Deadhorse sits on the edge of the continent, in a coastal plain with gray curved roads and few road signs to guide the way. It requires tribal knowledge to get around, and most anyone you ask for directions will point the way with a finger, and you have to figure out how to get over there. To call it a town would be charitable, it is really an industrial construction site built to support the extraction of oil.

First order of business upon arrival: gas up the bikes and spare containers.

Prudhoe Bay is home to the largest oil in the US and North America, which means it’s also a strategic asset – access to the Arctic Ocean requires a background check with 24 hour advance notice, as you must use a guided tour for access. While this appears to be common knowledge among the locals and ADV forum, apparently lots of people continue to show up in town expecting to have immediate beach access & ocean vu.

Tip: 2011 may be the last year for guided tours, as the hosting Arctic Caribou Inn is shutting down after this year due to increasing maintenance bills and competing housing alternatives. When we were there in July, no other hospitality companies had yet committed to picking up the tour for next year. So anyone interested in dipping their toes into the Beaufort Sea in the future should research this ahead of time.

Upon arrival at the Caribou Inn, your name gets checked off on an Excel spreadsheet, you pay the $40 tour fee, view an 10 year old video in dire need of a refresh, and hop on the bus to see the production facilities, local wildlife, and finally the ocean.

We spent the night at the Prudhoe Bay Hotel, complete with excellent wifi, 3G, and an over-achieving buffet. The hotel likes to keep the carpets clean, so guests have to wear baby blue booties over street shoes to prevent grime creep. Very stylish, and disposable. James liked his booties so much he wore them on the southbound trip, as you’ll see in the next video.

We headed out of Deadhorse in the morning chill, temps in the mid-40s, which the locals would call ‘balmy’ conditions. It’s all relative. The first 50 or so miles cut across the tundra on a layered gravel top, relatively hard in the tire wells, with increasing stone accumulation toward the edge of the road. Without any notice, the road turned to deeper gravel, 1-2 inches high, and the bikes became squirrelly. Jun was in the lead, I was right behind, our bikes both started to slalom. We reduced speed and plowed ahead. I looked in my side mirror, and saw everyone behind me had stopped. Someone had gone down.

Jun and I circled back. Everyone was standing when we reached the group, and were huddled around Brady’s bike. Turns out Brady got caught up in the high gravel on the edge of the road, and wasn’t quite able to get out. Brady is an experienced rider who vacations in Baja with his F650, so we knew he must have hit a bad patch and couldn’t squeeze out. Given the conditions of the road, I’m thankful more of us didn’t go down, it was a nasty surprise. Brady was up and standing, no injuries, something else to be thankful for, it was time for damage assessment on the bike.

You can see more of the bike and road conditions in the southbound video, which I’ll embed at the end of this post.

Although the bike was rideable to Fairbanks, we later learned that without a front fender, rain & road spray off the front wheel would come up and hit Brady right on the visor, essentially blinding him with water and mud. So James and Brady rigged a temporary fender that worked through the brief showers we ran into on the remainder of the southbound leg.

We ran into Matt and Jason at the Hotspot Cafe…two brothers from the UK now living in Atlanta. They have their own ride report in production here.

Short three minute video of the southbound ride, including the accident. Check out the skeeter swarm and James’ booties while we assess the bike.

Upon landing in Fairbanks, we immediately gas’d up and headed over to Adventure CycleWorks to clean up the bikes and attend to oil changes. It’s important to get the calcium chloride off the bike as soon as possible, as it will harden and do a vulcan-merge meld thing with the bike metals. Dan and Shawn run a nice shop there, highly recommended. Check out their site for more info.

We used the following day as ‘McGuyver’ Day to attend to Brady’s bike and catch up with shopping. We scored a $5 replacement fender (!) from the spare parts bin at the Trail’s End dealership, and picked up a left blinker and left mirror. I also needed a new blinker cover which was taken out by a flying rock from a truck passing on the Dalton. As we camped in the Trail’s End parking lot with our tool kits spread out, we had some wonderful exchanges with passing folks. One elderly gentleman stopped by, said he was one of the first truckers up the Dalton, had awesome stories of being stuck on the ice, helicopter coming in with food, he had to stand on top of the cab with waters rising around him, great stuff.

