We leave The Beav at The Crack of Bill, 0900 sharp, it was a beautiful blue sky day. We had met a guy at the bar in Buckshot Betty's who was part of the construction crew on the road repair sites we had driven through yesterday. He said we'd have great roads today, we chose to believe him, but kept some doubts in check, we're in the Yukon after all!

The Canadian border is just minutes outside of The Beav but US customs is 30 kms further down. We get there in about 15 minutes and while I am waiting my turn I prepare for my crossing; helmet off, sunglasses off, passport out of my double redundant waterproof sleeve, ear buds out. When the CBP guy waves me in I start the bike, drive the 25 feet and shut it off again.

I am experimenting today with my HeroCam mounted on my gas tank with a suction cup mount so I can see if it is on or off. CBP guy asks me if the camera is recording, I say "No Sir!" He asks again, I answer the same way but he wants proof. I look at the camera housing and realize it is filthy, I have only cleaned the lens. I suppose it is a fair question, I rub more dirt off exposing the LCD status window. CBP guy gets way more friendly when he confirms the cam is off.

(Not that I'd do it, but you can turn off both the red record light and the on screen display if I wanted to covertly record him!)

He releases me and I pull ahead about 50 feet to put my rig back together. My Passport goes back into its sleeve then the sleeve goes into a waterproof pouch, then the whole thing goes into my waterproof Pelican. You may see a trend here, I once had a wee bit of water damage to my passport from a motorcycle trip and when I went to get a replacement it was an extremely difficult process. We heard stories of persons being denied entry to Mexico because of minute damage to passports so I am not taking any chances.

As I am getting my rig together I hear Bill conversing with the border guy in a friendly manner. I know Bill is a very seasoned traveler, but I have my own rules for border crossings; answer all questions honestly and respectfully, offer no information other than what is asked for and make zero small talk. Both tactics work as Bill is waved through but to each his own.

The road, as promised is nicer than in the Yukon, but also as doubted there are many sections with temporary repairs. In Alaska, they choose to repair sections of the highway, sometimes only 10' feet, sometimes only half the lane, with various types of gravel solutions. These solutions vary from; an actual gravel road, to a hard packed gravel, to a seal coated gravel road. These sections appear without warning, sometimes in the middle of a blind curve.

Here is a couple minutes of footage from the gas tank perspective, nothing special happens but we are a little short on multimedia today! I really need to clean that camera lens better!



As the lead bike, I set the pace, fast enough to make it fun and get where we are going, but also in a safe manner. I start out extra cautious as we traverse each type of repair until I can evaluate what the friction coefficient is and how the bikes will react to the various materials. Eventually, it becomes apparent that all repair types except gravel can be treated just like pavement. Gravel needs to be treated like, well, gravel.

At times the road is perfect for miles at a time, then it will be a patchwork of various repairs for a similar distance. I am trying to figure out what factors cause the difference, my final verdict is altitude, the higher we go, the more damaged the road, prolly from freeze/thaw cycles.

The riding is mostly great, we have a great rhythm with the road and are blasting across the repair patches with impunity, but it is pretty chilly. I have taken to wearing a long sleeve shirt I bought in Skagway, along with my riding shirt, but I am still shivering. I refuse to put on my rain suit, unless it is actually raining, or gonna rain (or gonna hail and I know about it!). At one point I am shivering so hard that I have to pull over and do some jumping jacks to warm up. Bill confesses as to having had his seat heater on. I was using my heated grips, but it was not enough.

Next year we are going south again!

We are north and west bound now until we get to Tetlin Junction at which point we change highways and go south and west. This highway is in much better condition, but still is damaged, but the damage is of a curious nature. The road is wavy, the bed has subsided and created a bumpy wavy all most roller coaster effect. The problem is the frequency of the bumps are so close together, maybe 5' - 10' and the amplitude can at times be between 6" - 15" so that hitting them at any speed over 80 kph seriously destabilizes the bike.

Sometimes there are sections all wavy like this for 500 yards or more. I am mostly OK with these, but at times there is just a single instance of the hole & bump, or bump & grind. Hitting these at a buck twenty (120 kph) can bounce you right up off the seat. This happened a couple of times and I was far enough off the seat my sheepskin cover would blow back and I would land on it all bunched up. Very uncomfortable!

I activated my HeroCam numerous times, but the footage does not do any justice as to how wavy the road was, so I have not included any pictures here.

We never did have to drive through a completely ripped up construction area, nor did we ever have to follow a pilot vehicle. As we are approaching a mountain summit we saw there was a black ridge cloud and a rain curtain so we pulled over to put on our rain suits, well mine at least, Bill was already wearing his for an extra layer of insulation. We drove under the cloud and in the end only saw light rain for maybe 90 seconds, and no Hail!

The weather forecast was for rain in Anchorage so I left my suit on even when it cleared up, we assumed we'd encounter rain again when we approached the coast. Luckily the expected weather never materialized. What did materialize was an Interstate, which was very unexpected! Just 40 kms outside of Anchorage our little side road suddenly merged onto a 3 lane, heavily traffic'ed Interstate with a 75 MPH speed limit. After driving mostly deserted roads for 10 days it took a serious recalibration of the brain to remember how to drive in this environment.

This Interstate also had huge potholes in the wheel ruts, ranging easily from 10" to 24" or more in diameter. I was pretty sure I would survive hitting one, but with Bill's tiny tires it wouldn't go so well for him. I tried to increase my following distance so I w=could see them coming up but every time I created a gap some one would pull into it. Gawd Dam 'mericans!

Fortunately, I had reconnoitered the path to our mo'tel in advance and knew there was a gas station right across the street. We were at just under 300 kms indicated so I knew Bill was approaching the end of his range when we pulled into the Tesco to fill up. After taking car of business it was a simple matter to cross the street and we were home for the day! We are actually staying here 2 days as we do not need to be in Fairbanks until Friday.



What I did not know about our mo'tel was that it had a Sushi spot right next door, it is the new Penta-Fecta! When I checked in I asked the nice lady if I could have a room close to an exterior door so as to reduce the time it takes to load in. People don't understand that you typically don't have your brown leather Samsonite with all your stuff in it strapped to the back of the bike, you don't loadin in one trip! For me it is 4 or 5 trips, so being close to the door is more convenient.

She says that I am close to a door so we finish the transaction, but when I get to my room I see it is an alarmed emergency exit! People just don't listen. My window opens onto a heavily traffic'ed street and when I arrive it is cranked wide open, and doesn't have a screen. While I am standing there pondering it 3 guys walk by and I see they could reach right into my room, and help themselves to anything I put on top of my mini fridge. I close and lock it pronto! Weird! My bed has perhaps the ugliest bed spread I have ever seen!



After freshening up and slipping into something more comfortable we meet for dinner about an hour later and enjoy much Sashimi, large Sapporos and cold unfiltered Sake. The 3 S's of Japanese cuisine. Bill turns in, but I starting walking in the hopes of finding a convenience store, which I don't. I hail a cab on the street corner and have the fortuitous luck to be picked up by Taxi Joe who is not only a cab driver, but also the unofficial Mayor of Anchorage and proceeds to give me a bit of a tour as we go to the local Carr's store.

Having acquired the necessary toiletries Taxi Joe returns me to the Econo and leaves me with his card. I am looking forward to sleeping in tonight as we are not riding tomorrow and are scheduled for a 1100 lobby call. Good night!

Beaver Creek, YK to Anchorage, AK
687 kms today, 4699 kms thus far
9 hours in the Saddle