Trip Map - the link takes you to an interactive version of the map on the Open Road Journey site]

Riding the Alaska-Canada highway has been at the top of my wishlist for a couple of years. Peter and I left in mid-July and returned about three weeks later, having traversed the Alaska-Canada highway (from Dawson Creek, BC to Fairbanks AK), the Top of the World Highway (crosses the US/Canada border), the east side of the Klondike Highway loop (the west side is part of the Alaska Canada highway), down the Haines Highway to the Tongass National Forest via the Alaska Marine Highway (ferry). Homeward bound we rode along the Redwood Highway and Avenue of the Giants where you can commune with Redwood trees over 1,000 years old.

The yellow line shows the Alaska- Canada Highway. The entire length is about 1600 miles, road improvements keep shortening the road, year to year you'll see different numbers for total mileage.

The Alaska Highway
Winding in and winding out
leaves a lot of serious doubt
if the lout who build this route
was going to hell or coming out
- author unknown 

The best resource for Alaska trip planning is the Milepost, trip planner and Alaska travel guide to the highways, roads, ferries, lodgings, recreation, sightseeing attractions and services along the Alaska Highway to and within Alaska, including Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

At the "Mile 0" marker in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada, the beginning of the Alaska Canada Highway.

To get this far, we had ridden 1450 miles and had settled into a wonderful relaxed state of not knowing either the date or the day of the week. As you ride north, the days get longer and longer so the notion of "stopping at dusk" isn't useful.

Road trips are always a challenge for vegetarians but we have learned that when all else fails, find a steakhouse, the kind puts baskets of peanuts-in-the-shell on table while you're waiting for your beer. At a steakhouse you can always find side dishes of steamed vegetables and baked potato and a salad. Not optimal but sufficient - protein from the peanuts, greens and carbs.

Delta Junction is the end of the "AlCan" military road-building project, a 1500-mile segment of the Alaska Canada Highway.

Although our daily average was 300 miles, we were often out 8 to 9 hours a day. Road conditions are constantly changing and there are many construction-related delays all you can do is turn off your ignition and wait.

At the bridge of flags in Fairbanks, the terminus of the Alaska Canada Highway. The AlCan segment added to the existing 100 mile road between Delta Junction and Fairbanks to complete the Alaska Canada Highway.

The ride from Dawson Creek, BC to Tok had some challenges but I had no idea what was in store for me on the Top of the World Highway. The worst scare thus far was hitting a section of deep gravel (not road bed) at around 50 mph. I did stay off the brakes but didn't give the bike enough gas to drive through with control. Now I know what "tank slap" is. My understanding is that this phenomenon occurs at high speed when the weight is taken off the front wheel by the torque of the rear wheel causing the front to loose traction - the handle bars move from side to side in an uncontrolled manner as the front end of the bike tries to find its line again. On a sport bike, the movement of the handle bars would slap the tank. Fortunately the bike (with no help from me) stayed upright until we got through the hazard.

We saw Dal sheep and mountain goats along the rocky edges of rocky cliffs. Near Kluane River a red fox gave us a dirty look for impeding his progress across the road. You are riding along and you see something in the road so you slow down. The fox looks at you and you hear in your head, "Human, you are stopped in the middle of the road. Quit staring at me, it's rude. Are you going or am I going? Jeez, humans are crazy." Although tantalized by road signs warning us of caribou and elk crossing, we didn't see any.

The Top of the World Highway is a segment of the Klondike Loop, between Chicken and Dawson Creek. Although shown on most maps as paved, the surface is rough chip seal and loose gravel.

I'm glad I didn't know about the road surface for this section of the ride ahead of time. I'm better on pressed earth road bed after a couple hundred miles of it from this trip, but it still bothers me and I'm riding a bike built for these road conditions. Peter was riding a sport bike for the entire trip; I thought he was going to miserable. In fact, having grown up on the east coast and accustomed to driving cars on snow and ice, the sliding around on gravel was as fun for him as it was un-happy making (not quite terrifying) for me.

At Border is the last pit stop before you leave Alaska and enter Canada on the Top of the World Highway. We're not talking about fuel here.

Please note the road surface. Keep in mind that for any road marked "closed in Winter" on the map, "paved" is an intent, not necessarily a reality.

There was no one to ask, but I think this is the Boundary Lodge, one of the first roadhouses in Alaska.

Coming from the suburbs, the antler rack adornments give me the creeps. Here, subsistence hunting is way of life but not all antler rack adornments are the result of hunting. Elk antlers are shed in early December. When the elk drop their antlers depends on the amount of stress on the buck after the rut, heredity and nutrition.

Shed antlers are called "drops." Looking for them can be a good way to spend late winter days in the field. Usually only one side of the rack can be located at a time, because both sides of the antlers do not drop simultaneously. They are difficult to find after late winter because small mammals, mice and squirrels, eat the antlers for the calcium in them.

