Day 10 -12 Out of Alaska

Day 10, 11 & 12

We left Prudhoe Bay Monday morning with the idea of making it all the way to Fairbanks the end of the day. If you read the previous posts, you know that this was a big undertaking. Without going into too much detail, the road was in worse shape than the two days it took to ride up, with a lot of construction areas that turned the road into a sloppy, sticky, muddy mess. We left Prudhoe at 8:50 am and got to our hotel at 12:10 that night, dead tired.

Dan doing yoga along the Dalton Highway on the way home from Prudhoe Bay.

Along the way, we met several people that we found interesting:

Joseph was from Oregon and he and his dog Star were riding by bicycle from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay. He trained for a year to do this and said “It’s harder than I thought it would be.” We met him originally in Coldfoot, as he was having mechanical problems with his bike and we helped him take the front wheel apart to fix it. Unfortunately, the hub was gone and he was going to have to order another. Someone local sold him one instead.

Kenta was from Japan and studying at Centralia College in Washington State. He rode his bicycle from Anchorage and

was heading to Prudhoe Bay, about 850 miles and was going to take him almost a month. After taking a bus back to Fairbanks, He was going to ride south to

Montana, almost 2,000 miles and was going to take him 2 months, camping every night.

We met John at Yukon River Camp on the way south. When I first saw him, the first thought I had was that he could be a stand in for a 1850’s gold prospector in a movie. He carried a big .44 revolver in a shoulder holster and a rifle over his shoulder. When I asked what the guns were for, he replied in his gravelly voice, “Bear spray.” He told us a few interesting stories about bears trying to climb onto the deck on the back of his house, two miles away out in the middle of nowhere. He had a friend that got swatted around by a bear awhile back, and that friend now carries a big pistol around the house, and a rifle when he goes out anywhere.

It seemed at first that the people that we met along the way were unusual, but even though they have chosen to live a different life than those of us back in Chicago, without exception they all were nice and friendly and had a minute to talk if anyone said hello.

After having Nick at the motorcycle dealership check through my bike after the pounding it took coming back from Prudhoe, we left Fairbanks and made it to Tok, We intend to head to Teslin, BC today and then head south on the Cassier Highway and make our way back into Alaska to Hyder for the 3^rd and 4^th of July. We suspect that cellular service will end once we cross the border and wifi will be spotty again, so the next post might be in a few days. I am having trouble loading pictures here, but will add them when I can. The weather here is good and we are seeing scenery that we missed on our way north in all the rain.