The real June 11th, 2007

Yep, I messed up some dates. The 10th should have been the 9th and the 11th should have been the 10th. This is the real 11th of June. We left Whitehorse not quite as early as before. We have joined Allen and Carol Naille, whom you met in an earlier picture, and John Graves and Hayne Ellis. They left Flagstaff 4 days before Frank and I and took a side trip to Seattle. Allen is retired from Amfac at the Grand Canyon, John Graves owns Graves Butane, and Hayne owns farm land in Indiana and lives in Arizona in the winter. All are dyed in wool travelers. The have motorcycle toured in South America, South Africa, Europe and China, and Hayne just got back from his second tour of Turkey (he did Siberia and Russia a few years ago as well) Allen and Carol just got back from Australia and have motorcycled in 5 continents. All pros and good travelers (except Allen when he runs into a steel post with his two wheeled accessory platform, aka motorcycle) . Frank and I are relative novices, only having done parts of the US and Baja Mexico a couple of times. John is on a KTM 950 as is Hayne, Frank is on a 93 BMW PD "Airhead" as he is quick to correct. Allen is on an 06 BMW r1200GS Adventure that has everything on it except a continental kit, knicker knob, and curb feelers. Mine is an 05 r1200GS with a few add ons. I plan to beat Allen with a continental kit on mine in a few days (I'll explain later). Mark B asked me why the BMW rather than my KTM. Better wind protection on the BMW than the KTM for such a long trip. I'm trying to protect what I have left of my hearing. And, candidly the reliability issues with the water pump on the KTM.

For those of you not familiar with our gear, we all do have electric vests which if it's not raining too hard or too cold, will keep us from freezing. It's still pretty cold but, as I've mentioned before , we dress in layers and try to stay dry. We also have electric hand grips which, again, if it's not too cold will help take the chill off. Frank heard that if you smear a mixture of cayane pepper and whale sperm on you it will keep you warm. We've managed to get the pepper but no one wants to try and harvest the whale sperm so it remains up in the air.

Anyway, I digress.

We left Whitehorse and found major road construction around Kluane Lake (see above). Mud and dirt, dirt and mud, oh and delay. Hurry up and wait. It's really ok because after the pace Frank and I have been going over the last week we needed to slow down. We next ran into the most severe frost heaves in the road that I've ever seen. Frost heaves are where the road simply won't sit still. During the winter the roadway can rise or fall several feet. The road crews are constantly working to repair them.The Motorhomes and Travel trailers really had to slow down and so did we. Real kidney crushers.

This area is marked by wide valleys and tall mountains. They look pretty spectacular considering that they aren't really that tall compared to the Rockies, but we are at a low elevation and they really look impressive. The next picture is Allen and Carol on the road. Allen insists that shortly after this picture was taken there was a porcupine running down the side of the road in the opposite direction, but I missed it. I did read later in the Tok Times that a porcupine escaped from a Veteranarian that was later arrested for abusing animals by dressing them up in contra gender appropriate clothing (inside joke, sorry).

The next picture is of Frank looking fast parked, then a picture at the border, and a shot of the forest beside the road. The reason I shot this picture of the forest was to give you an idea how dense the forest up here is. If you went in 50 feet, closed your eyes and spun around three times, I doubt that you could find your way out. The aprons that they keep on the sides of the highway are like a frontier. The forest is a slumbering giant and if you look away too long, it will reclaim what was once his. Many people seeing this dense awesome forest are inspired, others probably intimidated or frightened by it's mystery. I see building materials. I really am my father's son.

We stopped for lunch near the border with Alaska in Beaver Creek after a long stretch of muddy road that left us and our bikes pretty filthy. The Alcan has been paved for several years, except where it isn't: Road costruction. They have to really hustle with their work because the time to work is so short. If you are considering this as a trip, you don't want to take a nice car. The road is passable everywhere, just not very smooth. We rode in mostly sunshine today, the first in awhile. We spent the night in Tok and after we checked in, it just poured rain. Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.

Tok is where Allen christened one of his bike's driving lights on a steel post. He was cool calm and contrite about this incident)>: However his withering gaze melted the pipe into 20 horseshoes which he threw over his shoulder for good luck not to repeat that on this trip. Sadly the horseshoes busted the headlights and windshield of a rare Edsel that was owned by the Tok Taxi (everything in Tok has to start with a 'T'). The driver was Hindu named Tom and he was in a forgiving mood, so with an apology and a foot massage, he let Allen off the hook(>; I doubt that Allen will ever live down giving that Taxi driver a foot massage. He's still complaining that the driver's toe nails were too long and painted the wrong color for his sandals. Have I been in the bush too long? The members of my reading group figured it would eventually lead to this. Tomorrow: Anchorage.