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Published: August 30th 2018
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Trapped by Wild fires
Before we left Fairbanks, we had Wayne checked out at the medical centre and with drugs and a rest up in the truck he was soon back on his bike, with after market mirrors fitted and a bit of brute modification to the steering and dash area he was good to go.
We had a fabulous ride down through to Denali Rainbow Village, then a cold damp ride to Anchorage.
I told everyone that there was a great spot for breakfast about 80kms up the road...well it stretched out to around 165kms.
We had a spare day in Anchorage and made the most of it with a great bbq dinner in Alaska Leathers shop. Huge thanks to Barbara and her team for such a great effort on our behalf.
The best thing for me was Barbara sold me an air hawk seat for my Harley, every day after that I was so thankful to her for making me buy it.
We planned a photo shoot outside Alaska Leathers the following morning and as I negotiated a speed bump I broke the side stand spring....after the photo shoot I went to the Harley shop and bought the last
one in stock, thanks to the guys at Moto Quest for the hand to fit it.
We had a nice scenic ride to our accommodation at Copper Center.
The plan was to ride down to Valdez before heading to Tok, but the weather was overcast with cloudy conditions so we all just made our way to Tok.
The next day was a big ride up over the Top of the World Highway, via Chicken and the Alaska/Canada border and onto Dawson City for two nights.
We were lucky with the weather as the day dawned with clear skies and no wind even though the temperatures were still in single digits.
Dawson City is an old world town full of character, good bars and a lot of fun.
We took the Goldwing off the back of the truck as Wayne was feeling much better and the road was paved from here on.
We left Dawson City in cold but fine conditions and made our way to Carmacks for the night, Christine, left earlier as she rode onto Whitehorse to stay with family.
The next day Gerardo, Ian and Kel, along with Paul, Melean and Erin in the chase truck took the
Goldwing Down.
Wayne was lucky to be ejected as the bike slid off the road and down the bank. Campbell Highway towards Fort Nelson, while the rest of us stayed on the paved road via Whitehorse, meeting up with Christine along the way.
This was a pretty big day for us at 616kms. We arrived soon after 5.00pm and were surprised to find the others not there yet?
Soon after Gerardo and Kel arrived to tell us that they just made it through a wild fire and the others were trapped on the other side....
It turned out that they couldn’t make it to Watson Lake so had to sleep over in a working men’s camp.
They were well looked after with a good dinner and a warm bed.
Meanwhile another fire had blocked our exit from Watson Lake as we were booked into Fort Nelson the next night.
Unfortunately the hotel we were staying in was fully booked the next night, but in the end we found some cabins a bit further out of town in Nugget City.
By mid morning those that were trapped overnight made it out to join us in Nugget City.
Luckily the road opened for us the following day and we made it south to Fort Nelson through the thick putrid smoke from
the smouldering fires.
The ride from Fort Nelson to Dawson Creek was all done in a Smokey haze and we were pleased to get there.
The following day’s ride down to Hinton was good in the morning but misty rain dampened our day as temperatures also dropped to single digits.
We’re in big mountains now and the weather was not looking good for our ride to Kamloops.
We headed off in cold drizzling rain that followed us all the way finally arriving at Kamloops after 562kms and a nice hot shower.
Just happened to check my rear tyre and all the tread had gone!!! Two days ago it was fine!!
Fingers crossed now that I can make it back to Vancouver ok as we still had 450kms to go...
The next day, which was our last riding day dawned with clear blue skies, which was well deserved after the past few days.
This was magnificent ride as we followed the Frazer River and the Trans Canadian Railway down to Hope and then the hustle and bustle of the Vancouver traffic back to our hotel, with all of us arriving within five minutes of each other all coming on different routes
after 10,000+kms was a bit of a hoot.
The last day was spent washing our bikes at a local car wash that Ian and the guys found closer to the hotel.
We had a great farewell dinner before we all headed our separate ways.
A special thanks to Paul and Melean for taking such great care of us and the chase truck.
Thanks also to those that shared their photos for this blog, especially Wayne for his incident ones.
For Gerardo and I this has been an Adventure to treasure as everyone made it such a pleasure for us and we thank you all for having faith in us to deliver a great adventure for you all.
Cheers.
Rosco and Gerardo.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Follow that Road
Sad the bison was been hunted out of its habitat by fires and smoke, but what a great photo. I have posted it in the "Follow that Road" thread in the Photography Forum.