We left Watson Lake and had a leisurely ride only 280 miles or so - but man was it cold!
Our first stop was the Signpost forest, where during the construction of the highway someone
put the distance to their hometown on a
post with other signs, then another was added,
and another... well it's to the point of absurdity now... I think I read that there were 27000 signs there. Most appeared to be home-made by travelers through there, and many were license plates people had removed from their cars. It was quite a sight to see and fun to walk through.
While we were at the signpost forest I took a good hard look at my scooter. So far during the trip the only issue we had with the bikes was dad's cruise control was kicking off and his brake light was coming on at random times. We traced that to a loose plug on the brake controller. As we were leaving the campground it started raining and I reached with both hands to zip up my jacket. Normally you can take both hands off the handlebars with no problem, but I had apparently never done it while going only 25 or so, because when I did the bike immediately went into a "tankslapper" If you aren't a motorcyclist, that is when the front wheel wobbles from side to side hard enough to bang the handlebars back and forth against the tank. Think of a shopping card with the wiggly front wheel and you get the idea.
Fortunately, the scooter doesn't have a tank there so the bars just shook like crazy and wiggled back and forth, but unfortunately it is still terribly violent and scary. I immediately leaned forward and was able to stop it from doing that. I did a little testing and it only happened below 40, so I just made sure to keep a tight grip on the bars when going less than 40... I re-tested the bike at Fairbanks with no load on the back and it doesn't do that, so I'm guessing it's due to so much weight on the back of the bike when I'm fully loaded.
Once I was sure my scooter wasn't going to kill me I took the lead the first section because I was pretty sure I could not make it on fuel - well, 162 miles later at the next gas stop I was pleasantly surprised. At the point when I normally fill up my scooter around 140 miles there is one "bar" showing on the display on the dash. Well, after 20 miles or so that bar starts flashing. I went another 10 miles with that last bar flashing... and at some point the bar goes away and you are out - but fortunately I didn't get that far. So I know now know that I can go quite a bit further on a tank - maybe 30-40 miles. That's important up here because more than half of the gas stations are boarded up!
Our second section of the ride wasn't so far, but I did celebrate a bit of a Milestone - 25000 miles on my scooter. I took a picture of the odometer to post on the burgman web site some day. Most people just tell where they were when it happened, but I'll have a picture too. We arrived
in Whitehorse quite a bit earlier than we normally stop, but there weren't many places to go beyond there, so we decided to stay. We stopped in the visitor's center in the center of the city, but decided to just go to the motels and try to find a room. The first place was pretty grungy
looking, the next place we went looked great but was full. We decided to go to an RV resort back up the road and it was really nice. I got a good nights sleep and did my laundry so I'm good for another 8 days of clothes.
The next morning we decided to get a room in Fairbanks. Someone said it was only 400 miles or so from Whitehorse so dad booked a room online. Because we made the reservation the same day as our stay, it was non-cancellable... As we were getting ready to pack Dad asked the
campground owner and he said "around 600" Oops! That's farther than we rode any other day!
We ran back to the campsite, packed quic
kly, put all of our rain gear on (mostly for warmth) and took off down the highway. Well, we ripped through the miles pretty fast even though it was raining and the temperatures were upper 30s and low 40s, but after about 250 miles we stopped for gas and started hearing horror stories about the road ahead. One man on a motorcycle said the potholes were two feet deep, with loose gravel and ruts 6-8" deep for 120 miles. I felt a sense of doom as we headed down the highway... and after 50 miles or so it started. First it was just a bump here or there, then the ruts started, and after a few more miles we passed a highway department truck with a man filling potholes. His shovel and the lower part of the handle were not visible in the hole he was filling - it was about 2' down!
The worst part of it was that there were places where you'd think you'd dodged a hole, then a ridge or dip in the pavement would bottom your bike out. In some places, they had aparently given up on filling the holes and the whole road was covered in Gravel. That was smoother, but since it was raining, it was slick and the gravel was loose. Most people slowed way down for that section of road and took 3 or 4 hours to go through it. Dad and I manag ed to go through there at 60mph or more, and I followed a truck that looked like it belonged to someone local. He dodged most of the holes and ridges, and I sat about 150' behind him and watched his wheels... if there was a hidden ridge the back of the truck would jump up in the air and I would slow down or swerve around the problem... It worked really well until we had to stop for me to refuel, then we were on our own, but most of it was behind us. We survived the worst part of the Alaska highway!
The Alaskan border was nothing like what I expected. You enter Alaska on a gravel road, and climb up a hill to a guard house. There is one lane for cars and RV's and one for big trucks. That was it! We waited for about 15 minutes to get through, but heard from others that it took as long as an hour. After clearing the border it was back on dirt and gravel roads for another 10 or 20 miles, then things started improving. By the time we got down out of the hills where the border station was we were flying down the highway, and the weather improved to the point where we knew that we could easily reach Fairbanks, just 200 miles ahead.
Once we arrived in Fairbanks we checked into a brand new motel - just a month old. We decided it was so nice that we'd stay two days and recuperate from the crazy ride the day before. We hauled everything inside and I spent the day cleaning my scooter and changing the oil. I can normally change the oil in 15 minutes or so, but it took 3 hours because every time I went out there to do something it would start raining or hailing. The storms have gone through here all day on about a 30 minute schedule. Even the locals say this much rain is unusual for July.
Tomorrow we will be back on the touring trail, checking a few local attractions then heading down to Denali to camp and see Mount McKinley. We did get to see it on the way to Fairbanks - It's amazing to see it covered in snow and glistening white in the sun (what little sun there was)
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