When asked by friends why we were going to ride Alaska, it was appropriate to re-work the classic George Mallory 1923 quote about climbing Everest – “because we think it’s almost certainly there”. We had never really considered the endless wilderness of the most northerly US state as a motorcycling destination, particularly due to my memories of reading about early explorers in the Yukon literally going mad with the relentless swarms of mosquitoes in summer. The likelihood of congress with huge and hungry grizzly bears didn’t add much additional comfort during the unfounded perceptions development stage, but when the opportunity to be cold and miserable and itching all over presents itself then we rarely take a backward step, unless we know that’s what it will be like in advance.
Several points worked very favourably for the Compass Expeditions True North Alaska tour; firstly, our daughter Kate is working in Canada so it enabled a visitation, secondly, the tour was being led by Bayne Morison our calm and fun Compass support vehicle driver from Africa, and thirdly, it was a “first time” tour so we would be like Hillary and Norgay, sure lots of people will ride Alaska with Compass, but we will always be the first.
So off we went via Canada’s airline to Vancouver on Friday 7th June, deliberately toughening ourselves up in economy as it is always worse than anything that can possibly happen on the tour, including being attacked by a bear. A brief stopover and then onward to Anchorage, vigorously waving our USA visas at any officials standing between us and the aircraft, which were required due to our trip through Sudan during the Cairo to Cape Town expedition. Arriving into Anchorage just before lunchtime, we met our first companion for the trip – Patrick of Perth – while loitering around the baggage carousel. Off to the Lakefront Hotel, we were forced to deposit the luggage and take a groggy trip into town due to the late check-in time of after 3pm. A wander about the fairly compact city centre, a coffee at the Hard Rock Café as a substitute for beer which would have caused immediate unconsciousness, and we were back out to the hotel to unpack, take a walk, and try to battle through until a reasonably civilised time to have dinner, drinks, and get to bed.
Tour day -2 was all about cultural immersion, commencing with a wander up the road to a nearby classic American Diner for breakfast and starting the process of USA food intake calibration. Using the eggs in the pictures for benchmarking the scale, it was obvious that the standard menu meals of pancakes, waffles, hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, biscuit (i.e. bun), and gravy with optional sides of grits, beans, and bizarrely fresh fruit need working up to. Instead, a “do it yourself meal construction” approach was taken with selection of only certain items to bring the calorie intake down from 1976 Elvis to a more sustainable John Goodman.
A trolley bus tour of Anchorage was on offer, and our guide Bracken did a great job pointing out the key features and history of the town and the surrounding areas. The airport and Lakes Hood and Spenard are worth a mention – Alaska is not overwhelmed with roads, so aircraft are owned by a lot of the population to get to the remote settlements and cabins. The stop at the little dirt strip at Lake Hood showed a constant stream of light aircraft taking off and landing on their fat tundra tyres, while seaplanes relentlessly did the same on the lakes and large jets regularly from the international airport. Air Traffic Control have a vending machine with Red Bull, Monster Energy, and Rockstar drinks very popular for the controllers to mentally stay on top of the confusion.
An ingrained event in the history of Alaska mentioned in all the museums in the state was the 1964 Good Friday earthquake of 9.2 magnitude – the strongest ever recorded in the US and second strongest in recorded history. Areas of most of the major towns of Anchorage, Seward, Valdez, Cordova, and Homer as well as numerous other smaller settlements were destroyed, particularly where buildings and suburbs were on soil which liquified. The popular earthquake park just west of the Anchorage city is based on the suburb of Turnagain Heights, which slid down toward the sea and was never re-built.
After our rampant tourism, we went back to the hotel and started to come across some of our tour group – mostly recognisable by Australian accents, lack of children, chiselled features, and carrying large beverage containers. Dinner was with several tour members at Today’s Pizza next door to the hotel, which seemed appropriate at the time because it was today then. Repeated warnings about “meth heads outside” from a concerned yet strangely repetitive and addled patron added to the local colour, fortunately we knew a secret back route to the hotel so could avoid making new local street friends.
Day -1 had a Segway tour thrown up as the preferred option. Finding the Segway tour office was a challenge, there were billboards, posters, signs and flyers everywhere advertising an 11am departure but the precise office location wasn’t obvious, and the assumption that a line-up of Segways surely must appear by 10:59am was incorrect. 11am came and went and so the back-up plan was to hire bicycles. A mere $50 gave us both bikes for 3 hours, enough time to do 11 miles out to Kincaid Park past the airport according to the staff on duty. Clutching detailed maps with random crosses drawn for where we might see moose, we hit the road past the still mysteriously quiet Segway office region and headed west along the Turnagain Arm coastline, encouraged to keep up a good pace by the mozzies who swarmed in like pre-teen Taylor Swift fans every time we slackened off.
