TravellingStrom

Thursday – Fairbanks, Alaska

Well, looks are deceiving, I actually thought I had planted my tent on a basically flat ground, full of rocks of course, but I thought level. No way, I had an uncomfortable night fighting to stay on my sleeping mat, the way it was set up, I woke up heaps of times. Never mind, I packed the gear up, even though it had and still was raining lightly and went to the cafe for breakfast.

Now, this breakfast looks funny, but was excellent, it has been served in a goldpanner’s dish and to tell the truth it was a bit hard to eat out of, but a full on different experience 🙂

A bit more chicken stuff then on down the road, my goal today was somewhere near, if not in Fairbanks.

It was not long before I bumped into me old mate from last night, Wade, he did the right thing and turned off the swirling sharp bits as I went past 🙂

The road was only a bit of dirt for 3 miles before I was back on the pavement

From here on in, it was a great ride to the south, the wrong direction mind you as I was intending heading north, but, this is where the road led, and as I was not on the map anyway, I had no choice! Lucky there was some information along the way which fed my interest 🙂

I arrived at a town called TOK (toke) and basically fuelled up, this where I met a chap called Simon, he is a BMW rider from Switzerland, he has already ridden from the south(I mean Tierra Del Fuego) and all he needs to do is Prudhoe Bay, so we teamed up and although I have a detrimental effect on BMWs, this seemed a good idea at the time, Al and Des know about BMW’s, All especially knows what happens when a BMW and a Vstrom team up 🙂

So, we both headed north finally and after some nice riding country I managed to see my first Moose, he was in the shade with his missus, but he stayed long enough for us both to get off and take a photo 🙂

On again and some nice scenery before I saw another moose just up the road a bit, he is just to the right of the big tree in the middle of the last picture, he nicked off when I stopped.

The next fuel stop was Delta Junction, this is the end of the Alaska Highway, there was a nice visitor centre, just watch out for the mossies, they will take you away!

We found a nice place for lunch where I managed to get some internet and check mail etc.

We continued north into the smoke haze from a lot of bushfires. I spotted a small lake in front of a mountain and thought, ‘that would be a nice reflective lake photo if there was no smoke’ but as I was doing 70mph I saw instead a funny rock or something that did not match anything I had seen and thought I will go back for a look. This was on a sweeping bend, but when I went back I saw the same thing.

Well blow me down it was a moose with a submariners ticket 🙂

It turns out he was eating some vegies from the bottom, but how cool was that eh! Well, it was not long after that we hit the road works near the town of North Pole. I had planned on stopping here for a photo opportunity, but there was nowhere to pull over so we continued through until we got into Fairbanks, there was an airforce base here with some interesting planes sitting around, the signs said no photos but I did not see the signs until after, ooops! Anyway, the smoke was so bad here the visibility was rubbish anyway.

We headed for the University of Alaska where they have a motorcycle friendly director of residence called Kevin, like our PM 🙂 Here we got a shared room, very cheap which includes WiFi and laundry etc, very cool 🙂 We were only going to be here one night before heading north for the attempt on the end of the road. The Uni is up on top of a hill, but the view was compromised by the smoke.

After a little bit of food shopping we found a bar not far away, after a bit of running around and had a few beers before heading back with a few take away’s into the eventually setting sun.

We had a few beers and a chat etc and planned what was on the cards for tomorrow. Basically, it would not be a real long day, we were heading for Coldfoot and planned to camp there, but I had to do some service work on the bike and Simon needed a new headlight. I had already sussed out the local Suzuki dealership and they said no worries, I could do my own service work on their premises 🙂 We planned on leaving Fairbanks around midday.

Day 322 miles and 518 km
Trip – 28,086 miles and 45,200 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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