No one was at the Cafe, either. It was lunch time, maybe the whole town was taking a siesta? We were warned that there is no gas in Boundary, contrary to what the maps tell you. Confirmed, no gas in Boundary; this section of the trip required careful gas planning and management.

On the George Black ferry to Dawson City

Coming to a skittish halt, it took a moment to realize that there were cars and an RV queued for the ferry that was negotiating the rapids. We looked around for a sign to tell us how much the ferry would cost; I worried that we were low on Canadian currency. No one tried to collect money from us, the ferry is provided as a free service by the Yukon government. It runs hourly, generally.

These TransAlp 600 cc bikes were first introduced in 1987. New versions were released in 1994 and 1996. For some reason I have a strong affinity for the TransAlp bike. The two pictured above had European plates; they had been shipped to the US.

My 1200cc GS is the perfect bike for this kind of trip but there were moments when I wished I was riding something a wee bit smaller, something like what I hope BMW will release next year, a GS version of the new 800cc bike. And, with 20-20 hindsight, I wish I had bought the spoked wheels instead of the designer wheels.

This trip gave me the opportunity to look at a variety of metal side bags. The stock expandable panniers that came with my bike are okay for city riding, but for touring I want load stuff in from the top and I want to attach dry bags more efficiently that we did on this trip.

Here are examples of carefully preserved and in-use buildings from the 1900's. Dawson City has worked hard to preserve its heritage and is a thriving tourist destination.

Better pictures of Dawson City, more information about Dawson City

From a sign about this 3rd Avenue Complex:

"In Dawson City's history, permafrost ranks second only to fire as the bane of buildings. These three structures (only two shown here), dating from 1901, illustrate what can happen when heated buildings are places on frozen ground; the frost melts, mixing water with the soil to form a very fluid mulch into which the different footings settle at different rates. No restoration measures have been taken with these buildings so that visitors may see history as it naturally unfolds."

The yellow line shows the Klondike Highway up to Whitehorse. Technically we didn't complete the Klondike Highway because we didn't go to Scagway due to flood warnings and possible road closures at Carcross. It is best to be flexible when traveling in Alaska, the weather rules.

The sequence of highways was entirely fortuitous. Most of the road hazards along the Alaska Canada highway are well-marked. One of the Yamaha cruisers let us know that when the road began to undulate we should take the posted speed signs seriously as he had bottomed out a couple of times.

As soon as we turned on to the Richardson Highway headed to Chicken, I had a sense that the inexplicable gravel hazard many hundreds of miles back was just a warning. The Richardson and Top of the World higways, and the Klondike highway up to the Mayo turnoff were a reasonable challenge to this offroad novice, reasonable only because Peter was leading. I was so glad I wasn't doing this ride alone. There were moments when I wondered what had possessed me to think I could do this. Past Mayo the Klondike highway was pretty good and my oh my was I ever grateful.

The Moose Creek Lodge was supposed to be a minor pit stop, but we chatted for nearly an hour with a congenial French Canadian fellow on a Kawasaki with trailer who had been riding for two months. He had just been up to the Alaska border, waved, and turned back. For some mysterious reason he could not enter the US. We did not ask.

Mr. Kawasaki had his tent, sleeping bag, camera, tripod, cooking equipment and the kitchen sink in his trailer. We were Visa card camping for the majority of the trip; I was a bit envious of his self-sufficiency.

Peter carried the dry bag with the tent and the sleeping bag pads, I carried the dry bag with the sleeping bags. Our packing methods were adequate, but required two trips to get everything off the bikes and into a hotel room. Ideally, it should take one trip per bike. We'll get there.

On the trip southward, we were in serious need of rest, a shower, and most importantly, an Internet cafe. I'm realizing, no, I'm accepting that I'm more addicted to email than I am to coffee-in-the-morning. The sign on the community-use computers at the cafe said, "Deposit one loonie for twenty minutes." I thought that meant a token of some sort. Turns out a loonie is the nickname for the one dollar Canadian coin.

In the San Francisco bay area it doesn't get cold enough to need a car engine heater. In Whitehorse, the city provides 220 volt cords for people to plug their car's engine heater into during the winter.

After getting our email fix in Whitehorse and a good night's sleep we headed west, retracing a section of Highway 1. The morning trip was timed to get us to the Haines Junction Village Bakery for lunch. The photos below are from the Kluane National Park.

A Village Bakery Patron

The Dempster Highway is a 417-mile road through the Arctic wilderness from Dawson City, Yukon, to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. It is notorious for tearing up tires. If I ever ride that highway, I will carry a spare set of tires with me.