All distances in Alaska are in miles, which tends to result in gross under-estimation of distance by the metrified peoples. 11 miles? That sounds like bugger-all even for those who hadn’t been on a bike since a 2016 magpie terror attack near home. 18 kilometres? There is no way we could ride that far in 1.5 hours including stops for moose photos, snacks, and application of five coats of Bushman’s. Two hours in and we’d slogged up the brutal hill not shown on the two-dimensional map in Kincaid Park to the 11 mile mark, fortunately manned by a street food vendor selling water and interesting hotdogs. The plan to pedal furiously downhill on the return journey and coast most of the way back was destroyed by pedestrians with small randomly orbiting dogs, but we still made good time even with stops for moose with calf photos, re-hydration, and 3 more coats of Bushman’s, arriving back only 10 minutes late after a huge 36km. 6.7mph is nothing, but 11kmh is a jolly good effort.
Back to the hotel with the quads seizing on the complimentary hotel shuttle ride, we enjoyed some deserved IPA and house wine-style refreshments and introduced ourselves to more chiselled tour members in the bar before the official tour briefing and dinner. After an emotional reunion with Bayne at the briefing, formal introductions were made and general information was given by tour leader Justin, and luggage was issued including 60 litre soft bags to avoid people bringing huge hard cases (and being deservedly murdered by Bayne after a few days packing the support vehicle), and two panniers for each bike.
The rollcall of tour members was:
- Justin Sain (1200GS) – Compass tour leader
- Bayne Morison – Compass support vehicle driver
- Nic (1200GS) and Margreth (700GS) – Brisbane Australia
- Tim and Karen (700GS) – Hobart Australia
- Bruce and Maureen (1200GS) – Launceston Australia
- Peter and Maxine (1200GS) – Bacchus Marsh Australia
- Alden (1200GS) and Jan (700GS) – Green Mountain Falls CO USA
- Mike (700GS) – Colorado Springs CO USA
- Patrick (Vstrom 650) – Perth Australia
- Richard (Vstrom 650) – Roma Australia
- Jake (800GS) – Adelaide Australia
- Trevor (800GS) – Kilmore Australia
- Cindy (700GS) and Duncan (800GS) – Brisbane Australia
Day 1 commenced at a civilised hour, with a short trundle up the road in the van to Motoquest to get the bikes. The fleet was extensive, but only well-used hard-core adventure bikes were available to ride given the plan included the infamous Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay. The ride group were relatively experienced, so everyone set to work getting the bikes bespoked to suit their comfort levels. After a quick test ride around the car park, all was ready.
The first day was of roughly 365km distance south down to Homer. Immediate scenery overload occurred, as it is virtually impossible to avoid riding toward/alongside imposing snow-covered mountain ranges in Alaska. We motored through Portage, had a brief stopover at Canyon Creek to read up on some gold mining history, lunched at Kenai Lake, paused at the Soldotna drive-thru bank, and had an excellent coffee experience along the coast of Turnagain Arm at a pro-biker establishment. A stop near Ninilchik on the beach overlooking the Arm with the distinctive and active Iliamna Volcano and Mt Redoubt off in the distance satisfied the budding photographers, and we finished the first day with a ride past Anchor Point to Homer Spit and Land’s End Resort.
The spit holds a mixture of tourists and fisherman, and a short walk had us back into a plethora of dining options. Captain Pattie’s Fish House seemed likely to have Halibut on the menu, and although the admission of wanting a wine or beer with the meal resulted in relegation to the restaurant section with almost no views across the bay, a good IPA and wine confirmed our sensible choosing.
Day 2 was designed to force the motorcycle fledglings from the led tour nest, cruelly we had to organise our own activities or do nothing at all. Cindy’s 700GS side stand was a priority as it caused the bike to lean over precariously, making it hard to get upright before riding off. A check of the maps indicated that it was a mere 4 miles into Homer proper and the promising sounding Ulmer’s Drug and Hardware where surely both duct tape could be purchased for the side stand and strong stimulants could be purchased to increase motivation to fix it. Organising a water taxi guided tour for the afternoon on the way, we dourly headed off up the spit to town. Although 4 miles sounds quick and easy, 6.4km doesn’t but we were so immersed in the imperial system of measure by this stage we didn’t think to do a conversion. Another problem was that the spit is just barren sand and rock, and the end is always in sight and never appeared to be getting any closer, with our misery rubbed in by passing Holland-America Cruise Liner free shuttles. Beginning to stagger from lack of stimulants, we finally made it to the end of the spit, only to discover that we had another 2 uphill miles to go to get into the actual town proper. Becoming delirious from lack of caffeine, we eventually made it into Ulmer’s and made the necessary purchases.
Sensibly catching a land taxi for the return journey, in 10 minutes we’d covered the 6 miles/10km back to the hotel and prepared ourselves for the water taxi tour in the afternoon. We met up with Richard O’Roma and Patrick O’Perth who had also booked the tour and hit the docks, eventually finding the water taxi which took us over to the other side of Kachemak Bay. First fauna on the list were otters, lots of otters. Otters are a lot larger than we’d thought, reaching well over a metre in length and eating a lot of seafood which makes them about as popular with commercial fishing people as a Harley rider in any situation involving human beings. Next on the fauna list were puffins, seen in group numbers rarely observed by our guide. These sightings were considered a positive harbinger for future bear sightings.
