50-by-52: Alaska
After coming back from our road trip around Yellowstone in 2017, there was only one US state that I had not visited. Alaska would require something else, so we started planning for a motorcycle trip in 2020. This was sort of a birthday gift to myself since I would be 50 years in October that year. The name of the project was obvious: 50-by-50. I posted my plan on facebook to go in May 2020, well assured that I would achive this goal.
I was on another road trip in California with Sissel and the kids in February 2020. We barely made it home before US was closed for travel due to the COVID pandemic. My next trip to the US was in August 2021; I had a National Interest Exception for travelling to the US, but due to the conditions in Alaska at the time it did not make sense to visit from California. It was nevertheless too late for 50-by-50...
This year, we decided to finally to the trip in summer. Our deposit on the bikes were still valid and we decided to do the trip in July/August. Our initial plan in 2020 was to do late May, but this year we went for July/August: more rain and mosquitos but higher night temperatures.
Flying to Alaska is not cheap. Considering my girlfriend paid less that 700 USD to L.A. in December, we were looking at 1700 USD this time. While Icelandair was probably the best connection, we decided to stay loyal to Star Alliance and fly SAS and United well mostly because of free food and beer in their lounges.
July 28-30 Anchorage.
 |
| Tuna served at Glacier Brewhouse. |
Apart from food and beer, we did walk along many trails along the rivers. Both Chester Creek and Campbell Creek were we spotted a bald headed eagle were nice hikes. A visit to the Dimond Center Mall was a waste of time.
July 31 Talkeetna.
Finally, the day for picking up the bikes were there and we showed up at Alaska Motorcycle Adventures at 9 AM. Renting motorcycles in Alaska is not cheap, and especially BMW's so. Everything inclusive we were looking at a cost of about 230 USD per day. With that panniers were included and a reasonable 450 miles per day. Even if I had booked a R1200GS LC I was lucky enough to get the exact same bike I drive at home: a 2020 R1250GS.
Weather was was good but we decided to start carefully so we headed up to Talkeetna. This town in situated on the Susitna river and on days of good weather a good viewpoint towards Denali State Park. The town itself is quite unique, and was the inspiration for the town Cicely in the TV series Northern Exposure despite being actually shot in Roslyn, Washington. Walking down to the river we could not actually see Denali due to the cloud cover further north. Despite having had driven less than 200 km that day, we decided to stay for the night and enjoy this cozy town. Finding accomodation was not that easy for us without pre-booking. We nevertheless managed to find vacancy at a motel within walking distance of the main street.
 |
| Our rental bikes in Talkeetna. |
August 1 Denali State Park and Fairbanks
Our second day on the bikes started with transport north on highway 3. And this is when we started to realise that covered road in Alaska are pretty straight, and pretty fast. Quite boring in fact, even when curising at 70-75 mph. The view towards Denali was still clouded so no view of Mt. McKinley itself. From the entrance of Denali State Park, there is a scenic 15 mile drive on covered roads with reduced speed. From that point, the dirt roads had to be driven in a bus. I got nowhere trying to negotiate with the rangers, but were told that during COVID people were allowed to drive that stretch in private vehicles.
 |
| Denali State Park. |
Still, the view of Mt. McKinley was clouded. We had a quick stop at the visitor center on the way down, and was told that actually only 1 out of 5 travelling to Alaska actually get to see the big mountain.
We then continued on HW3 north. Except for a stop at a gallery in Nenana, there were not that much to see so we pushed on all the way to Fairbanks. Here, our strategy of no pre-booking hotels got us into trouble as no hotels downtown had any vacancies. Prices were listed at $400 for some of the properties. We eventually managed to find a motel in the outskirts and took an Uber downtown for dinner. Fairbanks was really nothing to see. A brewhouse had some decent beers, that was all.
August 2 Dawson City.
The next morning we set out on HW2 south. From the map it looked like transport to Delta junction but there were actually quite a bit to see despite the road being fast & straight. The Eielson Air Force Base was interesting enough, but the Tanana river offered some excellent viewpoints. There is a lot of water in Alaska and the rivers are very important logistically. A lot of them have brown or grey clouded water and stretches wide, requiring flat bottomed boats for travel due to their shallowness.
 |
| Tanana River viewpoint. |
From Delta Junction, we rode the most boring part of the trip: 50 kilometers of completely straight road over plains with no view. Very boring, but luckily the GS's are quite comfortable. Arriving in Tok, we stopped for fuel and coffee. We had already driven 320 km, but saw no reason to stay in what seemed to be a junction with a gas station. So we set out for another 110 km toward Chicken. Taylor Highway turned out to be very enjoyable with great views curves. Chicked was a nice pitstop for tourists: a dregdge and some possibility for panning gold if you fancy that.
