Preface:
Back in 2006 I took my 1998 Heritage Springer to visit some friends in Las Vegas. This was my second large trip on the bike (the first was California and is documented in the archives). On my way home I came across a guy in Colorado Springs trailoring his BMW. After a short conversation I found out he was going to Seattle to meet up with a friend and they were going to ride their motorcycles up to Alaska. Right there I resolved to one day make the trip myself.
Flash forward to May this year. I called up one of my college buddies I had been really bad about keeping in touch with who lives up in Alaska to see how she was doing. I had been meaning to visit her since she moved there and told her that hopefully I’d made it his year (at the time I was thinking of flying).
She told me her folks were coming to visit her in a few weeks and they decided to drive the entire way from Texas. That started the wheels in motion and I began considering the feasibility of making my dream trip come true.
The idea was that I’d never be more than a day or two away from her folks so if I got myself into a bad situation mechanically with the bike I could use them as my rescue party.
The more I researched it the more I realized that while still very remote the ALCAN was paved most of the way and had enough services to keep me going without a terrible amount of discomfort.
So I went ahead and put in for the leave to make it happen and by a miracle I actually got 21 days of continuous leave approved!
The plan was a hope for the best but prepare for the worst. I was prepared to camp along the way and had emergency supplies for if I got stuck in the middle of nowhere for several days, but the hope was that I could find hotels to stay in since a warm bed and a hot shower meant me being well rested in the morning and able to put in a long day of riding.
What follows can be a bit dry but was mainly intended for me to be able to look back on as I get older and remember my adventure.
Day 0 (Saturday June 14th, 2009):
Final prep day. I had been compiling a list of items I was going to need for this trip and day 0 was my day to make any last purchases. I bought a simple one man tent from bass pro, a spare inner tube and spark plugs from the Harley dealership, batteries, a motorcycle tire inflation kit, a one gallon gas can, bungee cords, a flashlight, a few quarts of motor oil, and sun block from Wal-Mart, and on a whim a Garmin Colorado GPS from the BX. That night I laid everything out on the floor next to the bags so I could be certain I had everything for a final check in the morning.
The Trip up
Day 1 (Sunday June 15th, 2009):
Woke up around 0645, had breakfast and started putting everything into their bags. One of my friends from work had elected to ride with me for the first 100 miles of the trip and came by at 0800. We chatted as I loaded the saddle bags and strapped the gear onto the bike.
We rolled out around 0830 or so, gassed up then began the trip. The first hundred miles took me across the state border into Texas and stopped at a truck stop/barbeque place where the interstate exits off to Tyler (my friend had wanted to check out the Triumph dealership there). We ate an early lunch of barbeque snapped a few photos then parted ways. The rest of the trip would be solo.
Launching out on a Sunday worked out very well for me. Dallas and Oklahoma City traffic wasn’t bad and the only slowdown I experienced was from bridge work near the Texas-Oklahoma border which was stop and go and painfully hot.
It rained a bit as I crossed into Kansas but cleared up again north of Wichita, and I decided to call it a stop for the day in McPherson, Kansas (N38-22.329 W097-37.519).
While I was unpacking a gentleman walked by with a pipe and I inquired about what kind of tobacco he was smoking. The conversation turned to motorcycles and we talked a bit about the V-Star he had back home. He was on the road in his 18 wheeler, he pointed it out and it was one I recognized from passing a few times on the trip. We parted ways and I went in to the restaurant adjoining the hotel for a meal of steak and potatoes which was terrible but the waitress seemed bored was happy to make conversation with me (she was interested in the fact that I was Air Force, apparently she was friends with several ROTC cadets at her college) which made the meal more enjoyable.
Day 2 (Monday June 16th, 2009)
Got up around 0700 and had breakfast in the same restaurant adjoining the hotel. I had lots of prairie to cover.
Stopped on the border of Kansas and Colorado for lunch at Wendy’s. Somebody in the kitchen area had a nasty cough and I got real paranoid about picking up a bug this early in the trip. I gassed in the same town and spoke with a couple who were pulling a Harley trailer. They were heading home to North Carolina and had brought the bike to do some riding with friends between Steamboat and Ft. Collins but hail ruined their plans.
The ride was pleasant but unremarkable all the way up to about 120 miles east of Denver where I saw some pretty ominous looking clouds ahead of me. I stopped at a rest stop and called my father and asked him to check the radar for me. Five minutes later he called me back (he has dial-up) and informed me I was in a tornado box but hopefully I should be alright.
