Update 15

It was a short hop from Skagway to Juneau, so I laid down on a recliner in the rear solarium area of the ship. I had left my sleeping bag in the car deck, which was inaccessible while under way, so I put my backpack under my head, and slept for a few hours. When we arrived in Juneau I was feeling much better and rode into town to write this update from a Starbucks inside Safeway.

Catching the news for the first time in weeks I learned that a Norwegian massacred over 70 people and that little girl was bitten by a shark in Florida. When interviewed, the girl forgave the shark and said "he didn't mean to do it."

The TV man also warned gravely that if we don't cut back on spending for the poor and elderly we face the choice of becoming a country with European tax burdens, or turn into an irresponsible and insolvent nation like modern-day Greece. Ancient Sparta seemed a better comparison to me, with its focus on strength and superiority, its vast resources invested in military might, freedom and equality for those who have the resources or birthright to enjoy it, and humiliation and servitude for its own weak and the poor. To help the viewer reach a reasoned conclusion, a debate ensued. It appeared to consist of people shouting contextless one-liners called "facts," while continually trying to interrupt each other. Whenever the opposing side actually spoke more than one sentence, the camera would cut to the attractive female co-host who would gape and roll her eyes at the lesser man. I cannot understand how anyone can watch people behaving in such a way and saying the things they do without becoming enraged or ill. I had planned to stay longer but found it intolerable.

Back on the boat I settled in for the long stretch for Prince Rupert and took a few pictures in the evening and the next morning. It has been rainy and overcast continually, but I am enjoying the trip a lot. I really like the ship. The whole boat thrums and rumbles in resonance with the engines, and rocks and rolls gently as the captain runs the course through the endless straights and island chains.

After weeks of camping, electricity, water, and heat are in limitless supply. I took a 30 minute shower and for the first time needed to turn down the heat to avoid getting scalded. The bathroom appeared to be heated by the ambient warmth of the exhaust stacks radiating through the boat superstructure, so I didn't even freeze after stepping out of the shower. Food is good here too, and three times a day I can get full to the point of being unable to eat any more, for $10 a meal. That's cheaper than at any diner or fast-food restaurant I've been in. Large $2 bowls of cottage cheese really help round out breakfast and lunch, and I make sure to ask for gravy on anything that'll carry it.

Last night we sailed past a stark border in the waters, between the dark tide off the open ocean and the lighter tide of the fresher inner waters.



I awoke in the morning to a few people milling around the rear deck of the ship to see the Wrangell Narrows. It was very narrow and I was impressed at the skill demonstrated by navigating a large ship through the channel. Mud flats were throwing up breakers from our wake only tens of feet off either side. Bald eagles rested like pidgeons on the buoys and channel markers. Many houses lay along the straight, most in good repair. I envied the man with the glass-front house, and nice aluminum boat and seaplane parked out front. You can see part of the solarium canopy in one of the pictures. It is an open-faced structure with glass panels and gas heaters to make some warmth despite the wind. It's nice to stay out there instead of being cooped into one of the cabins or lounges.



Arrival in Prince Rupert is at 3AM on the 28th, and I will try to catch the BC Ferry the same morning at 7:30AM over to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, arrival at 10:30PM.

Update 14

The road from Tok to Whitehorse was nice, and since I had a late start I got to enjoy the beautiful scenery at dusk.

Right before the Canada border I was passed at Mach 5 by two Porsche 911s covered in blue masking tape and dust. They were held up at the border for a bit as I crossed, but driving side by side they passed me again in the Yukon. By the time I got the camera out, they were already a mile down the road. Radar detectors are not legal in the Yukon, but I have no doubt that these guys were decked out in every possible form of concealed warning or jamming system. If not for the wildlife on the road, this would be the best way to tour the north.



Once the hour or two of darkness fell, I was again struggling with my dim headlight. In the fading light it was hard to tell bear from bush and tree from moose beside the road. Fortunately I saw only one of the formers among many of the latters.



