Day 12 Fairbanks at Last

I got a chance to talk to the old couple on the Honda Goldwing pulling the trailer this morning. He said they went from Jacksonville, Arkansas (near Little Rock) to Alaska and then they went to Key West, Florida and now they're back in Alaska again. I asked him how many miles he had for this trip and he said about 20,000. That's a lot of miles sitting on a motorcycle. He said he's retired now and they don't have any schedule for anything so they just travel on the motorcycle.

I also talked to a guy who was riding a brand new R1200 GS that he had been traveling around Alaska for a while and then had his wife fly out to Anchorage and he picked her up and she was traveling with him for ten days. He said she only had ten days vacation so couldn't come with him on the whole trip. He said he had gone up to Prudhoe Bay by himself and spent two days going up and two days coming back and had the most perfect weather the entire time. I am SSOOOOOO jealous. I've seen nothing but rain for the last twelve days.

I started out from Tok in the rain as usual heading for Fairbanks. I planned one stop at North Pole, Alaska. Notice I didn't say THE North Pole. There's a city close to Fairbanks that is named North Pole. It has a Santa Clause Lane and Santa's House and a great big statue of Santa Clause right on the highway to Fairbanks.

There was very little construction between Tok and Fairbanks. Just one small stretch where they had one lane of the highway closed off while they worked on it. They had a pilot truck that you had to follow and it lasted about 2 miles or so. Not anything difficult at all.

My first stop after getting to Fairbanks was at the BMW dealer to see what's going on. I talked to the Harley mechanic for a while (yes, they are the BMW, Harley, Kawasaki, Polaris, Victory and who knows what else dealer here) and he was telling me that last year he had 32 Harley riders that he knew went to Deadhorse and 28 of them wiped out on the way. He said he tells every Harley rider that comes in there that they should not take a Harley up that road. He says a lot of them make it but a lot of them also don't. He says he actually lives off of the Haul Road, but real close to Fairbanks. He says I have the ideal bike to go there so we'll see. I'm going to watch the weather real close and maybe head out there day after tomorrow. That would take one day to Coldfoot, then another day to Deadhorse and then two days back. I don't imagine there is any cell service out there so I'm hoping they do have wireless. After that, it's time to head home ! !

Tomorrow, I'm going to go out and take a look at the Haul Road and see what I think. They say you can tell what it will be like in the first ten miles or so. This will be a mini test.

Right now it is 11:15pm and it's still bright outside. Your time is 2:15 am so I'm tired and going to bed. More tomorrow.

mo-gser.blogspot.com