I donned my rain gear and started riding into the storm. The rain started and I pulled over to tuck the hood of my rain jacket back in behind a pair of Gold Wings who were hastily putting their raingear on too. They were hoping to make it to the western side of the rockies by that evening but would call it quits if the weather got too rough.
Only a few miles down the road the rain started coming down hard and my speed slowed down to 60. The drops were big and hurt a bit even though my rain gear. Then they started hurting more. A lot more! I realized I was getting pelted by hail. The throttles came back even further and I slowed to 45. I would have done less but I was worried about a tractor-trailer plowing into me. Thankfully there was an exit with an underpass only a couple miles down the road I was able to pull off and stop. I was soon joined by around 15 cars, all staring at the poor sap hunched over on the motorcycle. As I sat there cold and wet staring down at the ice pellets accumulating on the road I reminded myself that no good adventure was without its moments of severe suck.
Thankfully the hail started letting up after only around 15 minutes and the local fire department came to tell folks they couldn’t stop in the middle of the road to hide from the weather. The storm had pretty much passed anyway so they started breaking up. I stayed put a bit longer to make sure it was well and truly gone. While waiting, a guy on a Sportster rode by and I decided it was probably ok to head out myself.
Twenty minutes or so down the road I pulled off for gas. I talked to some Fedex drivers that were hanging out in the gas station as well as the attendant the news was playing in the back ground and showed clips of the tornado I had thankfully missed. The fedex guys recommended an alternate route around Denver for me that I decided I’d take. When I stepped outside the station I recognized the Sportster getting gas and walked over to talk to the owner. He was from Greeley and was coming back up from visiting the Republic of Texas rally in Austin. I told him what my plan was and he offered to ride with me. We took the back roads for about a hundred miles then split off when we got to Greeley. I pushed on to Wyoming and elected to stay at F.E. Warren Air Force Base (N41-09.405 W104-51.734) for the evening. It was only $40 for the night and my room was the size of a small apartment!
Day 3 (Tuesday June 17th, 2009)
Got up and rode over to the lodging office to check out. I saw they had some courtesy computers available so I got on and checked some distances. Mapquest told me I could make Yellowstone by the early afternoon and I decided it’d be a minor detour to make that happen since I’d still be entering Canada north of Helena, Montana. Launching out I was enjoying the presently brisk air. After about 30 miles it stopped feeling brisk and just felt cold. I stopped for breakfast in Laramie and put on my quilted flannel shirt, chaps and cold weather gloves and the ride was much warmer after that.
I’m not exactly sure what was going on but my pace was just terrible, though I suspect I was just experiencing the third day doldrums and by the afternoon it became apparent I would not make it to Yellowstone early enough to do the park any justice and I didn’t want to stop in Jackson and pay the crazy high room rates. So I decided to call it quits in Dubois, Wyoming (N43-32.324 W109-38.324) only 347 miles from where I started.
I found a nice cabin in town for a fair price and ran into a gentleman and his girlfriend from Arkansas who grew up in Dubois and was staying the night for a visit. He was also a motorcycle rider and we talked for awhile about our trips. It was raining at that point and he offered to give me a ride to the restaurant and I accepted. I ended up having dinner with them and getting a tour of the town which was quite enjoyable.
Day 4 (Wednesday June 18th, 2009)
I was rather glad I decided to stay the night in Dubois because there was quite a bit of construction on the roads leading up to Yellowstone. I entered via the Grand Teton National Park which was quite spectacular and tooled around at a fair pace, stopping for a few photos here and there. I elected to stop to watch old faithful and was fortunate enough to not have to wait too long and got in on a pretty spectacular eruption.
As I was nearing the exit I was coming around a turn and had to bear down on the breaks pretty hard because I was greeted by a very large buffalo who seemed quite content to stand in the middle of the road. Traffic the other direction was backed up several cars. I shut down the engine, snapped a few photos and waited from him to move on. He did another took his place. Once that one was in the other lane I fired the bike back up and started rolling again. The engine noise spooked it a bit and it’s eyes widened and quickened the pace off the road.
Unfortunately I started noticing a wobble in the front end between 35 and 40 MPH which was indicative of my fork bearing going out. I knew I was going to have to keep my eye on it.
I managed to make it out of the park on a single gas tank and didn’t hit the reserve till 200 miles on the odometer which was pretty spectacular as I only have a 4 gallon tank with a half gallon reserve.