I didn't know where to camp once I was in Whitehorse so I went in search of wifi internet, but it was 3am. Everything was closed and my cell phone made for poor wardriving. I stopped into Tim Horton's and asked some past-curfew teenagers about wifi, and they suggested hanging out in front of Starbucks even if it was closed. They also gave me directions to Yukon Yamaha, and referenced Robert Services Campground as a waypoint. With this info, internet was no longer needed. I rolled my bike past the gate at Robert Services and laid down on the outdoor couch beside the idiotically named "Hippy Yuppy" coffee shop, "where the locals and the globals meet." Apparently it's a cool thing for rich young kids up here to camp all summer in this shitty campground. I was so tired I didn't take off any of my gear and instead just laid down with everything on and fell asleep until 6am when a surly old security guy woke me up.

The next morning I went to Yukon Yamaha for a tire. They had a WR250R collecting dust in the very back of the showroom, so I walked back to my bike, removed my pitiful hacked and worn chain slider, and brought it to the counter. Like a beggar pointing to his open sores I asked meekly if it wouldn't be too much to ask to have the chain slider off of their showroom bike. Even though the replacement part was on backorder from Japan for 3 weeks, they agreed! I bought a Kenda K270 which they static balanced for me once I mounted it. With the heavy side of the tire by the rimlock, it needed 20 grams at the rimlock to re-balance with 160g stuck to the other side from when I had my D606's balanced. His weights didn't stick to the soapy rim so I just removed 20 grams from the other side. I couldn't thank these guys enough. They really went out of their way to help me, even though they were busy.

A sour-faced elfish fellow from Brazil was there as well, looking for new tires, a tire change, and an oil change. He was agitated and insistent that they do the work for him, saying in terribly broken English that when they offered him the tire they had somehow promised also to mount it and do his oil change. Unfortunately their service department was all booked up, and so after much arguing he left with only the rear tire. He paid $350 for it, and outside he asked me if tire good one. I was totally unfamiliar with the brand so I looked at it severely and nodded, yes, very good, last long time. He hopped on his cruiser bike while his girlfriend slung the tire over her shoulder and slid in behind him. They made a comical sight as two of them rode away, mostly obscured by the tall backrest which had been transformed into an enormous Christmas tree of gear and decorated with an uncountable number of brightly colored bungee cords.

Lesson of the day is don't be an incompetent dick. You can be either and get away with it, but things go best if you're competent enough to do 90% yourself and polite enough that good people will do you a favor on the last 10%. It's getting hard to keep a positive karmic balance sheet with all this help I've been receiving.

My ferry was at 5AM the next morning and Skagway was just a short jaunt away so my only goal for the day was to get somewhere around there, eat food, and camp for the night.

On the way I stopped at the Carcross Desert, one of the few active dunes landscapes in North America. It was produced not by the dryness of the area but rather by the collection of fine debris from the terminus of several glaciers, under what was once a lake. With the lake now evaporated, the sand remains. People are allowed to ride over it, a novel thing for a Californian! I decided to try my hand at it, but had a terrible time with the Metzeler Enduro 1 front tire. It has no prominent tread and I wore myself out very quickly trying to keep it straight. I know the recipe is to gas it and stay loose on the bars, but I didn't want to know what would happen to my directional control at 30mph with an effectively bald tire guiding the way. With the little 250 there really isn't any reason not to run knobbies all the time, lest you be going down the highway and bam there's surprise dunes or singletrack to ride.



The landscape further on toward Skagway was spectacular glacier-scoured rock. I tried to ride out on some of the terrain here and made it off the bouldered road fringe, but as soon as I got there I saw that the rock was covered with fragile moss and scrub and my tire was tearing it up. I didn't want to be that shithead who scars everything up so I turned around and contented myself with experiencing the land from a distance.



One of many pretty waterfalls.



Skagway is a big cruise ship destination, so it's crawling with people and the food and drink isn't too bad. I had a good burger, some smoked salmon, a beer, and for $5 got some Flor de Cana rum on the rocks, but to fill the order the bartender had to bottom out two bottles for me and there was only room for one icecube at the end. Woe. One drink per axle is a saying I favor, but I'd need duallies out back to match my last drink so I hung around the library for a bit before heading off to find camp.



The fellow at the ferry terminal told me there were two campsites down Dyea Rd. I inspected one, found it satisfactory, and went to explore the road and find the other. At the end of the road I caught this glimpse of an overhanging glacier.



