Ok, here goes. My first post with pictures. Let's see how it goes.
Picked up the new '07 FJR on a good sale in Anchorage. Aside from the price it was a great excuse for a ride through some beautiful country. Stored the bike at my friend Jerry's house, and then got ready to head east (look at a map, it's mostly east-west going) on a dry but overcast day.
Getting out of Anchorage takes about a half hour, and then you are in some pretty fine country. Had a great burger at Sheep Mountain Lodge. View from dining room window goes something like this:
Typical roadside pullout looks like this:
Then you have to go through some more damn scenery, like this:
until you arrive at Tok, Alaska (the last town before the Canadian border). On the recommendation of my friends in Anchorage, I settled in at Fast Eddy's Restaurant and Motel. That was a wise move as the food was great and the company fine too. I had seen dozens of bikes on the road, and it turned out they were all headed to a rally in Dawson City. A biker who owns a hotel there puts on a big steak feed once a year. Unfortunately I didn't have time to change itinerary but it's definitely on the calendar for next year. Dawson is a fun town and it's a great ride up the Yukon River, or over the Top of the World Highway, to get there. So here are a few of the lads tucked in at Fast Eddy's.
Day 2 started relatively early (on the road around 7:00 a.m.) becasue it promised to be a long one. Rumor at Fast Eddy's was of a lot of construction and gravel after crossing the border. Ran into one guy who had been with a group of Gold Wings - on of his buddies dropped his ride on the gravel and broke his ankle really badly. Since I dislike gravel a lot, I wanted to get it over with early. That makes no sense, but there you have it.
It turned out to be about 40 or 50 total miles of construction some with pilot cars (easy going) and some with untended gravel repair work. Some of the gravel sections were older and packed down, and so presented no problem. Others were new, the gravel like marbles, and quite squirrelly. Never mind, the FJR made it through unscathed. What a great handling bike! The construction stopped around Burwash Landing, but that was not the end of the road issues. In that part of the world there is a lot of permafrost, which causes the road to heave and crack ("frost heaves). It makes for challenging riding because one never can predict how big a particular heave or crack is. That meant having to brake to twenty or thirty MPH quite often to avoid going airborne. All in all it was a tiring stretch of road.
However, once that stretch was passed the road turned great and by mid-afternoon I reached Haines Junction, where I met up with my buddy Jack on his Triumph Sprint.
Jack had come up on the ferry from Juneau to join me for the Whitehorse loop. After a quick sandwich we left Haines Junction about 9:30 p.m. headed for our friends Dave and Deb in Whitehorse. Did I mention this was the longest day of the year? Here we are about a half hour outside of Whitehorse at 11:00 p.m.
A couple of beers with Dave, a good night's sleep, and we arise to a lovely sunny morning at his hand-built log house on the outskirts of Whitehorse:
After a day of fooling around in Whitehorse, helping Dave with a boat project, and going to a potluck, we turned in relatively early since we had a 7:00 a.m. ferry to catch in Skagway. Not much of a hangover when we got up at 3:00 a.m., ready to ride.
We didn't see a single car in 120 miles to Skagway. It was a bit chilly (down to 36 degrees in the Chilkoot Pass) but well worth the ride in the beautiful morning light. Here I am at about 4:00 a.m., halfway to Skagway. This is just after we surprised a cow moose grazing alongside the road.
Made the ferry with time to spare. A nice long nap made up for the ungodly wake up call, but that Jack was not going to let sleep come easy. It is a great testament to the 'Stich that it makes a great sleeping bag as well as a riding garment.
Lovely ferry ride, home by mid-afternoon with just about 1100 miles on the new FJR. It was a great shakedown ride. Time to do the first oil change, give her a good washdown, and order all the farkles that revealed themselves as indispensible. Heated grips and a bigger screen are on the way. Hard to beat.
Picked up the new '07 FJR on a good sale in Anchorage. Aside from the price it was a great excuse for a ride through some beautiful country. Stored the bike at my friend Jerry's house, and then got ready to head east (look at a map, it's mostly east-west going) on a dry but overcast day.
Getting out of Anchorage takes about a half hour, and then you are in some pretty fine country. Had a great burger at Sheep Mountain Lodge. View from dining room window goes something like this:
Typical roadside pullout looks like this:
Then you have to go through some more damn scenery, like this:
until you arrive at Tok, Alaska (the last town before the Canadian border). On the recommendation of my friends in Anchorage, I settled in at Fast Eddy's Restaurant and Motel. That was a wise move as the food was great and the company fine too. I had seen dozens of bikes on the road, and it turned out they were all headed to a rally in Dawson City. A biker who owns a hotel there puts on a big steak feed once a year. Unfortunately I didn't have time to change itinerary but it's definitely on the calendar for next year. Dawson is a fun town and it's a great ride up the Yukon River, or over the Top of the World Highway, to get there. So here are a few of the lads tucked in at Fast Eddy's.
Day 2 started relatively early (on the road around 7:00 a.m.) becasue it promised to be a long one. Rumor at Fast Eddy's was of a lot of construction and gravel after crossing the border. Ran into one guy who had been with a group of Gold Wings - on of his buddies dropped his ride on the gravel and broke his ankle really badly. Since I dislike gravel a lot, I wanted to get it over with early. That makes no sense, but there you have it.
It turned out to be about 40 or 50 total miles of construction some with pilot cars (easy going) and some with untended gravel repair work. Some of the gravel sections were older and packed down, and so presented no problem. Others were new, the gravel like marbles, and quite squirrelly. Never mind, the FJR made it through unscathed. What a great handling bike! The construction stopped around Burwash Landing, but that was not the end of the road issues. In that part of the world there is a lot of permafrost, which causes the road to heave and crack ("frost heaves). It makes for challenging riding because one never can predict how big a particular heave or crack is. That meant having to brake to twenty or thirty MPH quite often to avoid going airborne. All in all it was a tiring stretch of road.
However, once that stretch was passed the road turned great and by mid-afternoon I reached Haines Junction, where I met up with my buddy Jack on his Triumph Sprint.
Jack had come up on the ferry from Juneau to join me for the Whitehorse loop. After a quick sandwich we left Haines Junction about 9:30 p.m. headed for our friends Dave and Deb in Whitehorse. Did I mention this was the longest day of the year? Here we are about a half hour outside of Whitehorse at 11:00 p.m.
A couple of beers with Dave, a good night's sleep, and we arise to a lovely sunny morning at his hand-built log house on the outskirts of Whitehorse:
After a day of fooling around in Whitehorse, helping Dave with a boat project, and going to a potluck, we turned in relatively early since we had a 7:00 a.m. ferry to catch in Skagway. Not much of a hangover when we got up at 3:00 a.m., ready to ride.
We didn't see a single car in 120 miles to Skagway. It was a bit chilly (down to 36 degrees in the Chilkoot Pass) but well worth the ride in the beautiful morning light. Here I am at about 4:00 a.m., halfway to Skagway. This is just after we surprised a cow moose grazing alongside the road.
Made the ferry with time to spare. A nice long nap made up for the ungodly wake up call, but that Jack was not going to let sleep come easy. It is a great testament to the 'Stich that it makes a great sleeping bag as well as a riding garment.
Lovely ferry ride, home by mid-afternoon with just about 1100 miles on the new FJR. It was a great shakedown ride. Time to do the first oil change, give her a good washdown, and order all the farkles that revealed themselves as indispensible. Heated grips and a bigger screen are on the way. Hard to beat.
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