I pressed on to Helena but because I didn’t bother looking at the more detailed map when planning my route I ended up passing up a much quicker back road to Helena and instead took the interstate the whole way which added 50 miles to the days trip. This probably wouldn’t have been so bad but it started raining once I hit the interstate and got quite chilly which really slowed me down.
I was just getting to Helena in the early evening and looked down at my odometer and saw it reading 185. I remarked to myself it was good I was getting to town because I was about to hit my reserve. As if on command the engine started dieing and I reached down to switch over to the reserve. Unfortunately I was already on the reserve! I forgot to switch back after the last gas. It was a rookie mistake that I’d not made before. Thankfully I had my extra gas can so it was a two minute inconvenience rather than a four mile walk.
I stayed for the night in Helena (N46-35.356 W112-00.143). The days were getting longer and once the sun came out I probably could have gone further but I was pretty exhausted and didn’t want to ride tired, especially with the possibility of more poor weather rolling in.
Day 5 (Thursday June 19th, 2009)
When I went to get rolling for the day I realized I had parked myself into a rather awkward predicament.
I always try to position my bike near something large and static so I can cable lock the frame of the bike to it overnight. The previous night I had done this with a lamp post. Unfortunately I parked it facing down on an almost unperceivable downward slope in a shallow pothole by the curb. The curb meant I couldn’t turn the bike and had to back it out and the pothole and slope meant this was going to be very difficult with my 750lb (dry) bike loaded down with all my gear. After several different attempts and forcing it backwards I finally discovered I could move it back about an inch at a time by standing up then throwing myself back into the seat and locking down on the front break before it could roll forward again. Once I got adequate clearance from the curb I was able to turn and roll away. It was only 9am and I was already sweaty and winded!
Once rolling I had a very pleasant ride. The same winding mountain roads that were terrifying the night before when cold and wet were tremendous fun when warm and dry.
The mountains gave way to the prairies before long though and lost some of their excitement. It didn’t bother me too much though, they enabled me to eat up the miles and it was a nice change of pace.
I made it to the Canadian border around lunchtime and stopped for one last gas while in the states. While doing so I was approached by a gentleman who saw my Texas plate and was quite curious about my trip since I was so far away from home. I explained that I was only halfway to my destination and again I was struck by just how far I still had to go. He warned me that crossing the border on this side would be easy but to expect a full search when I came back down.
I broke out my wiz-wheel and grease pencil and marked up my miles/hour only speedometer with KM/hour.
I crossed over the border with no problems as predicted and stopped immediately for lunch, then pressed on.
Riding through Canada felt just weird enough that I could tell I was in another country. Actually, it felt like I had gone back in time to America during the 80s. I even saw a train with a caboose on it! (When was the last time you saw one of those?)
Periodically though the day I’d see a rain cloud in the distance but I was fortunate enough to have the road always turn in such a way as to avoid them. Untill I got to Calgary that is.
Unfortunately I managed to arrive in Calgary just in time to get caught in rush-hour traffic and a mild thunderstorm was brewing. I finally got hit by rain as I was 3/4s through the city. I didn’t have my raingear on but it wasn’t bad since I was in stop and go traffic. Once I started to exit the city and speed up the rain started hurting but it was also clearing up so I toughed it out and was soon under sunny skies again.
My shadow was getting pretty long by the time I arrived in Edmonton (around 9ish) and I managed to get myself a bit lost which was quite frustrating since most of the major roads were scarred with construction work. I managed to hit one REALLY deep pothole and bottomed out the bike. I spent the next few hours hoping I hadn’t done serious damage to the bike. By 10pm I was though the city, back on course and looking for a room and gas. I stopped in Spruce Grove (N53-32.392 W113-55.249) and found a room. As I was coming to a stop I could hear my front breaks grinding and discovered I had managed to wear out my front pads. That was definitely something that would have to be addressed in the morning. It was too late to get food anywhere so I just secured my bike and gear, took a shower and went to bed.
Day 6 (Friday June 20th, 2009)
Right off the bat I new I had to take care of those breaks. Thankfully I had my handy Harley-Davidson ride atlas with me which has all the dealerships in North America mapped out and I wasn’t far from the Edmonton dealership. The folks were really friendly and after handing over the bike to them they told me about a nice diner I could walk to for breakfast.
By the time I got back the bike was ready to go again. I thanked them for their work and gave them one of my squadron challenge coins from our 2005 deployment in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. They seemed pretty thrilled and wished me well on the rest of my journey.