Seeing no other way forward I went to find the other campsite. It turned out to be near the site of the old Gold Rush town of Dyea, and permit-only. Dyea was on a tidal flat, a mile in from the deep water. Ships would come in and men would trudge out over the mud and back with the supplies. The town died almost as soon as it was founded, as the Klondike Trail worked its way further north in pursuit of gold.

As I was riding around I saw my first grizzly bear walk onto the road a few hundred feet away. I continued to roll forward and began honking to chase him away. After a moment he went loping into the bush, and I rode back to the camping area to inform the campers. A passing driver told me they'd shot at the bear with rubber bullets the day before, but he was back hanging around a creek. I was very excited and started to ride around the various roads winding through the area to make some noise when I realized that I couldn't see 5 feet off the road and decided it would be better to just leave. As I was riding back, I passed a clearing and there he was, maybe two football field's length away.



I think I really wanted to scare him off because like a stupid chimpanzee running around waving branches I decided that making a lot of noise and riding some distance toward the bear would be the right thing to do. I had a fresh tire and figured I could whip a turn and hook up pretty good if he decided to hold his ground. I got a third of the way there when he looked up and started to stand up. He wasn't even looking at me, I think a dog off to the right had caught his attention. In any case, I immediately came to my senses and realized I was doing something very very stupid around a very large bear, turned broadside, took a couple shaky pictures, and raced back onto the road as fast as I could looking into the side mirror to make sure I didn't have an angry grizzly running to chomp on my ass.



I returned to the other campsite and while settling in I discovered that a whole bottle of Dr Bronner's peppermint castile soap had emptied itself into my Giant Loop. Fortunately it had been in with other liquids and toiletries, but I wanted to clean everything up to get rid of the very strong odor. I spent an hour washing everything in the cold glacial creek running by the campsite.

I also noticed that my rear tire was a little flat. It turned out that the inner tube on the Tubliss had low pressure. When I wiggled the valve stem soapy water bubbled out, so I am guessing the some of it got stuck inside and when I initially inflated to 110psi the tube was pressing up against a water or air cavity. With that cavity drained, it read only 40PSI and wasn't holding the seal on the tire well. I reinflated the inner tube and all seems well. My electric air compressor didn't work when I went to top off the tire itself, which was disappointing. It has been sitting snug against the bike under my Giant Loop bag so perhaps the wet and heat and vibration got to it. At least my hand pump works, and my arm got a good workout.

I had only slept a couple of hours at Martin Service campground in Whitehorse the night before so being tired and lazy I put my sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the picnic table, and tried to fall asleep. The wind was howling down the valley, stirring the forest, and sleep was not coming to me. I thought setting up my tent and getting in would help, so I willed myself to do that, but that didn't work either. Finally I started packing everything up, got my gear on, and thought maybe I could just sleep with everything on again. I plugged my heated vest in for a few minutes to get warm, then laid down. My helmet worked surprisingly well as a pillow, but with the wind and night chill I was cold again very soon. I had run out of options so I decided to ride back to Skagway. I pulled into the ferry parking lot and without noticing the 'no camping' sign I inflated my sleeping bag, pulled out my sleeping bag, and crawled next to an electrical transformer box that shaded me a little from the bright sodium lights' glare. I fell fast asleep, missed all my alarms, and woke up just as the cars began to line up for the ferry. I looked over and saw the driver of this camper van watching me. I thought to myself, how can this be?



I rubbed my eyes, decided this wasn't a particularly intense hallucination induced by lack of sleep, and got packed up to catch the ferry. This RV was also driven by a dog.

Update 13

It was an overcast and hazy day as I rode out of Anchorage, headed for the well-recommended Thompson's Eagle's Claw campground in Tok. The conditions were terrible for photography, but all-around the Alaska Highway turned out to be much nicer than I had expected.

All the great old glaciers up here have receded, leaving behind the bare mounds you see below. This was the Matanushka glacier, which I gather is accessible by road but I didn't see a way and didn't want to wander around too much. The next photo is of an airfield backed by the Wrangell mountains. If I recall, the mountain to the right is Mt. Wrangell itself, an active volcano that's heating up. Ice and snow continue to melt off its sides as molten rock below warms the surface. It was extremely windy and I didn't see any air traffic, but there were many interesting cloud formations, including various kinds of disc-shaped lenticulars. The last stretch of road into Tok was a real drag strip. The straightest, flattest road I'd see on the whole trip.