Another biker stopped by, mid-30s, on a 1200GSA, this was going to be his last season in Fairbanks, he was done with it. He performs MRIs for a living, been up here for seven years, it’s too cold in the winter, the local vendors are too expensive, and heating months are 7-8 months of the year. He’s single, moving back to the lower 48 next year. Okay then. (If he’s reading this, didn’t catch his name, definitely a longer riding season here in Seattle.)

TIP: always carry safety wire. We used it to keep the fender on the bike for the rest of the trip. It rocks.

Also worth a mention of two of Fairbanks finer dining establishments…

And dinner at Geraldo’s on College Ave, excellent pizza and beer, and just 10 minutes down the street from the college.

Let’s just get this out of the way right up front: Denali Highway became an immediate nominee on my top ten list of most scenic highways in the US. Immediate nominee. I’ve been on Going to the Sun Road, Coastal Highway 1 in Big Sur, Trail Ridge in Colorado, Broadway in Manhattan (don’t dismiss it until you’ve tried it!), Windy Ridge to Mount St Helens, and now the Dalton on this trip. Denali Highway is spectacularly beautiful, and I ran out of superlatives to describe it.

We entered on the western side from Cantwell, which apparently is the wrong way to go, as Denali Mountain is then at your back as you travel eastward. It didn’t matter on this day, as the mountain wasn’t out during our passage. We danced with some rain clouds and more slippery construction zones, and even caught a rainbow.

We took our time going across, and eventually settled down at the BLM campground at Tangle Lakes. Half of the campground was closed to construction, looks like they’re putting in new sites and tables, and the construction trucks continued deep into evening with an incessant beep-beep-beep signal of reverse drive. The wind had kicked up too. It was the kind of wind that puts whitecaps on the lake and makes your tent flap all night. It also kept the bugs away.

TIP: The town of Healy appears to be the tourist capital of visitors heading into Denali National Park. It’s an insane juggle between RVs, tour buses, and cars looking for places to stay and grab some food. But tucked in between the buildings and RV camp are two food trucks, one for Chinese food, the other for Thai. Both had delicious entrees with heaping portions, although a little overpriced. Recommended.

We were warned about Glennallen, just down the road from the eastern side of the Denali Highway. Be extra careful about speed traps. The area is close to Alaska State Trooper training ground, where speed enforcement training is in regular operation. On this run, however, the only thing we had to worry about was the rain. A few drops had turned into a steady drizzle which turned into a steady downpour, and the temperatures were dropping into the low 50s. Although I had planned for temps down into the 30s for the trip, I had yet to toss on the long johns, and the prospect of taking off the suit and pants to get an underlayer on seemed too much.

We continued to forge west on the Glen Highway, hand warmers on full blast, and then little patches of blue appeared in the sky. Matanuska Glacier appeared on the side of the road, the pavement began to dry and turn a few twistys, and we found ourselves staring at Anchorage and Wasilla road signs. That wet and cold combo was one of the most uncomfortable weather segments of the trip, yet when I compare with other road trips this summer, seems we should be thankful it wasn’t worse. Anchorage was then under our tires, and we made our way to the Harley dealership for a tent spot and shower for the night.

Let me give HD Anchorage a shout out for the free campground and nice shower facilities. And free wifi. Most appreciated.

After taking care of supplies and bikes, we headed south the next day, embracing the scenic Route 1 around Turnagain Arm and down into Sterling as we made a beeline for Homer. But first, we had an important stop to make – perhaps this is common knowledge to all the local Alaska folks, it never occurred to us to hunt down the point of the most western highway on the continent. We had to stop at Anchor Point. It’s a couple of miles off the main highway on Anchor Point Road, there is no signage to indicate the way. (But the Chamber of Commerce folks are happy to give you directions.)

And for an extra surprise, we were lucky to enjoy the Anchor Point version of docking a boat. No piers or boat slips here, they just run a tractor out into the surf, the boat races in with the waves, a deck hand ties up to the trailer, and the tractor emerges from the water and up to the parking lot. Fun to watch on a calm day, and I’m thinking this takes on turbulent proportions in serious weather. Here’s a short photo sequence of a pick-up while we were there.

We chatted with the staff after the above extraction, apparently they have more videos on YouTube. The manager didn’t want to talk much about the maintenance costs on the tractors with the salt water, upkeep is a bit pricey, even by Alaska standards.