With a good set of breaks I was back to eating up the miles/kilometers. The towns were also getting further and further apart. The area to the west of Edmonton was mostly rolling forests and there were a lot of oil and logging companies along the road. Eventually that broke up and I was on the prairie again. Just outside of Grande Prairie the road started a series of bumps every hundred yards or so that went across the entire road. They’d probably be a bit more fun if it weren’t for the fact I had a full bladder at that point and was thus painfully reminded of that fact over a hundred times before I was finally able to stop for a gas and go.
I passed into British Columbia and on my way to Dawson Creek I managed to have a particularly large insect hit me on the side of the head. Now at this point I had killed many thousands of bugs on my face and I knew many thousand more were to follow but when I stopped for gas and went to take off my helmet my hand touched something that made a VERY angry buzzing. It threw the offender down and was greeted by a less than happy bumblebee. Thankfully her stinger must have been taken out of commission by our collision or I would have been in a world of hurt.
Dawson Creek was the start of the ALCAN. There were a lot of signs and flags announcing this but they stopped abruptly and once I actually got on the road it seemed like any other back road. I actually had to stop to make sure I hadn’t made a wrong turn!
While chugging along I stopped to take a picture of the wild roses and snapped another of the bridge ahead that spanned the Kiskatinaw river. It was moderately long and quite high. When I got to it I discovered to my horror it was a metal grate type bridge, which is quite unnerving to ride across on a motorcycle. This is because the tires of the bike want to follow the pattern of the grate and will rock you around. You’ve got to take it slow enough that you don’t get thrown around too hard but fast enough that you can maintain good gyroscopic stability from your wheels. Of course physiologically it doesn’t help either that you can look down and see all the way to the bottom of the gorge you’re crossing and consider just what that giant cheese grater would do to your legs if you dumped the bike. Needless to say I let out a large sigh of relief when I was on the other side.
I elected to stop for the night at Fort St. John (N56-14.346 W120-50.803) since the next real town was Fort Nelson another 200 miles away and I had received word they booked up early because of all the road work. So this was likely my last chance for a good room.
The hotel I stayed at was quite nice. The bed was soft and had plenty of pillows and a nice down comforter. It had a restaurant in it which served up some really tasty lamb stew (very well seasoned and just the right thickness but the connective tissues in the lamb hadn’t completely broken down in all the pieces so I probably could have used an extra hour or so of actual stewing). The waitress was real cute but not very talkative and had piercings in her lower lip, which I just don’t understand. I noticed this in Dawson Creek too. There were a lot of goth teens in BC.
Day 7 (Saturday June 21st, 2009)
I awoke to rain, and was not very thrilled. But I told myself there’d be days like this and after breakfast started loading up the bike.
Not only was it raining but it was cold too. I toughed it out for the first hundred miles but finally had to stop to warm up with some coffee. I found a restaurant, stripped off my raingear and tried to warm up. The thermometer outside said it was in the lower 40s and the numbness in my hands agreed. It about 15 minutes into my break I was joined by a gentleman from Ontario who was riding the highway as well. He was fortunate enough to have heated handgrips (almost everyone up north has them) but was having a hard go at it as well. We talked for awhile then his riding buddy caught up with him and they departed. I drank a few more cups before talking myself into getting back on the bike.
Fifty miles later the weather went from bad to worse. Lightning began to light up the sky which made me nervous and the rain got heavier and heavier. Finally it started hailing. Thankfully, unlike in Colorado, I had my leathers on underneath the raingear and was able to slow to 35mph so the hail didn’t hurt nearly as bad. But it was still miserable and terrifying stuff.
The hail broke up after about 15 minutes but then the wind picked up. Normally wind doesn’t bother me too much but the gusts were sudden and very strong and would really push me around, forcing me to keep a very slow pace and to be very mindful of what I was doing. After awhile I was met with hail again. This time I was on more winding roads, the wind was still going (but not quite as bad as before) and the hail was starting to accumulate on the road. This was definitely some of the most frightening riding I’ve ever done.
It finally cleared up just as I arrived in Fort Nelson. I had only done 230 miles and it was already mid-afternoon. As I was stopped for gas a couple in a truck noticed my wringing out my gloves and stopped to tell me it was just as bad down the road. That was all I needed to hear and I proceeded directly to the nearest motel and checked in for the night (N58-48.127 W122-41.067). As I was checking in I ran into the gentleman who I met when I was stopped for coffee and he and his friend had decided to call it quits as well.
After stowing all my gear and changing into dry clothes I wandered down the street to a Boston Pizza (popular Canadian restaurant chain). I ate a small pizza which left me still hungry so I also had a Caesar salad and washed it down with several pints of beer.
