Day 6. Alaska Ride 2017: Fairbanks, Alaska

I wake around 6:00 am, and feel good after the wild ride of the previous day. There is still some clean up and repair on the bike that I do after breakfast. I stop at the front hotel desk before leaving and tell the kid that I am planning to go to Dawson City. The kid is a fountain of information about the border crossing and roads. At one point the kid says “The road to Dawson City is terrible, and it takes forever to get there”, which is not exactly what I want to hear.  I then load up the bike and hit the gas station. I pull up to the pump and Martin runs out and asks if I want full service, since he says I am at the full-service pump. I do not want full service, and move the bike to the other pump.  I ask Martin if I there is air for the tires, since the Garmin tire monitor is telling me the rear tire is low. Martin says he will run the air out so I can use it. I start to work on the tires and Martin comes by again and asks about where I am going and where I came from. I tell him about Coldfoot, and like everyone else he says that winter has come early this year. Martin says he knows the owners of Coldfoot Camp, and they own the Yukon river stop, plus many other enterprises. He says they are in their mid-forties.

I take off down the highway and my temperature gauge says it is 45 degrees. I get 30 miles out and an error indicator on the console goes off. I freak, panic and pull the bike off to the side and shut the bike down. I read the manual on my bike to figure out what the error means. The manual really does not say, but essentially says that if the engine is still running and you get this error message, then it is not an error at all. I start the engine and the error message is gone.  The ride continues without incident, and is much unlike the day before. The Alcan is not the 405, but It sure is not the Dalton hwy. At the town of Delta Junction, I stop at the post office and send some unneeded things back home in order to reduce space and weight.  There were items that had already fulfilled their purpose on the trip. As I come out of the Post Office, there is Fred looking at my bike.  He tells me that he really likes the bike because of the height of the seat. Like usual, Fred asks where I have been and I tell him I was on the Dalton.  Fred then says “Winter has come early, and they are now requiring chains at the Atigun pass”: Is there no one in Alaska that does not know the current status of the Atigun pass?  I then go down the street to a nice little drive-in, with picnic tables on the side. I sit down and start eating, but Tim at the next table strikes up a conversation, once again asking me where I have been and where I am going. Tim then starts to tell me in great detail about the best ways to get back to Orange County, as he has done that route many times before for work. The problem listening to Tim, is there is no way I can follow him as he rattles off the names of towns and lakes. The best I can get out of the conversation is that the area around Banff, is really good.  So, I change my plans on the spot:  Dawson City is out, and I will double down on the area around Banff.

At the town of Tok, I stop at Napa to get some WD40 because the locks on the equipment are more difficult due to all the rain. Jim is sitting at the counter talking to the Napa guy. Jim and I start talking about the weather. Jim is probably around 70, and he says that it used to be where he could predict the weather in Tok, but no more. Things are changing all the time. Jim says during the winter in the 70s, it used to average about 60 below, now Jim says, it averages about 15 below, at that.  Jim goes on to tell me that the North Pole is moving about 7 miles per year, and it is now 300 miles more toward Moscow than it used to be, back in the day. Jim really gets going with the information, but I must continue on, if I am to get a good campsite later.  As I am getting on the bike, Jim says “Winter has come early this year”. 

I get to within 20 miles of the Canadian border and the road suddenly erupts into road construction, with graders going back and forth and all kinds of strewn gravel. I feel like I am back on the Dalton hwy, as 80% of the road is now gravel or mud.  It is almost a DMZ, with the countries saying “If you can get through this stuff, then you can come on in”.  I have visions of going down at this stench of road, after I had just gone through the Dalton unharmed.  I go through the Canadian border station without incident, and continue on until I reach the “Snag Junction Campground”. Fifteen beautiful campsites next to a lake. The campground is not full and I snag an excellent spot. The sky is now partly cloudy with the temperature about 70 degrees. It is so much different than what I left on the Dalton, that I feel that I am on a different planet: no, just Canada.  There is a guy in the next camp site in his tent repeatedly yelling

“there is a bob-cat on the camp ground, hello hello”.  I look up and I see a rabbit sitting in middle of the road between me and the yelling guy’s tent.  The rabbit is calmly staring at the tent where of the yelling guy like he was watching TV. I have noticed that the Northern rabbits look more like big house cats. They have dark hair running down their backs and large rear legs. I do not see a bob-cat, and apparently the rabbit does not either, or else he would have been high-tailing it out of the area. I wonder what drugs the guy in the tent is doing? Oh great, I see that my bike is dirty again due to the DMZ roads. I guess I will be clearing it a few times on this trip.