Thursday 25 July 2024 to Tuesday 30 July 2024, 1084 miles.
This next part of the journey takes us out of the Yukon, Canada and into Alaska, a state of the United States. We rode 2 fantastic roads, the Top of the World Highway, a road I travelled in the opposite direction in 2016 and the Denali Highway which is stunning road I hadn’t ridden before.
Thursday 25 July 2024, we started the journey from Dawson City to Tok later in the day than originally planned as the person in our group who was ill needed to revisit the hospital, this was to get some medical notes he could hand to the hospital he was going the visit in Anchorage.
At the edge of Dawson there is a free ferry that takes people and vehicles across the Yukon river. We rode past a queue of 40 or so extremely large RV’s and trailers hoping they were parked and not queuing for the ferry, unfortunately they were in the ferry queue, we joined one of 2 much shorter queues, one for bikes and one for cars. The First Nation event over the next few days was attracting a lot of people towing their homes with them as well as taking up all the accommodation in Dawson City.
The ferry that crosses the Yukon river, Dawson City
The RV’s in this part of the world are as big as a large luxury bus in the UK, often towing a trailer or a large SUV, the trailers or caravans, particularly the ones being towed on a fifth wheel by a large truck, some with a trailer, are as long as our articulated lorries. We could see the ferry being loaded and that only one of the longer RV’s or trailers was being loaded for each journey along with a few cars and bikes pushed onto one side of the ferry. Good news for us as we all managed to cross the Yukon on the next two ferry crossings.
On the ferry crossing the Yukon
Once across the river we headed to the town of Chicken along the Top of the World Highway, as I said at the start of this blog this is a road I travelled in the opposite direction in 2016. 100 mile’s of this road is gravel, which is mostly in good condition, although some thick loose gravel and the odd isolated wet patch near the river as we approached Chicken were a little tricky. The road runs along the top of the mountains giving some excellent views either side of road as far as the eye can see, Top of the World Highway is an appropriate name for this road.
Views from the Top of the World Highway
The weather was kind to so we made good progress arriving at the USA Customs point a couple of hours after leaving Dawson. Just before the Customs point a 16 mile stretch of tarmac greets our entry into the USA, it seemed a little strange to find a short stretch of new tarmac in the middle of a gravel road. Customs was easy enough, passport checked, fingerprint’s and a photograph taken and I was let into Alaska, same as the last time I was here no one ever asked to see any bike paperwork.
Entering Alaska
Chicken is one of those isolated places that is a name on a map that attract tourists into a very odd bar, stapled onto the ceiling are lots of the remains of pairs of underpants, the tradition is that customers part with their underwear which is then loaded into a cannon, this is then fired, the now shredded underwear is collected and stapled to the ceiling. How on earth did that all start?
The bar and cafe at Chicken
Phil, Val, Chris and Kerry were staying at Chicken that night, myself Steve and Al moved onto camp at a very good albeit expensive campsite at Tok. The road after Chicken soon turns to tarmac, this was way worse than the gravel road, potholes and an uneven surface that needed to ridden with extreme caution.That night I ate in Fast Eddy’s and started talking to a Scot called Woody, he now lives in New Zealand and leaves a motorcycle in Canada so he can spend the NZ winter touring Canada. He told us a story about how a few days before, on a different campsite, he left some granola in a bag in his tent and returned to find a bear had stolen the bag, along with the granola and his passport, he was grateful that he was able to follow the tracks left by the bear to recover his passport that it had discarded. Apparently the campsite owner was extremely angry that he had been so reckless and gave him a good telling off.
Before pitching the tent in Tok I asked if we were in bear country, the receptionist said we were and they are often seen running through the camp. We shouldn’t worry though there are too many dogs about for them to stay around very long, the real worry here, she said, is Moose, they are very aggressive and if seen keep well away as they are very dangerous.
