PowerCycle

08/22 Made it off the Denali Highway in one piece. The last 40 miles was very rough but the scenery more than made up for the frequent jolts. No lodges or anything today so I was on my own as far as food. Feeling a little better today but my throat is still a bit sore. I lucked out with the weather. Had a tiny bit of rain when I left this morning but it stayed dry for the rest of the day.

Staying at the Cantwell RV Park tonight and again tomorrow night. At 7:15am tomorrow I have a reservation for the shuttle bus out to Wonder Lake in Denali National Park. 13 hours round trip. At least I don’t have to worry about my butt being sore from sitting so long. I’m so looking forward to this. They have a shuttle out of here so I can skip the ride to the park. I would have liked to have ridden into the park but time isn’t on my side anymore. Frost is a nightly occurrence and the leaves are starting to change. I need to be heading south with the birds ASAP.

Went and had dinner at a bar about 2 miles up the road. Met Chet and Char, RV’s who are up here from Wisconsin. They are staying at the RV park too. Chet was kind enough to pick up dinner for me which was awesome. Hopefully they’ll be on the bus tour with me tomorrow so I’ll have someone to talk to.

As far as Mt. McKinley goes I probably did see it today but since I didn’t know what to look for I ended up taking pictures of some other mountain that wasn’t it. So it better be nice tomorrow or I’m going to be irked.

GPX Track

08/21 Since today is the 21st that means I’ve been riding for exactly six months now. Yikes. It kind of just seems like this is my life now which is weird. I like it though.

For the 2nd time on my trip I went and caught a cold. Last night my nose and throat were killing me. I probably had a fever too but its hard to tell when its 35 F. I know who it was too. Some old guy sneezed when he walked by me while I was eating in Paxson. I feel better today but when this happened last time it seems like I was under the weather for a few days.

Needless to say I didn’t make it to Cantwell and was kind of dragging all day. Only managed about 40 miles. To make matters worse the road went to hell at mile 70. By hell I mean very loose gravel and many areas that were extremely bumpy (washboarded for those that know what a rookie grater driver can do). That kept my speed down and did a great job of popping my front panniers off. Not all the way off; just the back clip. I suppose popping off like that is better than snapping off so maybe it was a good thing. My front fender also kept rubbing up against the tire and annoying me so in a fit of anger I stopped and practically tore it off. Of course for the next 15 minutes I had to unbend it and try to get it back on (succeeded). Sometimes I can be pretty stupid.

Broke my record for chocolate bars prices. Paid $2.50 each for 3 of them. That was at Alpine Lodge. They had wifi so I posted yesterdays entry from there. The best part was 15 miles further I stopped at another lodge and they were $1. I’ll have to look up the name of the second place because the co-owner was really nice. Carrol I think her name was (her husband is Butch). She’s looking to sell the place after 53 years because business is down so much and they want to travel more anyway.

For several reasons I’m really hoping it doesn’t cloud over and/or start raining until late tomorrow. Seeing Mt. McKinley is somewhat rare from what I’ve heard because clouds usually obscure it. Riding on this gravel in the rain will suck. If I’m still sick it will suck even more.

Boy do I have a sweet camping spot tonight. The view is of the Alaska Range and it’s incredible. The terrain changed from tundra back to alpine so there are trees again (pine mostly) and they dot the valley below along with lots of small lakes and a river. All of the riding today was on the side of mountains so I stopped a few times to admire the scenery. Saw a couple caribou and that was about it for wildlife. They have lots of room to roam up here so I was surprised to see any.

GPX Track

08/20 Woke up after a week of rain just hoping that the sun would finally be out… I wasn’t disappointed! Today was perfect. Had breakfast at the lodge and then took off for Denali National Park, the offical end of Leg 1. The Denali Highway was paved for the first 20 miles or so and then it was all gravel. Personally I didn’t think it was that bad but a little later one of the guys working at the lodge said a Princess Cruise bus driver was complaining that it was bad. Not for me. I was zipping around pot holes like they weren’t even there.

Rode for over 5 hours and covered 56 miles. I was only planning on 40 so the extra miles were great. It felt like I had limitless energy. Today would have easily been a 100+ mile day if I was on pavement. It might have been the 2 times I stopped and had strawberry/rhubarb pie and Kokanee and stop #2 that had me so pumped today. Lots of hills but none of them were that steep. Still ended up climbing 3884 feet which is a fair bit.

The road was pretty hard packed so no issses with slugging through anything soft. That was my biggest worry. Rain is supposed to be back on the 22nd so I’m hoping to be in Cantwell and on pavement by then. If it stays cool and the wind is calm like it was today that shouldn’t be too hard.

The views today were stunning. Passed by 3 glaciers and several mountain ranges. Lots of snow on top of these ones. Glad I finally figured out how to take halfway decent shots of the snow without washing out the picture. The trees gave way pretty quickly to tundra which is new for me. I saw a little the other day but nothing like this. For as far as the eye can see it just blankets everything. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m so glad I came through this way.

The other little thing I was kind of worried about were cars spraying me with gravel or it being really dusty. The dust was a none issue because of the rain and except for 2 morons in SUVs everyone slowed way down. The SUV guys were probably excited because they’ve never left pavement before and this was a huge thing for them. One couple in an RV slowed down and we chatted for a minute while I rode along. Lots of waves too.

Camped not too far off the road in an area that was probably scraped out by the DOT. It looks like of like a really small gravel pit. Saw lots of these all along the highway. This is by far the easiest place to find a place to camp at night.

GPX Track

Amazingly enough the sun came out today! It took until 3pm for the rain to stop so I decided I’ll just hang out here for one more night and then head toward Denali tomorrow. The weather forecast calls for sunny skies tomorrow and Friday so I’ll take advantage of it and try to tack on some miles.

Went for a hike along the creek that runs not to far from where I’m camped. For the first time I saw some Alaskan Bald Eagles flying around. They had a pretty good spot perched above the river waiting for some poor salmon to come swimming along. The younger ones stayed remarkable still for pictures even when I was only a hundred feet away but the mature ones took off if I got too close. It was still cloudy out so the pictures aren’t that good. Hard to shoot dark objects in the shadows. Lots of signs of bears so I had my bear spray and a big stick just in case (the stick was so I could pole vault over the raging river and escape them–they wouldn’t be expecting that).

Getting out of Alaska is going to be fun. I checked ferry schedules and the next date that shows passenger + bike availability is never unless “Vehicles: Not Available” doesn’t apply to bicycles. So I don’t really care at this point. I’m going to Denali since that was my destination and I’ll figure out how to leave when I’m done. I looked into renting a U-Haul if the ferry isn’t available and that was $1200 (not including gas) down to Vancouver. Ouch. Whittier, the closest port to Denali, might have freighters leaving from it but I have no idea how to book something like that. At this point I’m probably going to end up riding out of here which will be interesting. I can always hitchhike if the weather is really bad.