And there the real fun began. Even with 430 km behind us, the next 170 km was simply amazing. Here the dirt roads began, and 79 miles of those being the fantastic Top of the world highway. Placing the road on the ridges rather than down in the valleys made for windy roads with great view. Dry and dusty, but still very very enjoyable.
 |
| The Dredge in Chicken. |
At the border crossing on top of the mountain, we discovered that the paperwork for entry into Canada was not completed. That was just a formality quickly remedied and we could quickly continue on the Canadian side.
 |
| From the northernmost border crossing between US and Canada towards Dawson City. |
Arriving in Dawson city we had to cross the mighty Yukon river by ferry. It was amazing to see that the ferry ports on both sides of the river are made up of sand from the river, constantly reshaped with excavators on standby. We were told to take care with the bike as the ferry arrived, as quite a bit of force were in play to drive the ferry up on the sand bank.
We parked near the main street after a very long day on the bikes, and found a decent hotel for 100 CAN: stark contrast to the US side of the border.
Dawson City is of course a gold mining city. Touristy, granted but still authentic with wild west style buildings and dirt roads. After a quick shower, much needed from the dusty roads, we headed out for food and beer. Not the place for fine dining nor craft beer bonanza it turned out, but no one were complaining.
|
|
||||||
|
|
After dinner at the Triple J and beer at the Downtown Hotel bar we had a stroll along the river. Since the Klondike river confluence is just upstream Dawson City, the water on the far bank is brown from the Yukon and on the city bank clear from the Klondike. It's really a stunning sight.
August 3. Return to Alaska.
Normally, I'd prefer round trips. From dead-ended dirt roards in Norway, I have learnt to appreciate the reverse trip as well. From looking at the map we found that a trip south in Yukon to White Horse would be too far, so we settled for a return trip on the fantastic road we had driven before.
But first we had to visit a landmark of the Yukon: Dredge No 4. This amazing piece of gold mining history is the largest wooden hulled dredge in North America. It was in operation from 1913 to 1959 and captured 9 tons of gold. Today that would be worth 436 M$. I'd watched 12 seasons of Gold Rush before arriving in Alaska so for me it was very interesting to learn about how the large dredge actually operated. This massive beast only needed four operators!
 |
| Dredge No. 4 |
The drive back to US was very enjoyable in fantastic weather. We again had a quick stop in Chicken before continuing down to Tok. After refueling and dinner, we started looking for accomodation. That turned out to by impossible, and we started to question our strategy of not booking in advance.
 |
| From Dawson City to Chicken. |
All we could do was to continue south on HW1 looking for accomodation. We made it pretty far before we found a B&B that had beds for us. The Red Eagle inn was cozy, and I got a cabin with a fantastic bed all to myself. The owner was a very interesting person of Danish ancestry. He had his own airplane and airstrip, but besides crossing the Bering Strait into Russia they had never been outside Alaska. The story he told was quite sad: this summer they were going to a wedding in Germany. Unfortunately, the day of departure was the one day Lufthansa was on strike and their trip got cancelled. They were only partly refunded.
 |
| Red Eagle Inn. |
August 4. Valdez.
The next morning, we had coffee with the owner in the morning and talked about everything and nothing. He talked about a fish wheel he was going to visit. I had no idea what he meant so he invited us to join him 50 miles south. We were going in that direction anyways so we decided to join him.
The weather was fantastic and on our left side emerged some gorgeous mountains. It was the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Reserve coming into view. Although not more than 5000 meters, it was still a majestic view. We had a quick stop to take some photos of Mt. Sandford.
 |
| Mt. Sandford seen from HW1. |
Moving along, we drove a very primitive, which we enjoyed, access road to the Copper river. Here we got to experience fish wheeling. The fish weel is basically a barge with a wheel installed with wire baskets that scoops salmon into a holding tank. Copper River water was very clouded, so that might help the fishing at least in daytime. When we got there, there were three pink salmon in the tank.
| |||||
|
|
||||
The goal for the day was Valdez, and this time I booked a hotel early in the day. We considered taking the 10 on a detour to Chitina and McCarthy, but we were not sure if our bikes had the range to actually get there and back. McCarthy is an old copper mining town with some well preseved buildings.We found no information about gas availabilty so we moved on.