Friday 26 July 2024, Steve and I started the day with a general direction of travel in our mind, but with no plan to go to any particular town. At Delta Junction we had a look at the weather and decided to head to Tangle Lakes, rain was forecast so we booked a cabin for the night. Tangle Lakes Lodge is a very isolated place just after the start of the Denali Highway, there is a shop for basic goods, a cafe and a small number of cabins to rent. There is no mains electricity or water, no internet or phone signal, no alcohol, right out in the wilderness far from anywhere with no contact to the outside world. It started to rain as we arrived which continued all night, we were pleased to be in a warm dry cabin.
Tangle Lakes Lodge is very isolated
I got taking to someone who was doing some construction work on another isolated lodge in the area, he told me that people say this area is “Gods country”, he followed this with, “all I can say is god is very angry in February”. Winters up here must be extremely bleak.
Our cabin at Tangle Lakes Lodge
Phil, Val, Chris and Kerry arrived so we had dinner with them before retiring to bed early, no distraction in this place to keep you up late.
Saturday 27 July 2024, Steve has a bend side stand on his Norden 901, this was making it difficult to get on and off the bike as well as a worry that it could snap and break off. This could be a problem for two reasons, his bike doesn’t have a main stand so if the side stand does break Steve won’t be able leave the bike standing up without propping it up against a wall or a tree, not ideal. Perhaps more worrying a broken side stand can mean the side stand safety cut out switch will prevent the bike from starting. We decide to backtrack towards Paxton, we stopped there briefly last night and know that there is a mobile phone signal in the area. A brief call later and a new side stand is ordered for our arrival in Anchorage early next week.
Steve’s bike repair sorted, Denali Highway here we come. I was looking forwards to this road even so I was surprised by the incredible scenery. The road is 135 miles long, a short section of tarmac at the beginning and the end which is in very poor condition and much more challenging than the gravel which makes up the majority of the road. Some of the gravel is quite deep in places and the wet polished dirt at the end is very slippery. There were a lot of storm clouds around and some of the roads was wet, but thankfully it didn’t rain on us until after we had completed our ride along the Denali Highway.
The Denali Highway
We arrived safely at the Cantwell end of the Highway and headed North towards Fairbanks looking for an campsite. Before long it was raining very hard so we decide something with solid walls was a better, Denali cabins fitted the bill, we are in a tourist area so it was an expensive, nevertheless it was excellent accommodation with a hot tub outside and a good restaurant. It rained most of the night so our accommodation was a good choice.
Relaxing in a hot tub at Denali cabins
A warm dry cabin at Denali
Sunday 28 July 2024, today we are heading towards Anchorage, we have accommodation booked for a 2 night stay starting tomorrow evening. This allows for a relaxing ride and time to find somewhere interesting along the way to stay for the evening. Phil, Val, Chris and Kerry had booked accommodation in the town of Talkeetna, we decided it would be nice to meet up with them so we headed in that direction. The ride takes us out of Denali National Park, sadly the weather didn’t play ball so I didn’t see the top of the Denali Mountain, the same happened in 2016 when I passed through the national Park on the way to Fairbanks. Despite this the scenery was amazing for rest of the journey.
We stopped at Cantwell and was approach by an American riding a Triumph, he had just returned from a ride to Prudoe Bay on the Dalton Highway and wanted to know what the road conditions were like on the Denali Highway. We had a chat and told him how we had found the Denali, he described some fairly awful weather and road conditions on the Dalton, this wasn’t the first time we had been told of very wet, cold and some snow further North in Alaska.
We arrived and Talkeetna in some warm sunshine and checked into a guest house, very clean and well presented accommodation, a good place to stay on what turned out to be a very wet night.
The six of us walked into town and ate at a local brewery pub and restaurant, there was a good atmosphere in this place, lots of people enjoying the good beer and food. After dinner Steve and I spent some time in another bar with live music, a guitarist playing covers and his own country music songs.
Talkeetna is a lively Alaskan town
Not the first or last time I would see a bear skin nailed to a ceiling