At the Eagle campground I sat down by the firepit and joined a British couple riding around the world on their BMW R1200GS. They were an amiable pair, both young for their years despite being smokers. They had fallen in love with travel. The bike was home for them now, and when the money runs out they planned to sell their home back in England and keep going. If they were to move anywhere, they said it would be Argentina for its diversity of natural environments and good food. They mentioned that some provinces had free wifi everywhere. Sounds like a place I need to visit!

We were joined by a young man in an enormous black cowboy hat and boots. He didn't introduce himself and seemed to alternate between studying the ground and spitting as he hid under his hat. A "howdy stranger" got him talking, and in an fake Irish accent he said he was from North Carolina. His was extremely drunk and had difficulty talking. He said he had been pulled into a ride with a bunch of his buddies from the Army, to learn how to be normal again he figured. They were on leave from Afghanistan and he couldn't get his bike for the ride, so he drove the support truck. It was kind of his job anyway, he drove the broom wagon for convoys back in Afghanistan collecting all the broken vehicles. I talk in an Irish accent when I'm drunk, he said. I get drunk every day, he added, in a voice too tired and slurred to be boastful.

His buddies returned with an enormous cooler full of Coors Light which they shared and we talked for a while about nothing in particular. Apparently they'd been off in town playing drinking games. The told me a new one, the Dollar Game. They'd somehow number all the drinks in the bar and read off digits from the serial number on their dollar bills and make a drink with whatever came up. Apparently some kind of truth or dare game was involved as well, and the young fellow claimed he'd never gotten so drunk he threw up. He sat in the background, spit drooling from his mouth.

One of the men was accompanied by his wife, and he told a story about how he got back home 3 hours before she gave birth to their son, "you cut it close that time," she said. As we conversed he'd look at the ground from time to time and frown. His wife seemed to hover over him protectively and hold him closer. We got to talking about bikes and debated the merits of trikes. The wife said they were stupid, you may as well get a car, a notion I'm inclined to agree with. A few of the guys maintained that they would get one when they retire, if they're not too broken to ride anything at all once they're done. They talked excitedly about riding the mountains outside their base (Jalalabad?) once they get back, going from sea level to 10,000ft in a few miles.

Thinking back on the time I spent with them I can't help but feel very sad, particularly for young fellow who drives at the back of convoys and collects broken and mangled vehicles. I can only guess what he must remember, and then try to forget.

I studied my rear tire again at the Eagle's Claw campground and found the worn spot to be totally bald. After pondering for a few hours and perhaps trying to regrow the tread by thinking about it, I decided to make way to Whitehorse for a replacement. From Whitehorse it is a short jaunt down to Skagway for the ferry to Prince Rupert.

I ran into this rig at the Tok gas station where I stopped to fill up and eat breakfast. It was driven by a young German couple with no crew. They filled up with over 150 gallons of diesel, causing an enormous problem at the cash register. After 20 minutes on the phone they figured out that the only way they were going to be able to run the transaction is by splitting it into $200 increments. His lady partner hid in the cab, uninterested in conversation but the fellow was all smiles and said he was exploring, going nowhere in particular.

I am very skeptical of this particular rig. 99% of the terrain that they will cover could be done in a passenger car, and on the other 1% they're going to be the biggest thing out there with lots of fuel and lots of weight to get stuck in a very inconvenient spot. Where are they going to find a 6x6 MAN or Kamaz to recover them? The rig looks enormous and beefy but it doesn't even have portal gearing in the hubs like a Unimog would. I've seen equally large tires on heavy-duty Ford pickups, which probably weigh half of what this monster does. I asked the driver what he does if he needs to change a tire; does he have a hoist? He said the wheels weigh about 300lbs and he can lift them if he needs to, but he admitted that if an axle goes, he's screwed. For a two-person luxury expedition I think a Rover or Jeep 4x4 with a beefy off-road camper trailer is more sensible.