My waitress noticed from my credit card that I was an American and commented on how I was a long way from home then mentioned she was pretty far from home too. Turns out she was from Ottawa and had moved there for work. Besides just working at the pizza place she also was a maid at one of the local hotels. I was very impressed by her willingness to move to the edge of the wilderness and bust her butt for work and reflected it in my tip.
I wandered back to my room and it was still early but I had nothing else to do so I went to bed. It was a good move because after the day I’d just had I ended up sleeping for thirteen hours.
NO PICTURES TAKEN THAT DAY!
Day 8 (Sunday June 22nd, 2009)
Fort Nelson marked the end of what could be considered a normal town and the start of the Canadian Rockies and a whole lot of wilderness.
I awoke quite well rested, packed up the bike and quickly found a café in town for breakfast. While enjoying my sausage and eggs an elderly couple with their college age granddaughter in tow were talking with an airmen from Elmendorf and his friend. The elderly couple were on vacation from Oklahoma and headed up to Alaska. They were on day 14 of their trip and were traveling in an SUV with a small u-haul trailer. The airman was finished with his kick at Elmendorf and was moving to Scott AFB in O’Fallon, Illinois. With he and his friend taking turns driving through the night, and apparently going quite fast in the process they were only on day two of their trip.
The weather starting out was overcast, cold with occasional drizzle but not too bad. The rockies were quite beautiful and in no time I saw my first moose by the side of the road.
When I stopped for gas I ran into the elderly couple from breakfast and they asked if I had seen the moose. I told them I had. I spoke with a few motorcyclists who were coming from the other direction and they warned me the weather was picking up down the road and I would encounter some unpaved road as well for construction. I heeded their advice but elected to keep the raingear off for as long as possible.
It wasn’t long before the drizzle turned into rain painful enough that I had to cave in and don my raingear, but thankfully it was still nothing like what I had experienced the day prior.
The wildlife kept on coming. I pulled over to the side of the road and cut the engine to take a few photos of a brown bear that was munching on some grass. Other tourists were doing the same, so I felt back when I went to fire up the bike and the engine backfired sending the bear racing into the trees!
Besides the moose and brown bear I also saw caribou, black bears, buffalo and foxes along my way. I actually saw far more wildlife in northern BC than I did in Yellowstone.
The road work I had been warned about was most unpleasant. The worst point was when I was forced to come to a dead stop and the guy in the RV ahead of me told me to go ahead and get comfortable because it was going to be 20 minutes before our follow me would arrive. So I killed the engine and just lounged for awhile.
When we got rolling the unpaved road was soft and muddy as well as winding down around the mountain. I was very on edge about maintaining control of the bike, I was going very slow and even though we were supposed to stay single file several RVs passed me. Thankfully I made it through without incident but both the bike and I were covered in mud.
I made it into the Yukon mid-afternoon and stopped at Watson Lake for gas and was greeted by an old native sporting a “native pride” hat and maybe half his teeth who didn’t seem to care for my DCU pattern gore-tex raingear. He told me he was in the Canadian army engineering corps. I explained to him I wore the raingear because it was issued to me for OEF and we’re phasing out that pattern in favor of the ABU anyway so since Uncle Sam was kind enough to pay for it I might as well continue to put it to use. He told me he’d been to Afghanistan and I asked him when he was over there. He couldn’t tell me. By the end of our conversation based on the way it rambled along I was convinced he was crazy.
I went in to pay for my gas and asked where a good place to eat was. They recommended Bee Jay’s café. I remembered passing it on my way in and rode over. Bee Jay’s was also a gas station/tow shop/truck repair center. The restaurant was very small and the waitresses were native girls in their early teens. The rest of the patrons were local truckers who were drinking coffee and talking about what they were hauling and where they needed to go. I had the special which was beer battered halibut which was expensive but quite tasty.
When I got back on the bike, it was still cold and raining and the thought of doing more miles that day made my physically nauseous but Watson Lake made me feel far from welcome and it was still relatively early so I chose to push on.
A few hours later the rain broke up and the sun came out. I stopped at a pullout overlooking the town of Teslin to doff my raingear and was promptly swarmed by mosquitoes. The town had a very long bridge just prior to it and the scene was quite beautiful so I snapped a picture of it. I also realized that it was another grate bridge like I had experienced Kiskatinaw but I had experienced two others that day which were smaller but left me less afraid.
I stopped for gas in the town and was again greeted by the elderly couple from breakfast. We chatted again and both of us had set the goal of Whitehorse for the evening.
