Ding! Safe in Anchorage

From Tok to Anchorage, it's a straight shot.  I put my head down today and made it, though the body and even the bike protested along the way.  I had planned to only take a photo or two, but I wasn't prepared for what I was about to see.  

This one made me shout out loud when I first saw it on the horizon.

The road presented the usual challenges -- uneven surfaces, massive potholes, long sections of gravel and deceptive crevasses, plus miles and miles of construction delays and clouds of bugs.  All in all, nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing to whine about. 

The wind, on the other hand, really howled at times, and I needed to hug the shoulder at low speeds to plow forward.

When I hit the main pass through the mountains, I simply couldn't believe it.  Here's a big taste.

My bike seat, of all things, actually disconnected today.  I rode the seat right off the damned bike!

I didn't even try to capture the glaciers spilling from the mountains along the way.  They were unreal.

In the end, the bike and I pulled up safely to our hotel in Anchorage.  I'm sore as hell, and proud of the almost 4,700 miles we've traveled in three weeks.  Thanks to my trusty steed for not crapping out on me, though I gave it every opportunity to do so.

What a journey.  

The Top of the World Highway

From Dawson City, you take this little ferry across the river.  

And you're deposited on a road that looks like this.  

At times, the road is packed so hard and smooth it almost looks like pavement.  Often, it does not resemble pavement at all.  It's covered in gravel and dust and mud -- and rocks the size of grapes, limes, lemons, and occasionally grapefruits, some permanently mounted in the road, others loosely strewn about at random.  There are potholes and washboard sections, grooves and gaps and ditches.  This highway has it all. 

All of the Yukon seemed to be on fire at this point, so some of the early vistas were hard to make out. 

For the vast majority of the road, you're riding the spine of some tall hills and mountains, weaving from one to the next.  It's incredible. 

This next photo shows how the gravel and dirt tends to pile up and get thicker the closer you get to the shoulder. 

The early scenery had flora similar to a lot of my Yukon rides. 

But as I continued, the landscape changed and became more subtle -- and more grand, to my eye.  Yellows and bright greens were replaced with muted maroon, orange, and deep greens. 

Some reviews of the scenery on this highway thought it wasn't all that great.  I think those reviewers are nuts, or perhaps they've just been on some truly otherworldly roads and their perspective is a little skewed. 

I didn't photograph any of the worst sections of the road because I was more or less holding on for dear life, riding slowly with zero interest in stopping what little momentum I had.  The scariest sections were steep, winding declines in the road, where very large rocks were sprinkled in deep gravel, presumably to help bigger vehicles keep traction.  This strategy had the opposite effect on me and my bike. 

Here's a little mud. 

I saw maybe 12 or 15 vehicles total in the 3+ hours I slogged across the Top of the World Highway.  You can see the dust trail from one of those vehicles on the left along a typically winding section. 

Once I got closer to the Alaska border, the scenery became more dramatic, and the fight was well worth it. 

Notice the road on the top left of that last photo.  Another typical section of the latter half of the ride.  Now look to the top right of the next photo, and behold the northernmost border crossing in North America:

The line to cross was, of course, nonexistent. 

On windy or rainy or snowy days, traversing this highway seems insane.  Even in the relatively good weather I experienced, it was asking a lot of my bike.  What's more, once you cross the border, you still face 40 miles of nasty, muddy, pothole-ridden twists and turns on the road to Chicken, Alaska -- so you're most definitely not out of the woods once you hit US soil. 

It's a hell of a journey. 

Glad we made it.  

Dawson City is an Odd & Special Town

(Yukoners aren't shy about dropping an ampersand whenever they like.)

Dawson City, Yukon is a mining town.  In 1896, people got word that there was gold here.  In 1900, literally 1,000,000 ounces of gold were extracted from the earth.  Within a few years, that number dropped almost as quickly as it spiked.

They still walk on boardwalk-style sidewalks here.  There's still lots of booze and some gambling.  It has the feel of a preserved gold-rush town, but there's something more too -- something weirder, to my eye. 

First, the obvious thing at this moment.  Instead of seeing the grand mining town against gorgeous verdant Yukon mountain peaks, I see it against a cloud of forest-fire smoke.

You couldn't see the scenery while I was here, even at the river.  It was cloaked in what looked like fog, but was really just smoke.

Possibly related, everything's covered in white dust and dirt.  That could be the fires, but it also may be how the town looks.  This is a gold town, and everything's been turned up and blasted apart.  The streets seem to be made of white dust, fires or not.  Random streets on the way to town look like they've been snowed on, and every car is blanketed in thick dust and mud.

Another reason for the oddness:  This is one of those "period" towns, like Williamsburg, Va. or Gettysburg, Pa.  Lots of people employed by the city (or by Canada) wear a funny costume while they interact with visitors, and it's not unusual to see a lady in a pioneer dress and funny hat leading tourists around town. 

Maybe 20 of the classic 1900-style edifices are original structures.  New structures are required by the zoning board to look like old structures.  There are other incentives to 1900-ize pretty much everything else too.  And it works!  It looks like you went back in time when you walk around.

Other weird stuff:

Every service person seems to be from Europe or Canada or the States.  They're smart, young, attractive, ambitious, and provide superb service.  The gays are here too.  Close your eyes and listen to the soundtracks, linguistic stylings, and general ambiance, and you might think you're in Los Feliz or Greenpoint or wherever.  When some girl with the side of her head buzzed isn't pouring you a craft cocktail and selecting a new playlist, some guy from Australia or Madrid is saying "soooorry" with a Canadian lilt as he nonchalantly buses your table.

