While I was driving from NC to CA with my friend Val in August we stopped at Shakespeare Ghost Town outside of Lordsburg in southwest New Mexico on I-10. Out of dumb luck we arrived just in time for a tour, which only happen on 2 days out of every month.
In honor of the first day of fall here are some pictures pulled off the old SD-780 of summer randomness.
We got off the ferry and were a bit caught off-guard by the blackness of the night. The midnight sun was no more.
We had a few days to spend in Juneau, aka “The San Francisco of Alaska”.
Carrying a bike box while you are riding a bike is not easy. (Thanks to Cycle Alaska for the boxes).
We were flying out of Juneau, but there aren’t any roads that go there. Gotta take a boat. The ride was 5 hours or so, but I wish it had been longer. One of the few times in my life I didn’t want to arrive at my destination so quickly.
The Alaska Marine Highway System is awesome. The ferry goes as far south as Bellingham, Washington. You should go check it out sometime if you haven’t. I will be back.
These pictures cover our last 3 days of biking.
Thank you Benny for your kindness to a couple of random white kids on bicycles. Take care of yourself and your sister.
Big ups to Dave at www.vaguedirection.com for being such a baller. Nothing like riding into town and being greeted with pizza.
Thank you Joe, Trish, and Tucker for your amazing hospitality, and to Joe and Lisa, and Barry for crucial rides.
Thank you to every driver who moved over to be completely in the other lane when passing when it was possible, and for the ones that would have if they could. Thank you Canada for building those awesome shelters.
Thank you to every mosquito that didn’t bite me. Thank you to every raindrop that avoided us. Thank you sun for every ray you shown on us. Thank you wind for every time you were behind us. Thank you bike for not breaking.
Thank you Biz for being my friend.
Davy I wish you could have stayed with us. Love you brother.
Our time in the Yukon was most memorable due to the large amounts of rain we encountered. The warm weather we encountered near Fairbanks seemed like the distant past.
Fortunately, many campgrounds in the Yukon have shelters with giant wood stoves in them, with precut wood in covered bins nearby. Thank you Canada. These saved our butts. No matter how wet and cold we got during the day we knew exactly how many miles we had to cover until we had the chance of being warm and dry again.
Another challenging aspect of this time were a couple of 15K stretches of roadwork where the pavement was replaced with loose gravel. You were forced to bike on the narrow section than had been compacted by car tires and cars speeding by in the other direction would shoot rocks towards you on occasion.
During one such stretch of construction when it started pouring down rain and we were forced to run unto the woods for cover for the first time. A decent-sized spruce tree provides surprisingly good shelter, and we were to use this technique several more times during the tour.
I believe these pictures cover 5 days of riding.
After Fairbanks we did two of our most mellow days, both consisted of 50 miles of flat riding in the sunshine. We were hot. We ate ice cream. It was grand.
We camped right in Delta Junction and from there it was 95 miles to Moon Lake, right outside of Tok. A consistent tailwind went a long way to make that distance seem to go by rather reasonably.
The stretch of road between Delta and Tok was extremely desolate, we had a car pass us about once every 15 minutes. The highway started to feel like a giant bicycle path.
After Tok it took us two days to cross the border into Canada.
Morning at the mosquito onslaught at Sanctuary River meant a quick exit. After packing and being turned down for a ride by a full bus, we biked the 10 miles out of Denali from Sanctuary River (repeat scenery… ) to catch the free shuttle at the Savage River.
Once we were back on the Parks Highway it was about 60 miles north to Nenana, home of the world famous Nenana Ice Classic, where you can win hundreds of thousands of dollars by guessing the exact data and time (to the second) that a weight will break through the ice every spring.
Nenana to Fairbanks was only 50 miles or so, but hilly, somewhat hot (WHAAA??!!), and exhausting. I recall spending a decent amount of time in Fairbanks lying on the grass napping. Once sufficiently rested, we ditched our stuff in the campground downtown and spent the evening biking around the city, checking out the University, and watching the sunset from the banks of the Chena River that flows through the center of town. For a weekend night in July things seemed relatively quiet.
We woke up and packed as a trio one last time on the nicest day we had seen in the last 2 weeks. Davy got on a train for Anchorage. His new plan was to fly back to the Bay Area and start a road trip.
Jeff and I put our bikes on the free shuttle that takes you to the end of paved section of the road that goes into the park. We biked 10 miles and dropped our stuff off and Sanctuary River campground. Ironically named, as it turned out to have the most-dense population of mosquitos we encountered in Alaska. Almost unbearable.
We fled the campground and spent the rest of the day biking 40-some miles into the park to Tolkat River. The bus system allowed us to throw our bikes on for free and get a ride back to where we had started.
We had 70 miles to go to get to the main entrance of Denali National Park. After about 10 miles of biking at the top of a large hill I looked back to see Davy riding his bike with one leg and instantly knew the bike tour was over for him. 🙁
Hitchhiking to the park entrance was our new goal. About 4 cars passed before Barry, an extremely nice manager of a golf course in Fairbanks, stopped in his Toyota Tacoma. We threw our bikes in the back and got a ride to an area outside the park called Glitter Gulch by the locals. Davy used his phone to plan his exit. I drank coffee and observed tourists trying to stay warm on a cold and rainy afternoon.
The next day was spent inside the park hiking. It was the first day of our trip that we didn’t get rained on. Denali itself remained hidden in clouds, but it didn’t really matter, the landscape was immense.
Two locals, Joe and Lisa, gave us a ride to a campground a bit north of Anchorage. They were extremely hospitable and had done some bike touring themselves. Lisa had just finished divinity school at Duke and started a job as the first woman Methodist pastor ever in Homer.
A wet evening and morning led to a mercifully dry day of biking up the tree-lined highway (with some sun eventually!) and a campsite beside Montana Creek. Davy’s knee had been hurting him and he was not optimistic about his ability to bike as much as he had planned.
The next day involved a similarly wooded day of biking. We were close to the tallest mountain in North America but couldn’t see it through the clouds. A mistake of pitching our tent at a wooded walk-in site led to the second-most buggy campsite of the entire tour. Evening rain forced a retreat to the tent for one of several competitive games of Oh Hell. One more day of biking and we would be at the entrance to Denali National Park.
When we got to Homer we were taken case of by an extremely gracious trio of hosts, Tucker, Joe, and Trish. We ended up spending a few days in Homer as we waited for a ride Joe arranged to retrace our route back up the Kenai Peninsula to Anchorage.
It was chilly and cloudy but Homer’s location surrounded by water, mountains, and glaciers still felt like another planet at times. Joe’s place from the hills east of town had an amazing view across the bay that we were able to take in sitting around the campfire.
We left the Anchorage airport around 11pm and headed south. Our late start resulted in a trip to Walmart for supplies that was particularly unpleasant even for Walmart. The ridiculous amount of light allowed us to then bike 15 miles outside of town and crash at an information hut after finding actual camping to be lacking.
Our first full day involved windy miles around Turnagain arm. We ened up camping at Upper Summit Lake. Our second full day started out with the only stretch of road with zero shoulder at Cooper Landing, and ended with an excellent camp spot at Johnson Lake where a moose hung out for a while.
The third day was a bit shorter and brought us into Homer. The weather had been overcast and none-too-warm. Fortunately we managed to avoid biking in the rain. That would come later.