The drive down from Glennallen to Valdez was very scenic. The view of the mountains and glaciers spectacular. Arriving in Valdez, we found the Valdez Brewing Company for some refreshments. In the marina there were a lot of restaurants and the port were quite busy too. It's a modern city, since the old town was destroyed by an earthquake in 1964.
|
|
On our way up to Fairbanks we had passed on 100 miles of dirt roads known as Denali Highway due to bad weather. Now, we wanted to give Denali another shot. We drove back up HW4 to Gulkana and continued north to Paxson. Here, we enountered some really bad weather. It was raining hard and the temperature dropped to 6 °C. Despite having a new Rukke Rapto-R top of the line Gore-Tex Pro +++ jacket, I was soaking wet. Had it not been for the heated grips on the bike I may not have made it to McLaren lodge, were we had made reservations. When we arrived I was soaking wet. Panniers were not waterproof so basically everything I had was wet. We turned the cabin to max temperature and went to the bar for refreshments. Beer selection was actually quite good and we had some interesting conversions with the locals in the bar.
McLaren lodge served excellent food. It was the largest steak of the trip. I made a friend for life in a dog with fascinating blue eyes by sharing some of the steak under the table. After dinner, the weather cleared up a bit so we got good view of the area. Lucily, they also had gas for the bikes.
|
|||
|
|
August 6. Hatcher pass.
The next morning, it was raining again. Not like the day before so we could enjoy the dirt road. The views were not great but it was still a nice ride to Cantwell. From there, the HW3 south was just transport: fast and a bit boring. It was raining, and there were no sight of Denali on our right hand side.
After a few hours of transport we were at the junction of the road to Hatcher pass. We had skipped this on the way up to Talkeetna due to bad weather. This time we could not postpone so we went for it. The dirt road was windy and enjoyable all the way up to the pass. It's about 1200 mas but still offers some great views of the mountains.
 |
| Hatcher pass |
The road down was pretty steep but it was covered all the way to Palmer. We had planned to stop in Palmer: we had a coffee there before we drove to Talkeetna so we knew it was a good place for staying. Unfortunately, the city was completely full so we had to drive down to Anchorage for accomodation. In Anchorage, we found an OK motel for $350. Not cheap, but the benefit was that we could return to the Glacier Brewing Company and have "dessert" at the Tent City Taphouse.
August 7. Seward.
 |
| Towards Whittier. |
In order to get to Whittier, there is a tunnel and a $15 fee for motorcyles. What was weird was that motorcycles had to wait and drive last. We decided not to wait for an hour to pass so we headed down towards Seward. Crossing the Kenai Fjords and National part was really a really nice drive.
Seward was really not that much to see. We had lunch at returned to Anchorage without getting off the bikes. We delivered them at 17:00 after having driven about 3400 km in eight days.
August 8. Return to San Francisco and reflections.
The last day it was raining heavily so we went to the airport after breakfast. Walking around Anchorage in the rain was not an option as we did not feel we had missed anything after four nights there.
Thinking back on the trip now, there are some reflections made a couple of months later.
- Alaska nature is awesome. A lot of it is flat, so for scenic driving, the south is probably the best part with the exception of Denali.
- There are a lot of fantastic dirt roads in Alaska if that is the main attraction. Top of the world and Denali highways are amazing.
- Covered roads in Alaska are fast and straight: very boring for some.
- It rains a lot in the middle of summer. This is also the tourist season so hotels are very expensive. May or September are probably better options for motorcycle riding.
- Mosquitoes were not really a problem even in the middle of summer.
- Distances are long: our biggest mistake of this trip was probably to try to cover too much and thus were forced to days of transport only.
- Fairbanks was really not worth the visit.
- Dawson city was very nice.
- Talkeetna is worth a visit.
As a closing remark, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with Alaska. Nature is great, but otherwise it is very American. Anchorage could have been anywhere in the US, with the shops and restaurants. Yukon felt much more authentic, and I had I known what I know now I would have planned for more time in Canada.
All in all a nice trip. But if you read my blog about our trip to New Zealand in 2018 this never came close to that motorcycle experience.
More pictures and videos: https://tinyurl.com/BMWalaska
Comments
Post a Comment