Spell of the Wild

Chuck:

Jim “Clutch” had said that he would whip up some blueberry pancakes for breakfast.  As I walked over to his little cabin, I heard a loon calling.  The air was crisp and clear, snow streaked mountains surrounded us, rusting metal relics of old mining equipment were scattered about in a loose display  between the cabins.  Jim has an unending supply of stories of this area, the North, mining, etc.  Clutch is a big ‘Santa like’  guy, maybe in his seventies, long white beard and hair.  As he was cooking and spinning a yarn about the largest gold nugget ever found in this area, his friend “Walt” appeared.  Walt currently drives a tour bus and they often stop for the night at Wiseman.   He is another fountain of knowledge concerning  the history of Alaska and this area.  These two ‘old timers’ could alternate telling stories of the North for hours, maybe days.  I wished I had a tape recorder: a local guy went through the river ice with a bull dozer, another drove a tractor 40 miles to find shelter when his truck broke down in 50 below weather, an unplanned party that went on for days during a winter storm, etc, etc.

As we say good-bye to these guys, they continue uninterrupted by our departure.  The road north climbs to Chandler Shelf,  then on up to the pass that crosses the Brooks Range and heads down the North Slope.  After crossing Atigun Pass, we saw about a dozen mountain sheep high on the side of a mountain.  When we were crossing the tundra, about 50 miles south of Prudhoe, we started seeing caribou, mostly in small groups of 5 to 20.  I was trying to keep a count but lost track after 200.  There was one herd of musk-ox, maybe 30.  Also, a large red fox was so busy eating a hare that it tolerated us being within 100 feet.  We arrived in Deadhorse, a portion of the larger Prudhoe Bay area.  It is a huge industrial camp.  There are very few signs, we looked for the Deadhorse Camp Hotel.  After checking several possibilities, Betty found the right one and made arrangements for another “Spartan” room and a cafeteria, all you can eat, meal.  While Bren checked his messages (we have cell coverage and maybe Internet here), Betty & I found the unmanned gas pumps.  The pump meters are in an outdoor cabinet and you step inside a small enclosure to swipe a card and start the pump.  Before dispensing fuel, you place a 2’ x 3’ fabric tub (called the Rubber Duck) under the gas cap area to preclude any spillage.  As we ate in the crew cafeteria, we met “Mike the Tour Guide”, he brings a van load of folks from Fairbanks to Prudhoe every week; probably much like Walt’s operation.  Mike is very helpful and explains how we can best use our time here.  Betty made arrangements for a half-day tour of the oil fields for the next morning.   This central part and sort of headquarters for all oil field operations, is a busy, industrial complex with conex containers of all sizes everywhere, new heavy equipment lined up in rows, each company or contractor has an assigned area, this is a bee-hive of activity; reminds me of a military base camp.  It has the basics: running water for showers & flush toilets, semi-permanent kitchen facilities, heat and small, two person, crew rooms.  No frills, but mostly clean basics.  There is melting ice everywhere which results in standing water and mud pretty much everywhere.  The mess hall and dorms have disposable little blue booties to slip over your shoes or boots so the mud does not get tracked into living areas as much as it might otherwise.  There are lots of birds here; we need Jean B. or Mary H. here to help with identification and also the migration story of each species.  We see birds in nearly every bit of open water between slabs of melting ice:  Long Tail Jeager, king eider (plus several other eiders), Canada geese, Pacific Loon, trumpeter swan, arctic tern, mallard & merganser ducks and bunches of others.  Plus, those “naughty” gulls, which eat other birds’ eggs & chicks.

Betty:  We had sketchy cell coverage and no internet.  Once we got north of Fairbanks we rarely had TV, cell or internet.  Every once in a while we’d accidentally be able to tap into something fleetingly.  We found that in Canada and in Alaska when we have internet there is usually some control on it.  We can only use it for an hour or we can only have a certain number of megabytes.  That’s not a problem when writing something or checking messages but it really is a problem for trying to post pictures.

