To me these warning signs looked more like Devo hats…
Steep grades indeed. This trip was the first time I ever recall seeing signs saying 20% grades.
There was just so much great scenery heading into Dease Lake, this was where we hit the first of the construction and gravel sections. They were easy and actually in good shape. I can’t say that for all of the construction that we would be going through, that’s like a funky sign for gravel roads, eh? lol. The steep grades sign here was a joke compared to some that we’d see later in the trip. I didn’t get pictures of them, as it’s kind of hard to stop on 20% grades with switchbacks to take pictures. I am pretty sure that Jaime’s got more GoPro footage of it, though.
The lady at the desk of the Dease Lake,hotel where they let us wash our bikes. They gave us a bucket, dish soap, rags and pointed us to a hose. What really nice people, the bikes were liking rather ratty for new bikes. I’m not so sure they liked the bath, the fuel gauges on both bikes just stopped working until the next day, go figure. Strange. There were a few miners working on the hotel during their weeks off from the mines, they were entertained watching us washing the bikes, one of them gave me a really nice and large piece of jade that was a perfect match to the paint job of my bike. They had some great stories to tell us about people who’d been visiting the hotel too.
It was here that we met up with ADV Inmate Tewster, Kelly had told us that he hosted him at his place and we’d likely run into him on the road. Tewster told us about his run down the side road to Telegraph creek. It sounded amazing both Jaime and I agreed that we’d rather come back and hit it on the way home. She really wanted to get to Anchorage so she could get down to Sitka to see her family for her birthday. I was hoping to get there by the 5th of June to see my in-laws (actually ex, but I got to keep them in the divorce, they are just too awesome to let go of.) before they headed down to Washington to see the grandchild. At this point I already knew I wasn’t going to make it in time to see them before they left, but was still hopeful we might make up enough time for a quick visit before I took them to the airport and took over their home.
There was a great deal of this on the trip, between chain cleaning, lubing, and checking tire pressures every day.
Once we got back onto the Cassiar hwy heading heading North again. We had promised we’d stop at Boya Lake to check out the turquoise colored water, how could we not after hearing about how it was the prettiest lake in the area. 
Once we made it up to the junction of where the Cassiar meets the Alaska/Canada hwy there was another DUI check point. With yet another really smoking hot Mountie asking us where we had come from and where we were going. I shocked he didn’t think I’d been drinking given I couldn’t answer a single question coherently. It didn’t help that I had Jaime making comments over the Sena while I was attempting to answer his questions. In my defense, this one was so good looking that even Jaime had a hard time forming a coherent sentence when he asked her questions. LOL.
It was at this point that we hit our first sections of road construction, these section weren’t too bad compared to the sections that we’d hit later on just after Destruction Bay. I kept having people warn me about them, but I wasn’t passing the info onto Jaime. I didn’t want her to worry about it. One of us worrying about it was enough.
Saying that Hwy 37 is paved the whole way isn’t really true, it’s not really pavement, but isn’t gravel either. It’s like the picture above, tar and gravel that makes look it’s paved.
We’d keep hitting nice sunny patches then nice wet cold patches, although the sunny patches really weren’t that warm, I wore my heated gear all day I just kept turning it on and off all day. Jaime put her rain jacket on along with her heated gear.
Destruction Bay was stunning and really cold. The visitor center there was full of tourist a number of them loud kids, that were giving me a headache. The upside was that they had the scopes out so you could see the Dall sheep up on the mountains above. I didn’t take any pictures due to the cold and the headache.
I did talk with a women from England who was driving a camper around, she had crossed paths with us in two other locations. She remembered seeing us and she stopped me to tell me that she loved the Triumphs. During the course of this trip we crossed paths with a number of other tourists, over the weeks going in and out of Alaska and Canada, who would come up to one or both of us and tell us they had seen us in a location earlier in the trip and that they were glad to see that we were okay and still having a great time. It added an extra element to the trip that made it even more special for me.
That bridge in the background was the scariest one of the whole trip. It’s metal grating was really in bad shape, it had signs up requiring all vehicles crossing it to slow down to 30mph, honestly that might have even been too high. The bike moved all over the place and it was really unnerving.
Once past Kluane Lake and Destruction Bay, we hit the worse of the road construction. I felt for Jaime as she still had the deathwing stock tires on her Tiger. The FullBore tires handled it well and I didn’t have too many issues with the deep gravel but she had a number of moments, the really rude semi driver didn’t help out either. She made a number of comments about how close he was to me when he past me, and that it looked like he was going to hit my bike. He wasn’t that close, but he was a lot closer then he needed to be. I didn’t really enjoy the gravel hitting me that he kicked up, I ended up with a few bruises on my arms and legs from it. Once we got to the Alaskan border it was all smooth sailing. It was also the first time we’d get to see two moose, they were just like I’d told Jaime they would be. In the marsh, sticking their head into the water eating the grass. It was a mother with what looked like a yearling baby, it wasn’t that small. We still weren’t see much for wildlife on this trip.
From there it was a fun ride to Tok, Alaska. This section of road on a bike is like a roller coaster ride from all the frost heaves. It a car it’s horrible but we had blast and a few times we even caught air. Once in Tok we stay at Thompson’s Eagle Claw Motorcycle campground. The place was really awesome! It was set up really for bikes, there were place for you to throw up your tent or you could chose to stay in a bunkhouse, or a teepee, an ambulance, or even a convert school bus. We happened to be there with three others that night, so it was nice and quiet. Jaime opted to turn in early, I stayed up to chat with the three coast guard guys who were heading to their next assignment. They were telling me about their trip up the Dalton on CRF 250’s. It sounded like a blast. I was really looking forward to riding up the Haul road myself. The road was permit travel only when I lived in Alaska so the farthest I went up the road was to the Yukon river when I was living in Fairbanks for college.
The next day was a mad dash to Anchorage to see if we could get Jaime’s bike into the dealership there so they could put a new map on it. It was running fine, but there there was features we couldn’t access, like changing it to dirt mode and shutting the ABS off or the Traction Control or changing the time on it. Frustrating. Needless to say we didn’t make it. We stopped to many times for pictures the rain that day was also just horrible so it was hard to make good time. Jaime had to remind me a couple of times that she didn’t know the roads like I did and that I needed to slow it down a bit… oops.
Once we got into Anchorage we hit rush hour traffic, it was the first time since we’d left NM that we really had to deal with traffic of any kind and the traffic on the Seward hwy is really special too. Funny, how something never change. At least I remembered the back way to the Margie & Ray’s so we didn’t have to sit in the rain for an extra hour or more, but there was no way that we were going to get her bike to the dealership. I did call to see how late they were open. I kind of like that Sena for things like that, it came in handy for calling Mike in SLC too while I was riding on the interstate. Never thought I’d be able to do something like that.
Once in Anchorage, Jaime took off to Sitka for 3 days, I spent it with my family and friends, I did some driving around, cleaned up my bike, did some shopping for warmer clothes. and tried to plan out the run up the Dalton. However, the snow storms that were rolling through were making that part of the trip look less likely to happen.