The ride for the rest of the day was very pleasant. With the sun back out my energy had returned and I was chugging along at a fair pace and really enjoying myself. As the sun was getting low I could look off into the swampy sections of the taiga and the light would catch just right so I could see all the mosquitoes swarming in the air. Billions of them! It was not a pleasant thing to think about. I was actually pretty surprised I wasn’t picking up more on my body.
I made it to Whitehorse a little after 10 o’clock and found a hotel with a room available (N60-42.886 W135-03.085), unfortunately it was a smoking room which wasn’t too great but the clerk who was trying to do right for me let me pick out the least stinky of the four he had available then gave me a can of air freshener to try to minimize it further. I found a Chinese restaurant that was just closing down for the night and managed to talk them into selling me whatever they had left over so I could get a meal. I ate it in my room then wandered out to hit the hotel bar for a beer and again ran into the elderly couple from breakfast who were checking in for the evening. They’re goal for the next day was Fairbanks and I knew that unless we launched out at the same time this would probably be the last time we’d talk and it was.
Day 9 (Monday June 23rd, 2009)
I set off a bit after nine. I had hoped to launch out a bit earlier but I did a lot of miles the day prior and my body needed the rest.
Setting out it was looking to be a beautiful day and I was glad because I had been informed that the roads got pretty spotty after Whitehorse. This wasn’t exactly true. The roads were quite nice after Whitehorse. It was after Haines Junction, the last Canadian town of any size on the ALCAN that the roads became rough.
At first it was just a few dips or rises in the road from frost heaves, then they became more frequent and were accompanied by potholes and finally I started hitting the unpaved sections. Between Kulane and Destruction bay there was a very long one (at ten miles).
At Burwash Landing I was warned it’d be the last gas till the Alaska border (~110 miles) so I decided to top off the tank. The frost heaves and unpaved sections continued all the way to the border. I dodged the former as much as I could and took it slow on the latter.
I made it to the Alaska border at around 1pm local time. I then stopped at the first gas station to fill up and had lunch. I knew I still had a lot of miles before I was at my destination but it was good to at least have it in sight.
The roads were greatly improved in Alaska and made for smooth riding. The countryside was just beautiful and I made several stops to take photos along the way.
I broke off from the ALCAN at the town of Tok and proceeded south towards Anchorage. Not long afterward I started getting rained which forced me back into my raingear. When I got to the town of Glennallen I stopped for gas, stripped off my raingear and turned on my cell phone. It had been receiving a signal but I assume it was emergency numbers only because no calls or texts would go through since I had been in Fort St. John several days prior. Needless to say there were several messages from people checking in to see if I was still alive. I sent out a message stating I had made it to Alaska then proceeded on, determined to make Anchorage that day.
Not far out of Glennallen I started coming up on a state patrol vehicle. I wasn’t exactly sure what the speed limit was. I had seen one for 55 outside the town but hadn’t seen another since. I assumed I had just missed it and this far out of town had to be 70 or so. I decided that as long as I didn’t pass the state trooper I’d be just fine.
I was wrong. Apparently he was just locking his speed to mine and it wasn’t long before he pulled over, let me pass then pulled me over. He told me I was going 73 in a 55 which seemed a bit high (I think I was going around 67). I told him I didn’t realize I was speeding and didn’t know what the speed limit was so was just trying to match off him. He seemed understanding but not too understanding and ended up ticketing me for 9mph over to save me a more substantial ticket.
I asked him how far I was going to have to go before I hit a higher speed limit and he said the 40 mile point.
“40 miles! Dang that’s no fun!”
“No you misunderstand, mile 40 on the highway. We’re currently at mile 177. It’s 55mph all the way from the border to Palmer”
My heart sank. My day had just been extended another couple of hours and it was getting late and cold.
I set back on the road at a much slower pace. I was getting cold and the problem with the neck bearing I detected back in Yellowstone had been greatly exacerbated by the very rough roads I had done that day. Combined with my shivering I had to be very cautious to keep the bike under control at 55mph.
I arrived at my friends condo at around 10:30pm. She was actually having a party and most of those in attendance had been tracing my journey via the texts I had been sending out every night. I was incredibly tired and covered in dust when I walked in and was greeted with thunderous applause. It felt pretty good to have made it.
But of course the trip was really only halfway over.
To be continued....
This is my Granddaughter, Sky age 7. She can't walk,talk, or feed herself due to brain injury but look at that smile. It makes most of our troubles seem quite insignificant.
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