Chuck:

The scenery here is beautiful, crystal clear air, endless vistas of mountains, clear water streams winding through long valleys.  I had breakfast with Kip & Jake then they were off on their motorcycles heading to Prudhoe.  Betty & Bren drove me back about 30 miles to my start point for the day.  More road work that will not allow bicycles, as before the driver of the pilot vehicle offers to load bike & rider in their pick-up, but the B’s came along while we were waiting and I hitched a ride with them.  The highway between Coldfoot and Wiseman is great; relatively new and not excessively steep grades, the bad news is, this only lasts for about 20 miles. 

Betty has arranged for us to stay in Wiseman.  An old sourdough, Jim Lounsburg has a couple of cabins and wall tents available for rent.  We are in a wall tent.  Very nice, especially for a tent; a framed door and window,  two double beds, lace curtains, Yukon stove, and lots of blankets.  Bath facilities are in an adjacent cabin.  They generate their own electricity with small windmills and store the power with battery banks. He has gas lines routed to the bath for an on-demand water heater and for gas lighting in both the cabin and wall tent. Betty & I cooked supper on their grill.  Afterward, Jim showed us through his little homemade museum.  He is a long time resident of the “North Country” and has been involved in lots of interesting activities like panning and mining, he knows many of the regions past political figures and has stories galore.  His current project is preparing to host the local American Legion 4^th of July celebration.  This afternoon he went up onto a mountain behind here and brought back glacier ice to cool beer and other drinks.  He expects over a hundred residents that come in from miles around for this annual event.

Tomorrow, we will drive to Prudhoe.  The Bike portion of our trip has reached its northern most point.  At first our goal was just to reach the Alaska border, then, we thought the end of the Alaska Highway in Delta Junction, Alaska.  Later, we thought maybe Fairbanks, then, maybe the Arctic Circle or Prudhoe.  Now we have decided; the Arctic Circle is just right.  However, we will drive on to Prudhoe, so Betty and Bren can see it.  Then we will return to Fairbanks and return to biking the Alaska Highway and connectors (nearly 2,000 miles) that we skipped over earlier.

Chuck: 

Last evening, at the Cold Spot Café, after I finished the journal, 5 bikers arrived. They are south-bound and are packing their camping gear. Two are from Dallas, one from Iowa and one from Wisconsin and I forget the home of the fifth biker.  We compared Dalton Highway miseries, they’ve had some tough going.  We all agreed, the “seven miles of mud” was unbelievable.  This diverse group of bikers all met on a RAGBRAI (Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa).  We have all done lots of the same events and trails.

OK, now on the road again, more ups and downs.  The road surface varies from smooth asphalt pavement to very rough paving to loose gravel.  The gravel is treacherous, especially down hills.  It is slow going uphill because of the extra effort on gravel and slow going downhill for safety.  During a break at a wide spot in the road, a security vehicle stopped to talk with me.  Rich Ermi got some info from me and gave me a pass to ride directly on the service road which usually is a few feet from the pipe-line, it is a rougher road so I would only use it to avoid something like the “seven miles of mud”.  About mid-afternoon, we crossed the Arctic Circle.  This has been one of our goals and may be where we terminate the bike trip, which is fine with me.  Right now, the riding is good and it is a nice day, I will bike on and we will discuss it later.  We get a few pictures and just as we were leaving we met Kip and his son, Jake.  They are on their way to Deadhorse on motorcycles.  Kip and his wife live in Estero, Florida, just 10 miles north of us. They are visiting their son who is an Army pilot stationed at Fort Wainwright, near Fairbanks.  I knocked out a few more miles, then the B-Team whisk me away to Coldfoot.  This is a very small community that is an important way station for truckers going to Prudhoe.  We had dinner in the Frozen Foot Saloon (the farthest north bar in the country).  This road seems to bring folks together; two different couples had seen me trudging along the Dalton and asked about our trip, then we saw Kip & Jake.  We had dinner and some “Silver Gulch” beer (the farthest north brewery in the world; they say?) with them.  We have a lot in common.  Betty made arrangements for us to spend the night in the “Ice Palace”, another spartan stopover for work crews.