Meanwhile, the rest of this very tiny population consists of Yukoners -- guys with giant beards who don't say anything for a long time.  These characters have their own quirks and manners, and they could certainly be a town unto themselves, as they no doubt were before the new guard showed up.  

To add one final layer of texture to the picture, Dawson City is an enormously popular RV destination.  Many locals along the Alaska Highway lament the rise of the RV crowd, but for the moment, it's here to stay -- and every RVer is rightfully nuts about Dawson City, which has plenty of space, beautiful scenery and wildlife and fishing, and tons of great bars and restaurants right in town.  To put it mildly, the RV crowd lends its own special patina to the social life of Dawson City.  For better or worse, that patina often involves drunk chubby retirees waving at you with the joy and subtlety of a toddler.

One last obvious thing:  It's obscenely cold here for most of the year.  It's (mostly) a seasonal town, and that has a big effect on how people and employees comport themselves during the relatively short period when Dawson City is In Season.  Everybody seems to have 50% more energy every night.

Without the period angle and the resort angle, this town would be proper Yukoners, hunters, and not much else.  It would be staggeringly beautiful (when the world isn't burning around it), but it might have three gas stations and not much else.  Instead, there's much, much more.  They hung on to the Gold Rush stuff, and that brought employees and tourists.  They managed the infrastructure and got RVers and Europeans and more employees.  They kept a foothold in nature and people come here to hunt, fish, and view wildlife.  They sell gold prospecting tours, helicopter tours for northern Yukon and Alaska, boat tours, and every other kind of tour you can imagine.  More employees arrive to handle these jobs.  And so it goes.  

Dawson City is mobbed all summer.  Every restaurant and bar I visited was packed solid.  Whether or not it has forged an identity or reached an equilibrium, Dawson City is firing on all cylinders -- whatever those cylinders might be.  

Tombstone Provincial Park

Located right along the Dempster Highway, Tombstone's a trip through very different landscapes.  According to the brochure, you get boreal, alpine, and Arctic environments all within a compact park.  

You start with rivers, valleys, forests and some rock formations.  

Then you extend towards a more mountainous region in the middle of the park.  

 And eventually into the north end of the park, where a slender arm of Canada's Arctic creeps in. 

That last shot may not look like much to you, but in person the top half of the slope looked almost green and blue and purple, while the lower portion was a sea of reds and oranges and yellows.  It was a subtle trip across the color spectrum in one long slope.  

Driving to the north end of the park, you could feel the wind pick up and the temperature drop.  On an extremely nice day (for up there), it still felt inhospitable and very remote. 

The bike and I fell once at low speeds, had a brush with disaster at higher speeds, and almost turned around on a few occasions.  But we crossed the continental divide and made it to the top of the park, where a nice German couple took our photo. 

The Dempster Highway

The Dempster is a 740-km dirt and gravel highway that connects the Klondike Highway with the city of Inuvik.  No major highways or roads intersect with the entire Dempster highway.  It's way up there. 

Motorists are recommended to carry a spare tire or two, as well as extra gas and water.  The tire advice was not a comfort to me, as my bike does not have a lot of room for spares.  

Here is one of the first signs you see as you begin the journey.  

I talked briefly with that man walking across the bridge.  The conversation lasted less than a minute.  The number of mosquitoes that swarmed around each of us was hard to comprehend.  One or two ended up in my mouth, and many more joined me in my helmet for part of my ride.  

The Milepost, venerable guide to everything around these parts, notes that while the highway is in relatively good shape, it "requires drivers pay attention at all times for sudden changes in road surface, including frost heaves, potholes, boggy or slick stretches, crushed shale (hard on tires) and other drivers." 

The surface is dirt and gravel.  In spots it's quite flat. Sometimes, it's quite not.  You get potholes, embedded rocks that stick out like small speed bumps, patches of thick gravel, mud, etc.  And when a car or truck passes, a giant cloud of dust envelops everything for a while.  All things considered, it seemed to be a good to great condition, but that's grading on a curve. 

I did not have grand ambitions when I started this little segment of my journey.  I simply wanted to make it to Tombstone Territorial Park and have a look around -- and to return safely. 

The scenery all the way through Tombstone was stunning and diverse.  Even with smoke from nearby forest fires, it was highly memorable. 

My round-trip through Tombstone and back was about 236km.  That was within a long drive of entering the Arctic Circle, but I was happy to quit while I was ahead.  

Below you can see how the gravel can get a little deep and boggy in spots.  You can also see how different Tombstone can look and feel from one spot to the next, with its changes in elevation and flora. 

The Dempster is named after Corporal William Dempster of the North-West Mounted Police.  The act that won him fame is rather grim.  I encourage you to read about the Lost Patrol on Wikipedia.  

Here is the short version.  In 1910, another member of the NWMP named Fitzgerald led a mail patrol via dogsled 750km southward from Fort MacPherson to Dawson City.  There were four men in the patrol.  They got lost, ate many of their dogs, and eventually all died from starvation, exposure, or suicide.  Dawson was the guy who set out to find -- and in fact did find -- the Lost Patrol.  

Tough founding tale for a tough road.