Update 12

After my night in the Motel 6 lot, I started calling shops to see who had a front sprocket for me--the minimum needed to continue on the road. Many of the wear items on the WR250R are interchangeable with the WR250F dirt bike so it's surprisingly easy to find things like sprockets and oil filters. Unfortunately, Anchorage Yamaha wasn't able to supply anything larger than a 12T front sprocket that was compatible with the small-spline driveshaft. They did give me an unsold 12T sprocket for free just in case (thank you!), and I bought a non-o-ring chain made by Tsubaki. The next paragraph is me making excuses for this odd decision.

I normally wouldn't use a non-o-ring chain, but I bought into the Tsubaki brand for all my bikes. They sell bare master link clips in bulk, and since I seem to lose them every few thousand miles it saves me from having to buy a whole new master link. I can also pull the chain at any time for cleaning without coming to any grief over reusing the clip. In addition, even on the non-o-ring chain Tsubaki's master links have press-fit side plates. In the inevitable case of losing a master link clip, the pins and plates stay put. I also wasn't replacing my rear sprocket, so I expected accelerated chain wear due to the mismatch in tooth profile--no sense wasting a $100 o-ring chain. Since mounting this chain, I feel like the bike shifts and changes speed more smoothly due to the reduced rotational force in the lightweight, low-friction o-ring chain.

Anchorage Yamaha referred me to a motorcycle aftermarket parts store, Go Pro, which had the 14T sprocket I was looking for. They gave me space to work as I changed the oil and installed the new sprocket (thank you too!). With those things squared away and thank-you packs of beer supplied, I went to search for a campsite. I decided to make a stop at Alaska Leather to see what they had to offer, and I bought a pair of waterproof heated gloves. They mentioned that there was free camping and hot showers for travelers at the local Harley dealership.



I found it by the enormous chrome bear statue up front, and rolling into the camping area I saw Bjorn's bike! He was accompanied by a German couple on their own BMWs, who were also traveling around the world. I must have looked suspicious circling around on the tiny 250 because after I inquired about Bjorn they asked each other out loud if he had mentioned a "Mike" before.

Bjorn showed up and proper introductions were made, and we got settled in. They invited me to join them for boiled potatoes and carrots and ground beef so I went to the grocery store and came back with an enormous quantity of additional food. I tried to make Bigos, a traditional type of Polish hunter's stew consisting of sauerkraut, fresh cabbage, onion, sausage, and a dried fruit like prunes or raisins. My stove's generator must be a bit clogged because I couldn't simmer low enough and burned the bottom, but it tasted alright nonetheless. A moderate success, and my first meal cooked on the stove. The Germans were happy with their food alone so I also feasted on the bigos as well as a loaf of bread, a stick of butter, a basket of strawberries, and a 6-pack of beer.

I was planning to head out in the morning, but I ended up spending the afternoon at REI sizing up stuff sacks and buying wool underclothes, and left several hundred dollars poorer. A fellow traveler at the campsite correctly estimated that spending at REI can be represented as a function of time: roughly $100/hr. I needed to stay the night again so I picked up a 12-pack of beer on the way back, tucked it behind the tankbag, squeezed myself into the remaining saddle space, and rolled back to the Harley dealership. No one was around and I started pondering the consequences of finishing the whole pack myself. Fortunately a few fellows showed up to save the day and we shot the breeze late into the night.

All backgrounds were represented, and my opinion of Harleys rose from total pieces of shit to desirable pieces of shit. If they were practical and modern and well-designed, would Harley riders sit around and talk about how they successfully navigated tight corners, how they stopped in front of a deer with 20 feet to spare, and occasionally set their bikes on the side for the mild aerobic exercise of picking them up again? Like flagellants with chrome whips, Harley riders are brought together through their suffering.



That evening two riders showed up, returning to their tent that was set up in the furthest corner of the dealership parking lot (outside of the camping area). I waved to them a few times but they ignored me and everyone else. They were a pair of ladies and didn't seem to have any interest other people, just the tires on offer at the motorcycle guide shop next door, MotoQuest. We were all a little puzzled at being ignored and curious about the strangers so we fell into staring and speculating like a bunch of schoolboys, trying to figure out who they were, what they were, and what they were up to. I spoke with them the next morning, one seemed skittish as a deer at first to have someone talking to her, and the other approached very assertively to ask about my WR250R. They were riding back to Northern California and it sounded like they were on a schedule.