Betty:  Spartan, but better than a tent  🙂

The Ice Palace

 The Frozen Foot Saloon

Chuck: 

Betty & I have breakfast at the Camp’s restaurant, while Bren sleeps.  We drive the 18 miles back to our stopping point, Mile 38.  It is a good ride, hills are not too steep nor too long.  Soon, on top of a ridge, I see the Yukon valley spread out for miles.  Both the Dalton Highway and the pipeline wind their way down the hillside and cross the Yukon together.  After coasting down to the bridge, I get a couple of pictures before crossing.  The bridge is about a mile long with a wooden treadway.  I first crossed this bridge about 21 years ago on my way to Prudhoe.  Ten years ago on the 4^th of July, my canoe partner, Bill Quayle, and I were camped under this bridge.  A young German couple was also camped there.  I fired the “emergency” flare pistol a few times as we celebrated.

I find the B-Team visiting with Dottie at a Park Service Visitors station just north of the bridge.  We learn much about the local area from her.  The plan is to bike/drive four miles to the Hotspot Café and have lunch.  While there we decide to stay for the night, but first I will bike north for a few hours and they will pick me up and bring me back to the Hotspot.  My goal was to add about 30 more miles to the 22 miles I did this morning.  It seems that all too often things do not work as planned.  After only about 5 miles, the road is very wet, maybe a maintenance crew has a water distributor working to keep the dust down.  Oh no, the road is also being graded and sprayed with calcium-chloride .  What a slick, gummy mess, it quickly clogs my brakes, gears, chain, the spaces between the forks and the wheels.  I have been dragged to a stop.  I push the bike a few hundred feet and the tires will no longer rotate.  This gook also has gravel in it which quickly lodges into moving parts and stops them.  As big trucks come by they throw a wall of this mess about 20 feet on each side of their vehicle.  This is not a good situation.  In desperation, I pick up the bike, put it on my shoulder, walk across the road and find the nearest safe place to go down the high embankment.  While poking and prying with small sticks to clear the mud and rock from crucial parts on the bike, the water truck arrives.  Nick gets out and apologizes, explaining that it is called ‘Seven miles of mud”, but it is his job and this mess will dry into a hard smooth surface, like the one I have been on for miles.  He said that he asked the grader operator to save me a small strip on the far side that is ‘gunk free”.  It would start about a quarter-mile in front of me.  In the meantime, I pushed the bike through the undergrowth along the road side until I got to the clear zone.  Amazingly, the bike actually works.  I stay in this 18 inch wide zone for the next several miles then finally, I reach the end of their current maintenance.  I am beat, also nearly out of drinking water!  As I labor up hills, I miss my cell phone.  If we had cell service, I would ask Betty to pick me up a couple hours early.  Up front, I see precious shade, break time.  Only a minute later here comes Betty, the car is covered with seven miles of mud.  We compare mud stories on the way back to the Hotspot.  We decide to enter the café from side road, oops here come three trucks.  They pass and we see this lovely now vacant wash-site, it has a short fire hose for dispensing large amounts of water quickly.  As I turn it on, Betty drives close.  In an instant we have removed a ton of gunk from both the CRV and the bikes hanging on the rear rack.  A quick turn and Betty has the other side in place.  We surely were not there more than 3 minutes and gone.  Back at the Hotspot, shower, dinner, done for the day.

Chuck and Brendan preparing for dinner at the Hotspot Cafe.

Betty:  We saw our first moose along the Dalton Highway today.  It didn’t stay around for a great picture, but here is what I got.

Chuck: 

We had an early start, packed lots of “last minute” items into the little Honda CRV, it is now ‘officially full’.  The RV is parked in a holding slot for the next two weeks at the Rivers Edge Campground.  Driving north out of Fairbanks, our biking start point is the southern terminus of the James Dalton Highway.  The northern terminus is in Deadhorse, Alaska at Prudhoe Bay, about 450 miles away.  Depending on conditions, we may only bike as far as the Arctic Circle, about 200 miles, then drive on to Prudhoe.  At the start, we snap some pictures and I am off on my bike, it has been ten days since I did any biking. 

