My personal reflections on this recent 5 week bike trip to Alaska. For what they’re worth, here they are:

In the end, we travelled a total of just over 18,500 kms (11,500 miles) over the 35 days. Vicki and I wound up doing about 13,800 kms on the bike and the remaining 4,725 in a car (see comment below re: lemons and lemonade). Brian, Jana and Matilda likely did a bit more and all of it on 2 wheels (we won’t tell anyone about the 2.5 miles Jana did in the back of the rental car)!

For the first 2 ½ days of the trip, we were joined by Jerry – or was it Dud TheSpud??? – but he left us in Duluth, MN. Apparently, he had a wedding to get back to, but really dude, you’ve got to get your priorities straight there mister! Never mind that it was his own wedding …

In Canmore, we were joined for part of the trip by Everywhere Joe and Romy – now, those 2 left Kingston, ON a few days before we did and they’re still out there enjoying the countryside!!!

We travelled through 6 Canadian provinces (ON, AB, BC, YY, SK and MB) and 6 US states (MI, MN, WI, ND, MT and AK). This leaves me with only 5 states (WA, OR, CA, NV & TX) to ride in before I can complete the map of the lower 48, and with NT, NB, NS, PEI and NL left to cover all the Canadian provinces.

We slept in 34 different beds, stayed in 31 different cities, in 31 different h/motels (3 times we stayed in the same town at the same accommodation – Bear Cover Inn in St Ignace, MI; Young’s Motel in Tok, Alaska; and the Stratford Motel in Whitehorse, YT) and wound up “spreading the wealth” equally – half of our stays were in Canada, the other half in the USA.

Along our journey, we visited 29 different Harley dealerships – ok, so one of those (Winnipeg) was actually closed when we were there – and missed out on visiting 4 others (Kane’s in Calgary, Banff, Mighty Peace and Prince George) due to various reasons, and I personally picked up another 27 poker chips to add to my collection. We didn’t spend too much time at most of these dealerships with the exception of Calgary HD (waiting for the rain to stop), Andy’s HD (replacing a warped derby cover), Magic City HD (replacing a blown shock), House of Harley (servicing Matilda) and HD of Smithers (replacing a water pump).

We had done a lot of pre-planning for this trip, and had booked all of our accommodations along the way, all of them being sight unseen. If I had to do it over again, I would only change out a couple of the places – the locations in Entwistle, AB; Palmer, AK and Valdez, AK. In fact, we wound up not staying at the location we had pre-booked in Entwistle and just moved down the road.

In terms of trip-routing, we probably logged 95% of the originally planned route, and I really can’t think of too many changes that I would have made if I had to do it again.

Some more random thoughts:

• The north shore of Lake Michigan is very nice
• The south shore of Lake Superior is even nicer
• Even flat lands can be enjoyed if you look for the opportunities
• Denali (previously known as Mt McKinley) is spectacular, and according to some of the locals, we were quite lucky to be able to see it in its full splendour for a couple of days – as one of the locals put it, “Denali has it’s own weather system”
• Going across Montana will give you an extremely varied perspective of landscapes
• When a 24 ft wide piece of machinery is coming at you on a 2 lane road, you best move over
• We rode on some very scenic roads and then again on some fairly boring roads, but nothing that was overly technical. One of my favourites had to be the Cassiar-Stewart Highway between the Alaska Highway just outside of Watson Lake to the Yellowhead Highway in New Hazelton
• We also drove on quite a few roads that were showing their wear and tear from the winters in the north, including the Taylor Highway from just past the Yukon border into Chicken, AK amd the Tok Cutoff from Tok to Glenallen
• It only takes a couple of days for newbies to become familiar with the bike’s intercom system
• You can still have fun on a bike even when the weather isn’t the best
• Cabooses do make for good places to spend the night
• You learn to deal with a natural occurrence such as the Arctic wildfires when you live up there, and just go on with your life. They do take some of the beautiful views away from you, but it’s just part of the lifecycle
• The lounges at Harley dealerships make great places to wait out a rain storm – free coffee, free water, free popcorn and nice lounge chairs
• The Icefields Parkway (Hwy 93) from Lake Louise to Jasper is (still) astonishing – but can be extremely busy with tourists
• Rain gear makes good cover when you are riding in dry, but cooler weather
• Construction activity on the Alaska Highway can take its toll on bikes
• Bears, wood bison and mountain goats have the right of way on the Alaska Highway (or any other road, for that matter) … and don’t try to think it otherwise
• Sometimes life hands you lemons. If that happens, make some lemonade and enjoy!
• We made it to the Geographical Centre of North America in Rugby, ND and also to the Longitudenal Centre of Canada just east of Winnipeg
• A lot of people are quite happy to come up to you and ask you about your travels, especially if you are on a motorcycle
• We managed to cover the entire length of the Alaska Highway between Dawson Creek, BC and Fairbanks, AK
• Ironic isn’t it? You pack long sleeves and warmer clothing to get ready for Alaska and the Yukon, and then when you’re there, they set records for high temperatures… but it’s ok, those long sleeves and warmer clothing came in handy when you’re riding in the “southern” climes
• Getting 20 hours of daylight in the north can be a lot of fun… if you can stay up to enjoy it!
• I am thankful for Harley dealerships that accommodate travellers … and for Yamaha dealers that can fix Harleys!
• Dawson City is a neat town, and if you go there, you just gotta go “kiss the toe”
• Having a full sized bull moose run out in front of you WILL be an ass-puckering moment … and if the camera is handy, WILL make for a great picture!
• Speaking of ass-puckerings, getting caught in a torrential thunderstorm with no place to safely pull into sure falls into that category!
• We were into 4 different time zones on this trip – before the trip, I didn’t even know that Alaska had it’s own timezone
• We crossed the Canada/USA border a total of 6 times: Sarnia/Pt Huron; Waterton Lakes; Poker Creek; Beaver Creek; Ft Frances/International Falls; Pt Huron/Sarnia
• Sometimes, it IS worth it to ride those extra 150 kms to go chase that elusive curvy road, even if it is only a couple of kilometres long
• We manage to see a few of the “world’s largest”, e.g. paper clip, Eiffel Tower replica, weather vane, beaver statue, tepee, mall (well, at least it was up until a few years ago) and a few others
• You know you’re in the wilderness when on a single day’s travel, you ride past a total of 20 bear, 2 herds of wood bison and a whole bunch more wildlife
• We got to experience riding in all types of weather, with some days starting off as low as 4C, and then others that reached high temps in the low 30C’s range, in bright sunshine and in teeming rain. We missed 25 cm (~10 inches) of snow along the Icefields Parkway by less than 48 hours … thankfully, the roads were cleared and dry by the time we hit them
• If you think 5 weeks is a long enough time to see everything you want to see and everyone you wanted to visit between Ontario and Alaska, think again! Even though we did get to spend a little bit of time with some family and friends out there, it certainly wasn’t enough, and we missed out on the opportunity to see other family and friends
• Pre-booking all your accommodations for a trip of this length can ensure that you have a place to lay your head down at the end of the riding day … and, when things go off plan, can increase your stress levels as you try to make it to the place on time
• After sleeping in 34 different beds, eating meals out every day for 5 straight weeks, coming home and sleeping in your own bed and enjoying a home cooked meal is a blessing
• The toughest part of this whole trip is sorting through the over 13,250 pictures that were taken and narrowing it down to 30 to include with this post!!! Well done Vicki and Jana!
• And you’d also think that with that many pictures, the memories of the trip would stay forever ingrained in us, but the reality is that the pictures (and the few videos that were taken), don’t really do the landscape the justice that it deserves. But, those memories will always be in our own memory banks, and that is what really counts
• So, if you think you’d like to seriously test your relationship with your partner, I strongly recommend spending 35 straight days, 7/24 with him/her – if you pass that test, you’ll be really ready for retirement life
• It is so much better to enjoy this beautiful continent we live in, when you get to share the experience with your loved one

So, a big thanks go out to Brian and Jana for having the trust in me to allow me to lead them on this 35 day journey, and to my wife Vicki for helping me plan this trip and for putting up with me and my various moods along the way!

Ride safe, all y’all!!!