Three hours later, after staring at every inch of the magnificent coastline and mountainsides looking for bears and only the guide thinking he caught a glimpse of a black bear’s bum as it ran into the bush, we returned to Homer. A nice IPA in the Salty Dawg while nervously looking at the thousands of flammable $1 notes pinned upon every possible space, and after first making the necessary modifications to Cindy’s side stand the clock said it was a suitable time for dinner and bed. But not until we’d heard details of the Team Tasmania flight out to unfairly see bears in plague proportions.
Day 3 was a partial backtrack north then a drop south-east to Seward. A coffee at Kasilof, and we were fortified for the journey back to Kenai Lake which had now become the traditional southern Alaskan lunch venue. On the subject of backtracking, the Alaskan road network is a loop around Palmer – Healy – Fairbanks – Tok – Glennallen, with a sparse set of dead-end roads coming out of this loop, one going north, and the rest heading in other directions except for west – there are no roads out to Nome. Hence the plethora of planes to reach much of the state. So backtracking becomes an accepted practice in Alaskan travel, but at least not much is missed and any photo regrets can be resolved on the return journey.
Coming into Seward was scenery on steroids, with lakes, snow covered mountains, and even glaciers making the ride down to Resurrection Bay one head swivelling distraction after another. The town is named for William Seward, the US Secretary of State who in 1867 bought Alaska for $7.2 million, equivalent to 2 cents per billion mozzies which is extraordinary value. Once ensconced into the warm bosom of the Holiday Inn Express, it was a stroll down through the marina area into town proper and into the even warmer bosom of the Seward Brewing Co establishment for a few spectacular IPAs and dinner. A nice stroll back via the waterfront, a few more drinks with Nic and Margreth in Chinooks restaurant next to the hotel, and the conscious period of the day came to an end.
Day 4 was solid and relentless backtracking to Anchorage on the way to join the road loop proper and finish at Talkeetna. More scenery from the opposite side was experienced up to morning tea at Alyeska on Turnagain arm, strangely including a dead whale high and nearly dry on the mud near Portage. Bayne was already anticipating the mass food disposal at the end of the trip, resulting in over-consumption of chocolate snacks, but at least we were well energised for some fairly un-inspiring riding up through the Anchorage ‘burbs.
After a bit of dispersion through Anchorage and calm re-grouping, we made our way into Eagle River for lunch. We don’t expect to be taken to a vegan café specialising in kale – kombucha dishes, but nor do we expect the complete opposite – Pete’s Barbeque. To imagine Pete’s Barbeque, think of a 17th century coal mine with a few neon signs installed, or the disturbing basement in the Silence of the Lambs movie during a power failure. We were in a land of perpetual daylight, except for the hour or so we spent on Day 4 inside Pete’s Barbeque. The food was fantastic, and once we had all evolved into blind hairless moles the atmosphere was excellent fun. The stage was used to store numerous lawnmowers, which seemed especially odd as there was no lawn, and vacuum cleaners which looked to be caged vacuums as there was no evidence they’d ever run free range out in the bar area.
The cultural immersion complete, it was back on the bikes in the increasing heat for the push up the highway to Talkeetna where we had a two night stay planned at the Swiss Alaska Inn on the edge of the town. Once changed and refreshed, we took the shortcut out the back and over the Anchorage to Fairbanks railway line to the touristy little village filled with restaurants, bars, craft shops, and adventure tour booking offices. The Denali Brewpub was the venue of choice for dinner, however we managed to completely de-rail serving protocols by moving into and out of different staff zones on the verandah to avoid the sun or sit with tour friends. As we were customers and therefore always right, any sullen staff attitudes were fully accounted for in the final tip tally.
Day 5 started with a breakfast and gathering for a trip to the Talkeetna airport for a Denali flyover. The weather looked okay-ish, but as Talkeetna is a long way from Denali hope for a clear view went unmentioned in case it put a curse on the tour. Once out in the plane and on the way, the clouds disappeared, and we were treated with some of the most spectacular scenery imaginable. The plane doesn’t go up to 20,000ft and therefore all the flying is below the peak of Mt Denali and through the valleys and glaciers.
With universal agreement that the Denali experience had been right up there with the best ever, and after a wander about the town and a light lunch we moved onto the next activity – ziplining. The Denali Zipline Tour includes 9 ziplines and 3 suspension bridges, so took up a fair part of the afternoon with Peter and Maxine and Margreth joining us. No photos were taken because we left all our loose gear behind, anything falling would be lost in thick jungle forever so decided against. The tour was excellent, even though long periods were spent on apparently flimsy platforms while less confident group members sometimes had to be pried from the tree branches to get them onto the next line.
After all the activity, the day was declared a raging success and the railway line was crossed once more for dinner and some well-deserved drinks at the Mountain High Pizza Pie restaurant which was rounded out with the Blue Flags and Black Grass band playing a few catchy numbers. Back to the Swiss Alaska Inn, our laundry was sorted out and bags repacked for the next stage of the trip – the daunting push to the very top of North America at Prudhoe Bay.
End of Part One
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