 Immediately, the asphalt paving turns to loose gravel.  This means more care must be taken, especially on turns and braking, down-hill runs must be slower and gravel requires more effort.  The B-Team beep as they pass.  They will wait a few miles north while checking how the hybrid bike handles.  Jeez, these hills are exhausting me.   After only a mile, I can see this is not working, the rear brake is dragging, I cannot shift into the lowest gears and it feels squirrelly on the gravel.  Yesterday, I took this bike for a short test ride at the RV Park and must have missed the brake and gear problems.  There is nothing like climbing up a steep hill to uncover mechanical issues.  I tried adjusting both but had little lasting success.  When I reached the B’s, I swapped the hybrid for the mountain bike; much better.  As I am pumping along, the thought occurs to me that the hybrid bike has been on the RV’s rear bike rack since we left Florida.  Maybe, 4,000 plus miles of dust, grit, rain, engine heat, etc. has taken its toll.  We transported  both the mountain bike and my new road bike inside the CRV and both work fine?  Betty & Bren leap ahead, ten miles at a time, while I try to get myself back in gear.  We are still 18 miles short of the Yukon River, but that is enough for today.  We load up and drive to the Yukon River Camp which is mostly a truck stop arrangement; they have a restaurant, showers, rooms and, of course, fuel.  The rooms are “crew rooms”: spartan with showers down the hall.  Except for the short summer tourist trade, truckers enroute to Prudhoe and maintenance crews for the pipeline and highway are their mainstay.  I think we all slept well.

Chuck:

Another busy prep day.  Tuned up the mountain bike and the hybrid for this trip, the other three will be left behind; two on the RV’s back rack and my new baby inside.  The rough gravel road surface is hard on bike tires as well as vehicle tires.  I will take two extra tires and four extra tubes for each bike.  The bike I ride will have one extra tube, changing tools and a mini-pump.  We plan to start at Livengood (about 50 miles north of Fairbanks) the actual start of the Dalton Highway and hope to bike the 60 miles to the Yukon crossing tomorrow.  Do not know how many miles are doable each day on this road.  Daylight will not be a limiting factor, but mosquitoes might be; here in Fairbanks it is light all night, even if the sun goes below the horizon.  However, the bugs come out in force during the hours of lower light, just like a very long dusk, their favorite time.

Betty got lotsa groceries today, mostly dehydrated, one pot meals.  There is a Fred Meyer store just across the street from us, it is huge, similar to a Super Wal-Mart.  Bren & I set up our tents just to review the process and check to be sure we had all the essential parts.  It is 9pm in the Alaska Time Zone (one zone west of Pacific), we just washed up the dinner dishes, watched Boston lose to Chicago in the third overtime of the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Excitement is high, a night’s sleep and we will be on our way into the tundra.

Betty:  There may not be updates for two weeks.  We’ve heard there isn’t much possibility of using the computer or cell phones.  We will carry them along, just in case.  🙂

Chuck:

Today we continued preparation for the Prudhoe phase of our bike saga.  From Fairbanks it is about 500 miles up the Haul Road (aka Dalton Highway) to Prudhoe Bay and what used to be the tiny community of Deadhorse.  Now, of course, Prudhoe is the base of operations for oil companies in production, drilling & exploration.  It is a semi-permanent, oil boomtown that has consumed Deadhorse.   We expect the bike trip to take about 2 weeks.  There are two refueling stations along the way, one at the crossing (where the Haul Road crosses the Yukon River) and another at Coldfoot.  Both of these locations also have a grill, packaged snacks and limited motel-like rooms.  We plan on using the facilities when available and will camp between them.  Upon arrival in Prudhoe, we will refuel and drive back to Fairbanks.

