I really enjoyed spending a few days in Anchorage. It gave me time to catch up with a few people I hadn’t seen for some time. As always I stayed with Ray and Margie, my other set of parents, I guess really they are my ex-inlaws but they are so awesome I had to keep them. It was good and bad that they were around when I got into town, they should have left for Washington in the morning that day, but Ray’s back went out so they put off the trip for a few days. It gave me time to spent with them before I had to take them to the airport then I pick Jaime up from the airport on the same day only later in the evening. She and I’ll will have one day to pick up bike up from the dealership, get it cleaned up, repack everything, and than she has to spend part of the day with my mother doing the shopping that she wanted to do before we headed off to Fairbanks. The second snow storm had just rolled through Deadhorse with at least two more in the immediate forecast. We agreed that riding up the Dalton highway with that type of weather was out of the question for this trip. We were just going to have to plan another trip up to ride that road another time.
Once we’d finally gotten everything in order to head back out on the road, we started toward Fairbanks. I’ll admit this was the slowest I’ve ever made the trip up the Parks highway in all the times I’ve travel that road. It took us just over 13 hours to do the 360 miles that day from Anchorage to Fairbanks, we stopped at every touristy stop there was and took a number of pictures. Talkeetna for lunch was a great diversion.
The guy in the picture below, I almost paid him $10 to stop singing…. I’m not sure but I really think that was his plan on how to make money. He kept singing the same song over and over, not to mention he wasn’t singing it well.
Then of course there is the Igloo, it’s seen better days. It used to be a gas stop back when I was making this drive in college.
Along with the general pretty splendid sights along the way.
Denali Park is a must do stop on the way to Fairbanks. We spent some time in the visitor center. It’s also where we ran into a kid who’d just ridden down from Deadhorse that day. We spent about an hour talking with him, about flat tires on the way up there, how he had to stand up and walk his bike through the snow and ice to get up there… the things you can get away with when you are 20 years old and 6 foot one. Not to mention riding a bike that you can stand up over… Neither of us can do that, heck I can barely get my feet on the ground when I’m on the Tiger. It just made me feel better about giving up on the idea of riding up there. On the other hand, in another week the road would likely be perfect. We just wouldn’t have the time to ride it then.
I’m pretty sure that his almost bald tires is the main reason for the flat…
I do regret not having enough time to make a stop here for some of my friends back home, I know they need a few things from here.
By the time we rolled into Fairbanks that night it was really raining and the road to Lori’s cabin was bit on the sketchy side to say the least. I know that I wasn’t very nice when I was on the phone with her asking her why she didn’t warn us about this when she texted me directions. I’m sure there was some smart comment about her picking the bikes up out of the mud if we dropped them when trying to get to her place. Yes, we had to make that turn through the nasty part. Not fun, but we didn’t fall in the mud so I considered a good night.
We blew a couple of days in Fairbanks, getting new tires on the bikes, changing the oil and doing some sightseeing. I recommend the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum. There were so many great cars there, but I picked this one as I have always had a soft spot for snowmoblies, it was one for the first things that my dad ever tried to teach me to drive when I was like 5 years old. Needless, to say he saw the error of his ways when I gave it way too much gas and he flew off the back. Hum… I guess I was born throttle happy… somethings never change.
We also took a side trip over to Circle Alaska, to get a feel for the new tires on gravel roads. This is one of the highlights of the trip. I’d never been out to Circle, we had been thinking of trying to make a run up to Coldfoot and back just so we could say we crossed the Arctic Circle twice on this trip, but were talked out of it by John, who’s a friend of Lori’s he does a lot of hunting,trapping and surveying around the area. He recommended we do head to Circle instead while we were playing poker the night before. I’m really glad this night of poker ended better than the last time I played poker with him and Lori.
Once we left the pavement I knew it was the right choice!
There were a couple of roads that went off from the main road so we followed them to see just where they lead, not a single time were we disappointed…
What I liked about this one of Jaime, was that we were talking about how do you take pictures of the scenery that do it justice. I think that her look pretty much sums it up… you can’t. You take a picture, then look at it, then you try another or 4 and none of them manage to capture the splendor of what you are looking at. No matter how great the pictures are.
Once we got back to Fairbanks I took her to what I refer to as the experimental farm, at UAF aka Large Animal Research Station. They have musk ox, caribou and reindeer there. We got there in time to see the reindeer eating dinner.