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Published: September 14th 2011
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We left another sloppy mess at the over-priced Super 8 in Fairbanks as we packed up and headed South on the Parks Highway toward Anchorage. Before leaving Fairbanks We went to a pawn shop where I got a new helmet for only $25 and Dan got a new pair of boots. We headed to Denali National Park, but wanted to absorb a little Alaskan culture along the way. So, we stopped at Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn about 20 miles outside town.
Skinny Dick's is a roadside pub, but with a very explicit flair. The decoration inside was the old signed dollar bill-loned ceiling, and sick-humored post cards & pictures to line the walls. The bar tender told us about Skinny and his daft humor. He had T-shirts that had his logo of two polar bears in the frisky spring pose with graphics that would spell out vulgar phrases when folded up in half. We had a beer each as we checked the place out before hitting the road again.
We stayed on the road for an hour before wanting to soak up a little more rural Alaska. We were told to go to the Clear Sky lodge by a
The Crew
Bryon, Dan, Kelley, & Jim couple hunters we tried to get moose meat from. We found the place up the road about five miles later. They had a special on Rainier cans for $1.50 which kept us for more than one as we chewed the fat with the locals. We had a blast! We met a guy that used to work the pit on the Baja 1000 that told us stories about races in the past and another guy that sold us a cheap copy of the Mile Post, a intimate guide of Western Canada and Alaska for people on road trips. Dan donated his old boots to the bar tender as she promised to use them as a flower planter.
We made another stop at a local micro brewery just North of Denali where we inquired about going out to the bus where Chris McCandless spent his final days. We were told that we could make it out there on our bikes by the bar back at the pub and decided that would be our next adventure. They had the bus that was used in the movie version of the story in front of the bar and we took the obligatory posed photo.
That night we pitched our tent in the town at the entrance to Denali as we went to the Salmon Bake to let loose with all of the J1 visa workers at the park as they partied for the last time in the U.S. before heading back to Russia and Eastern-Europe. After a late sleep-in we went into the wild.
We were told to go up to Stampede road and follow it to 8-mile Lake where the road would become a dirt track. We would have to ford the Savage and the Teklanika rivers to get there. We had forded a few creeks and braided rives already in Alaska and were ready for the challenge. We met a guy at a a camp site that worked for a jeep-safari company way out on Stampede road that showed us detailed maps of the area. He told us that we would have a small challenge at Fish Creek. Fish Creek was actually a bog, a nasty, thick and broad bog.
The road was a little challenging up to the bog, with some mud spots and deep ruts to get through. But we powered through with confidence. Then we got
to the bog. I had never tried to cross a bog before. Its not just muddy, its deep mud. You can stay on top of it if you keep going fast, but with the weight of our packs we both eventually succumbed to the sticky mess. After we were both fully entrenched in the bog a couple hunters came along on their ATVs and gave us a tug out. They led us out of the bog with a couple more pulls when we got stuck again. The trail only got worse. We had to go through parts of the trail that were completely submerged with logs crossing them to add more obstacles. When we got to the Savage river we were in full regret for coming this far. After to Savage we met a couple National Park Rangers. The road dips into Denali National Park, and they were there to make sure that no hunting occurred in that part of the park.
They told us that we didn't have to worry about camping permits if we decided to pitch our tent inside the park boundary, and that crossing the Teklanika river was probably not in our best interest. We
got to a place to camp for the night and decided not to go any further. We had dropped the bikes at least a dozen times each and Dan's pannier mounts had cracked apart.
We stayed there for two nights, loathing the trip back which was only to be worse after a night of rain. And it was. We got to the Savage river and forded it without much effort. We crossed the flooded-out portions of the trail with confidence. Then we got to the bog. And inevitably we got bogged down once again. And once again some hunters came along and towed us out. After dumping the bikes at least a dozen more times each we made it out after dark. We went to the nearest motel to lick our wounds and make another foul mess in the bathroom as we tried to clean our selves up.
We got packed up and headed out around noon the next day. We rode down to the park entrance and headed in to ride the first 15 miles into the park. The ride was very beautiful and we caught a glimpse of Mt McKinley near the 13 mile mark. We
headed back to find a bit of a traffic jam a few miles up. This means wild life! There was a big grizzly bear about 100 yards off the side of the road and we got a good picture of him before heading our and down to Anchorage.
We got to Trapper Creek where were going to fill up before the last leg to Anchorage. A group of three BMW GSs pulled in just as we were about to head out. We got talking shop and they learned that our bikes were in bad repair and we were offered a garage to wrench on them and a place to sleep in Wasilla. We went back to Jim's place where Rob helped weld Dan's pannier mount back together. We tinkered all night and the next day Kelley came to us with a box of his old KLR parts from his previous four KLRs.
We have been here in Wasilla for the past three nights (one at Jim's and two at Kelley's) getting our bikes road-worthy, and now we are heading to Anchorage to get a few supplies before heading out back to Canada on our way down to the
lower 48.
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