So that was the Dalton Highway

AFTER DEADHORSE I rode 1,100 miles south to Homer, Alaska, an attractive little town on Kachemak Bay at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula.

I camped in Nenana on my way south but the campground was noisy that night, I split out of there at 3:30 a.m. Camped the next night in Anchorage on a little plot of grass next to the Harley dealership. My kind of camping: free.

Andy and Sherry from Pittsburgh were taking advantage of the Harley courtesy when I got there. It’s open to riders of all motorcycle marques. The dealership gives you a five-digit code so you can get into the bathroom and shower overnight.

Sherry and Andy went to their junior prom together, in 1964, got back together in recent years, after both of their long marriages ended.

They’re together now, and traveling the world. Here in North America they ride a 2005 Honda Goldwing, a 6-cylinder behemoth that easily hauls a pop-up camper trailer for two. Their trailer weighs more than my single-cylinder piglet. Significantly more.

Sherry, like me, is a recovering journalist. We compared notes on the writing life.

Andy’s a born seeker, an astute framer of the novel take on the eternal questions. He gave me free beer, always a reliable sign of a highly advanced state of humanity.

His degree is in philosophy. Given how the philosophy game pays, he became an expert transmission builder.

When I saw him at the Harley place I thought he looked familiar. A moment later I realized we had talked for a few minutes at a fuel stop in Dawson City, the Yukon. Funny how you run into the same people a couple of thousand miles later. Happens all the time.

Interesting people. Road people. So now, add one free-thinking shaved-head ponytail-bearded transmission-building world-traveling dropped-out Eastern Orthodox Seminarian nudist.

While saddling up the piglet, I said, All right, man, see you down the road.

He said, If not there, in another life.

I camped on the Homer Spit last night. Now I’m roosting at a house that’s been empty for a while, and will be for weeks to come. It belongs to a member of the family D1 married into.

Good place to get a shower, do laundry, and maybe do nothing but sleep for a few days.

Or try to get some work done. This was supposed to be a working ride.

For the record, I’m 8,768 miles downrange of Little Rhody. I could get home in 13,500 miles if I were to follow the most direct route, but that’s… never happened yet.

One of the hazards of being a free man on the earth…

… it’s addictive.

The last time I was here, at this house, in Homer, there were moose in the backyard. I snapped this pic from 20 feet away.

Haven’t seen any yet today. I’m on the lookout…

Last night on the Homer Spit. Big tides here.

Bird’s eye view…

The view from my tent at low tide last night.

High tide this morning. My property values went through the roof.

A smoky ride down to Homer yesterday, wildfires burning on the Kenai south of Anchorage. Visibility was down to 100 yards.

I’m told it was worse last week, the road was closed for a time.

Smoke’s awfully raw on the lungs, throat and eyes. It cleared up about 75 miles north of Homer, and the temperature dropped dramatically. I stopped to put on two more shirts and swap the short gloves for gauntlets, keep the air out of my jacket.

A lovely ride, that last hour and a half. It’s good to be here again.

I was here in 2013, on the big iron piggy.

About Deadhorse and the ride south: I had perfect traveling weather on Day 1, a debt to be repaid on Day 2 when I rode through 200 miles of rain. It made the Dalton iffy but not nearly as greasy as the wet Dempster had been in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. I think there must be more clay in the mud on the Canadian side.

As always, I found the answer to my tires losing their grip on the road was to give the throttle a good twist and gas through it.

The oldest off-road saying there is: When in doubt, gas it!

The piglet and I collected quite a lot of mud on our way south off the Dalton.

Forty miles north of Fairbanks was the first time I set foot on dry ground that day.

I’m impressed with this little thumper. It took big-league punishment on these back-to-back runs to the Arctic Ocean.

Saw a musk ox from 75 feet, just south of Deadhorse. I didn’t stop because I don’t know enough about the animal to assess the risk of approaching on foot with a pocket camera. My gut tells me it may be stunad.

Arctic fox? I’ll stop and dismount for that.

Saw her trotting down the road with at least three ground squirrels in her mouth. She must have a den full of kits to feed. She ignored me and trotted right by.

I moved the bike down the road 100 yards and waited for her.

She crossed the road and picked up her pace.

Again, I rode on a short distance, and stopped.

She crossed back to the side of the road where I’d first seen her, sped up, then made a right and took off over the tundra.

Last time I promised to photograph some of the typical road hazards on the Dalton.

The common deeper-than-your-ankle-is-high pothole.

This is actually a decent stretch of road because the holes are easy to avoid. Very often they’re not. You try to thread your way through, succeed for a while, then there’s no path forward and you bang through a dozen of these things.

These you really need to watch for. They’re 2 feet deep.

The ones shown here happen to be on the edge of the travel surface, but you often need to ride the edge when you’ve got a semi barreling down the middle of the road.

Here’s one forming dead center in the travel lane. Keep yer eyes open.

And for graders, too.

I pulled over, shut off the motor and sat the bike when I saw this one coming toward me.

This was Day 1, dry road. He’s putting up dust.

And there he goes up the hill behind me.

So anyway, I split out of Brooks Camp early, rode the coastal plain south…

Soon you’re climbing the foothills into the Brooks Range.

Mountains come into view next…

Then you’re in them, and it’s time to go up and over.

This is the Atigan River, just north of the highest pass in the Brooks Range.

I stopped to wash my visor in the river. Couldn’t see much through the dust of the morning’s ride.

On the final ascent to Atigan Pass. See that tiny, distant plume of dust coming down the north side? The road is plenty wide for the both of us but I’m waiting for him to get down here before I go up.

I wouldn’t be able to see a thing when we passed each other on that ledge. You don’t want to be blind up there.

Here he is, down at the bottom.

Up and over, and on the other side you start seeing trees again. This is still north of the Arctic Circle but it gets enough sunlight and warm-air currents to support tree growth.

Slow growth. Those trees look spindly, about as thick as the working end of a baseball bat, but it may have taken them a century to grow that much.

This is just about down to Coldfoot, one of the bridges over the Koyukuk River.

I camped at Marion Creek at the end of Day 1, rain started around 2 a.m.

No dust on Day 2, so that was good.

In closing, a word about vehicle parts. Broken leaf springs, brake rotor dust covers… you see them scattered about on the Dalton from time to time. No surprise there: a wilderness road is hard on vehicles.

You may even see a drive shaft that ripped out and went flying.

This one happens to be attached to a gear-box mainshaft, complete with shifter pawls… Yeah I was a little surprised to see that.

Even on the Dalton.

Tony DePaul, July 6, 2019, Homer, Alaska, USA