All of us are now busy, planning for two weeks on this remote, gravel road.  This afternoon, I located an extra spare tire on a rim for our CRV.  From home, we brought tents, camp stove, sleeping bags and other camping gear just for this phase of the trip.  The real challenge is selecting only what we need.  As much as we try, we are finding it impossible to cram all that is in a roomy RV into our little Honda CRV.  Betty will get the food and other consumables tomorrow.  My plan is to leave the road bikes with the RV and take only a mountain bike and a hybrid (larger tire than a road bike, but not as “beefy” as the mountain bike).  This will provide a back-up bike in the event something breaks that I cannot fix on the road.  The folks at our current campground (River’s Edge) have a place we can park the RV with electric service for the two weeks we are away.  This will work out well, the fridge/freezer will continue to operate, otherwise, Betty would empty both, tossing lots of good stuff. 

After a busy day, we went to a sports bar, Brewsters, just outside the campground.  In addition to dinner and a pitcher of beer, Bren got to see the U.S. crush Panama as the World Cup eliminations continue.  Tomorrow will be final prep and Thursday, “On the Road Again”.

The nice overnight site after crossing into Alaska, however, it is also where we had the flat the next morning – no cell coverage.

The flat tire.  We spent most of the day first finding a phone, then waiting for the repair, glad we had our home with us 🙂

Dall Sheep along the highway in the Yukon.

On the road to Skagway.

A small black bear along the roadside on our trip to Skagway.

Repairing the crack in the windshield of the RV.  Actually, it’s just stopping it from spreading.

A beautiful roadside pulloff along a lake in the Yukon Territory just prior to the US Border.

The scenery is so beautiful.

The crack really shows up in this picture.  We had one crack in the RV windshield compliments of a big truck and two cracks in the Honda plus a couple of dings.

Chuck:

We have several errands to chase down before we depart Tok.  I met Willard at his repair shop to sign some AAA paperwork and pay him for the tire that he mounted on the RV yesterday.  The more I deal with this crusty old guy, the better I like him.  He’s probably in his seventies, very stout, overweight but not obese, very quiet and moves slooowly but deliberately.  His work truck and shop are an organized mess.  There are 15 or 20 vehicles in and around his large garage.  A sign hanging crookedly on the cluttered wall behind the cluttered counter (which is also one of many work benches) says: “I try to get along with one person each day. Today ain’t your day, tomorrow doesn’t look good either”.   His work truck is an old Ford 350, I tell him I had a 350 several years ago.  He muttered, “Yeah, I got three other 350’s, one needs an engine, another has a snowplow permanently welded on the front for winter use and one doesn’t have a clear title yet so I don’t drive it much”.  We talk for about 20 minutes, more than we did in four hours yesterday.  As I was leaving, he said “Stop by on your way back and I’ll treat you’n yer wife to lunch”.  Jokingly, I asked how he knew we would pass back through Tok, he said that it was about the only way out of state with an RV.   Next, I went to Three Bears Outpost #1.  I had phoned Beau, the owner, weeks ago to arrange to send a box and some mail to myself ‘in care of’ his Outpost.  He looked a bit and said nothing was there and they would probably have sent it back since he did not know me.  I reminded him of our phone conversation; he looked again and found the box, but no mail.  Charged me $25 for his service.  I was going to buy ammo, bear spray and some other items, but didn’t need another service charge.  The Post Office was just down the road, I checked there for the large envelope of forwarded mail.  The Postmaster, said it most likely had not come in yet or he would recall seeing it, but we should try again after the morning mail is delivered.  We checked again as we were driving out of town.  It was there, bills and all!

It is a pleasant, scenic drive from Tok to Fairbanks, good highway, most of the frost heaves have been “smoothly” repaired.   Afternoons, we have had short showers.  During one today, the driver’s side windshield wiper, disappeared below the glass.  We stopped, putzed with it, something stripped on the base, drove on without it.  River’s Edge Campground seems quiet and is just outside of Fairbanks.  Tomorrow, we will check the Fam-Camp at Fort Wainwright and compare the two to determine the best site to base out of as we prepare for the trip to Prudhoe, 500 miles north.  The current plan is to leave the RV in Fairbanks, and camp out of the CRV as I bike north, it will take about two weeks.  There are two locations to get fuel enroute and also one at Prudhoe Bay in Deadhorse.