In the same vein, this trip has changed my expectations of motorcycle travel. When I set out, I had modeled the experience in the image of wilderness expeditions. I had envisioned a great solo struggle against the elements and technical obstacles, of early morning starts and long days on the road. What I failed to realize is just how many other people there are out on the road doing exactly the same thing, and almost all are very friendly and interesting. At most campgrounds I found at least one or two fellow riders and we'd talk late into the night. Few would leave earlier than late morning or noon unless they were on a very short vacation. The strangest thing on the road is the person who rides doesn't participate in the community. Frankly, the world would have been a better place if the great heroes of exploration had followed this model, if Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen had decided that this race to the pole business was total bunk and instead shot the shit about mechanical sledges versus sled dogs versus man-hauling for days, took notes, rejiggered their gear, and went off to conquer Antarctica together.

Update 11b

The next morning I got up and discovered I had a problem that needed a solution.



The front sprocket was badly hooked. The chain was had a lot of flex in it and had worn all the way through the chain slider and made 1mm notches in a weld on the swingarm. Cosmetic, fortunately, but I needed to have something there to prevent further wear. I cut part of the slider off the top half and shimmed it under the worn part on the bottom. I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to find a replacement sprocket in Anchorage, and since I was already on the Kenai I figured I would stop in Whittier and see about the ferry straight to Bellingham, WA.

This would be a good place to rant about the Kenai. It is pretty, but it is an awful place to ride (by comparison to the rest of Alaska). Granted, it has many beautiful things to see. It is also the playground for everyone in Anchorage, so the beauty is smeared with tens of thousands of trucks, RVs, and cars. (In and around Anchorage I noticed that the boi-racer/ricer fad has not died out, and the aggressive drivers are complimented by an equal number of incompetents who use the brake anytime they approach a curve of any radius--say at 65mph on a nearly straight highway.) In all fairness, it a matter of expectations; people need somewhere to go and play. So if you have a destination, go there, get off the bike, and hike a glacier or catch some fish. If you expect the journey to be the destination, stay clear of the Kenai or just get used to studying the back of an RV for a few hours.



Be that as it may, the other thing I've found on the road is that it's impossible to make a bad decision. Every bad thing that has happened, every mistake I've made, somehow manages to take a good turn. If you keep positive, talk to people, and try to make something happen, you'll find a way.

So back to Whittier. Whittier could not be shittier. It's a stop for cruise ships and the ferry and nothing else. It turned out I could get on standby for the next ferry, leaving Monday, if I showed up Monday morning. I could also head up to Anchorage and try to make something happen, assuming that the chain and sprocket would make it up, and back if necessary.

With all the mechanical issues to deal with in the morning, I had skipped breakfast. To make any kind of decision, I needed to eat. Whittier's dining choices are touristy halibut fish and chips and Chinese. For consideration, Kenai had the biggest salmon run on record this year. The peak was around 270,000 fish past the sonar in one day. If I was going to eat fish, I wanted fresh salmon.

I went to the wharfside fish shack and they sent me off to the grocery store for a bag of charcoal. As I was buying charcoal, a nice fellow overheard my conversation with the cashier and offered me a pound of Coho salmon fresh off his charter boat. I got two fillets and a belly cut. He wouldn't take any money. I then went back to the fish shack and got another pound of Red salmon, some tin foil, and salt and pepper. I made foil pouches for the fish, got the coals hot, and grilled it all for 10 minutes, not a minute more. It was delicious and I ate it all. Wasn't hungry again until the next afternoon.



Some gratuitous schlieren.



I decided to track down a sprocket and rode out to Anchorage that evening. The one unique thing about going in and out of Whittier is that you go through a 2.5 mile tunnel right through the mountain.



The campgrounds immediately outside Whittier had a bad bear problem. The information board had a guestbook that looked a little too busy for my liking.



I rode out of the Kenai and back up to Anchorage to see what was available.