The Kluane National Park has many glaciers of ice, some are enormous. But the glacier in the picture below is of rock. During the last 8,000 years the brittle bedrock of the mountain peaks has been shattered into fragments by the cycling of freezing and thawing of winter and summer. Lubricated by meltwater and riding a core of glacial ice, this constantly accumulating mass of rock slowly ground its way down the mountainside. Today this rock glacier is dead, a result of warmer temperatures in recent times.

The yellow line shows the Haines Highway.

The Haines Highway goes from Haines Junction, YT to Haines Alaska. As with riding the Top of the World Highway, I felt privileged to be alive and having this experience. The Haines Highway cuts through mountains still being carved by glaciers. On the map, the route is marked with a black dotted line to indicate that it is a scenic route. Peter's interpretation of those black dots is that they mark where you will feel compelled to stop and take a picture. We wondered if we would ever get to Haines because we kept stopping to gawk, and take a picture.

That bulk under my jacket isn't the result of many pieces of berry pie, that's my electric vest. It wasn't turned on at this point, but when we were in the middle of the pass, surrounded by glaciers, without it I would have turned into a popsicle.

"Take the ferry", said Pat, the Service Manager at CalMoto. Checking the map, I saw that the Alaska Marine Highway would take us through the Tongass National Forest. We could float part of the way home and see the forest from a completely different vantage point. Perfect. I booked us on the Malaspina from Haines AK to Bellingham WA.

I don't have pictures of the Tongass National Forest. Like the Haines Highway, I didn't know where to start. I was so overwhelmed by the glaciers, the forests, the whale, porpoise, and dolphin watching that I put the camera away, and just enjoyed the experience.

Being aboard a ship for several days can drive you batty. We learned that 8 laps around the ship's deck was equal to a mile. Peter and I weren't the only ones braving the wind and rain to get some exercise.

If I could only do this ferry segment of the trip, I would start in Bellingham and go north, slowly leaving civilisation behind, entering the land of the glaciers with a sense of reverence.

A word to the wise: No matter what the reservation agent tells you, bring your own tie-downs. On our voyage there were 22 motorcycles in the ship's hold. The Malaspina car deck crew gave Peter and me various lengths of rope and twine, and I was able to borrow one tie-down from an amused truck driver. Not pretty, and rather embarrassing as all the other bikers had brought tie downs, but in the end all the bikes were well-secured.

Our 2-person Yellow Tent

Two out of the four nights, the wind howled and the rain poured; thanks to the sleeping bag pads we slept one half-inch above a completely soaked tent floor. The last day was gloriously sunny - everything dried out just in time to pack up and load on the bikes.

Camping turned out just fine - you can rent towels on board, there are hot showers for tent and the sleeping bag-only folks who slept on the lounge chairs in back of us in the "solarium" - note the heaters in the ceiling.

A Watchful Bald Eagle

The voyage had a couple of short stops. I'm used to seeing pigeons and seagulls hanging around marinas, Here in Alaska you'll see birds of a different feather perched on the lamp posts.

While the food aboard the ferry was okay, this was no cruise ship. If you are used to drinking espresso, then shift your expectations to the equivalent of cafeteria coffee and you won't be disappointed. There is a bar on board with excellent Alaskan beer on tap.

Many tent people brought dehydrated camp food which they rehydrated with hot water from the ferry's cafeteria. We did take advantage of one of the stops to buy fresh fruit and peanuts at a market. Since all food in Alaska needs to be brought in by plane or ship or truck, it is not cheap.

The ferry puts into port in Bellingham, WA, so it should have been easy to hyperwarp home on Highway 5. The ambient temperature was 109 degrees in Roseburg WA, I was back to putting ice chips in my bra to keep cool. We decided to head for the coast via Highway 299 and take 101 the rest of the way home.

Fortunately we were prepared for the 50 degree temperature change riding from inland Oregon to the California coast. As we approached the coast, the ambient temperature decreased. Just before we reached Crescent City we were enveloped by a fog bank that sucked away what little body heat we had left. We pulled over and wordlessly layered on the cold weather gear.

There's some dispute about what section of Highway 101 is the Redwood Highway. Some people think it runs from Crescent City to the Golden Gate Bridge, other people think it is just the section between Crescent City and Eureka.

The section between Crescent City and Eureka is quite scenic, and there are are more amazing trees to see along the 40 mile side road called Avenue of the Giants, which takes you through a protected forest of redwood trees, some of which are over 1,000 years old.

We had planned to stop in Sausalito for lunch, but the fog was pouring down the hills with such vigor that we agreed to head straight home. I've been on the Golden Gate bridge in rain storms before but was protected from the elements by being inside a car. Riding across the span in gusty winds surrounded by thick swirling fog on a motorcycle was a completely new and unnerving experience.