for gas in Beaver Creek I ran into Coleen and Mark from New Mexico. I stayed with them for a few days when I was on my Nowhere In Particular Tour last year. So funny and completely random to run into them at a gas station in the middle of the Yukon. We decided to ride together as far as Tok, where I planned to stop for the day… and they were going to continue on to Fairbanks.

We made it to Alaska!!! woo-hoo!! waiting to cross the border back into the USA.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Collen, Mark and I had dinner together in Tok (thanks again for dinner guys!), and by the time we finished eating dinner it had started raining. I headed straight to the nearest campground and ended up wimping out and renting a cabin because I didn’t feel like setting up my tent in the pouring rain. The rain ended up dying out into a slight sprinkle so I decided to head out into town and take in some live local entertainment. After the show I spoke with the singer and discovered that he was a rider and owned a Honda Shadow 1100. He told me that the best ride in the entire state of Alaska was the Richardson Highway down to Valdez. I hadn’t planned to go to Valdez, but Wrangell - St.Elias National Park was on the way… so Valdez it is.