Cheapest choice seemed to be Motel 6, but they quoted me $140 a night. I must have looked a little helpless as I tried to figure out what I was going to do because the receptionist helpfully suggested that if I've been camping for a month I could just camp out outside the motel. The parking lot was adjacent to some wetlands, so I set up my tent, threw the sleeping bag on the ground, and fell fast asleep.

Update 11a

As I left things, I had just done the Dempster. That evening I took the ferry across the river to the provincial campground and stayed the night there yet again.



I woke up fairly late in the morning and was dicking around with my gear until early afternoon when I heard some rumblings--wondered if it was a truck or the ferry down on the river. The morning was sunny and the sky was blue overhead. I looked through the trees and the slope to the west; cloudcover was building above the ridgeline. The cloud continued to creep higher and further across the sky, and the rumblings began to get stronger, so I put a rush on things and got out as fast as I could. I had stopped checking the weather a while back; isn't much you can do about it anyhow, as one local put it.



So onwards I went, back over the Top of the World. The rumbling seemed to have been caused by the clouds feeding off the moist warm air above the Yukon river. I caught drizzle here and there, but managed to dodge any serious downpours.



Once I got to the Alaska border the road got crappy and boring. I continued north via the Alaska Highway to Delta Junction where I aimed to ride down the Richardson Highway to the Denali Highway. The rain and low clouds thickened into a battle line as I approached the Denali.



Once I entered the mountains there was a real chill in the air, maybe 45F. My hands got quite cold in my wet summer gloves, even with the heated jacket and grip heaters.



The Denali Highway itself was phenomenal, and even moreso in mixed clouds and rain.



After so much time up in god's country I am a little sick of turning a corner on an easy road under clear blue skies and seeing YET ANOTHER OMG HUGE EPIC MASSIVE VISTA #64,348. For me, wet and cold reinforce the terrible beauty of the north. Sure, from pictures and from tour buses or RVs you can see that the north is vast, powerful, and indifferent. But what sets it apart from oceans or deserts or prairies is the latent sense that sooner or later it wants to eat you and floss its teeth with your bones. If the bears and mosquitoes don't get you in summer, just wait for winter. And if not in one winter, then eventually. The north is patient. Glaciers may now recede before the rise of man, but in time they will come to reoccupy their temporarily vacant homes. I don't think you've been north until you've felt that threat blended in with the beauty.

You can camp anywhere on the Denali Highway. Just pull off the road as far as you'd like, and throw up a tent. I'm a huge chicken and I like to meet people so I rolled into the state campground 20 miles outside Cantwell. The next morning was nice and sunny, so I got to see the contrast in the landscape versus the day before.



I stopped at a gas station in Cantwell and it was a dreary run-down affair. Both the station and the connected diner were in disrepair and unmaintained. The diner said it was open under new management, but looked like it would have an inch of dust on everything inside. In the station, half-wired fluorescent light fixtures hung from the ceiling and the few goods that they had were clustered in little islands on the vast stretches of old shelving.



The road into Anchorage was pretty boring again. You got a few glimpses of Mt McKinley, but then it was a tall trees on both sides of the road for miles. I was so bored that started riding the dirt frontage roads that parallel the main highway; used by locals on ATVs in summer and snowmobiles in winter I imagine.



After 5 minutes of this kind of exercise a nearby shotgun? blast sent me back onto the main road. At first I thought one of the bear bangers in my backpack had gone off, but no. I was being passed by a beat-up rusty old truck with a suspender-wearing redneck and a trailer full of ATVs, perhaps he was having fun, or perhaps someone wasn't happy with a dirty motorcyclist hooning it up on their frontage. In Alaska you can make a good pastime of looking at road signs and debating the caliber or gauge of ammunition used to blast holes through them.

My feelings of displeasure with Alaska did not last long. I rode on to Willow where I took a shortcut over Hatcher Pass Rd. to Fishhook. It's not a high pass, but after days of seeing the landscape at a distance, riding right through it was a nice change.



(The 35mph sign made me laugh.)

There was still daylight left so I pushed on down the Kenai Peninsula toward Homer, AK. I made it about 20 miles out of Homer when I had to stop and camp; it was near midnight and after nearly 500 miles on the road I was a little beat.