Pre-Trip Stuff

Travelling to Alaska has been on my bucket list for a long time, and a couple of years ago, Brian McMahon planted a bug in my head that said that doing it on a bike could be a lot of fun. While on our trip to the mid-west in 2017, Brian kept on joking that the only way to top that trip would be to do one to Alaska and back.

And with that, over the past winter, I started to gather some research material and put together the plans for doing just such a trip. Maps were acquired, various books were purchased, many websites were visited and essential information was extracted, and people who had previously done the trip on 2 wheels were asked questions and

provided me with feedback.

By early January, we had a potential route in place, as well as a lot of insight into what we may be faced with on such a ride. One of options I considered was to trailer the bike out to Calgary and just ride from there, versus riding it all the way from home base and back. For the eastern/southern part of the trip, I relied on various publications - such as RoadRunner Motorcycle Touring Magazine - to lay out a decent route that would for the most part avoid doing interstate highways and which would offer some scenery or some neat points of interest.

For the western/northern part, The Milepost - the self-proclaimed "bible" of north country travel was indeed an excellent choice and really does live up to its' name. I would highly recommend it for

anyone planning a trip - on any number of wheels - into the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Alaska. Another good resource, especially for anyone that is considering doing the multitude of unpaved roads in Alaska is Klancher & Freeman's "The Adventurous Motorcyclist's Guide to Alaska".

Once the framework for the trip was completed, I reached out to my riding family to get a sense of who was seriously interested in participating in the trip. Although many showed considerable interest, in the end, it looks like we will be heading out of St Thomas/London with only a couple of bikes - LiB with Vicki and I on board, and Matilda with Brian and Jana aboard. For the first 3 or 4 days, we might have a tag-along (Jerry) who will drop off at the southwestern edge of Lake Superior and then double back along the north shore of the lake to complete the Lake Superior Circle Tour. In Calgary/Canmore, we will most likely be joined by "Everywhere Joe" and his friend Romy and they will likely do some/all of the loop into Alaska with us and then drop off again as we get closer to Alberta.

Now that I had a routing plan, and a good sense of just how many rooms we might need. I got down to the task of booking accommodations. I was forewarned that it is best to book early, as hotels and motels tend to fill up rather quickly, with not only tourist business but also to accommodate the various work crews that are

out there working on various projects, not the least of which is maintenance of the Alaska Highway. My days of sleeping on the ground and camping are long gone, so our options were to look for motel/hotel rooms or B&B's. I fully expected to find that the further north we went, the higher the pricing would be. I was rather pleasantly surprised to find that it really wasn't too bad. On the Canadian portion of the trip. the highest price we're going to pay is around CDN$164/night for a room in Canmore, AB which isn't surprising at all since it is a) on a weekend and b) it's a big tourist area. On the US side, the highest rate is US$137/night in Valdez, AK. The most unique place we will stay will be in Mossleigh, AB where our accommodations will be a couple of cabooses that have been converted into sleepers at Aspen Crossing. After a bit of tweaking, some phone calls, some emails and through the Booking.com app. eventually we were happy with our choices - we'll be out on the road for 5 full weeks, so 34 nights of accommodations (17 in Canada, 17 in the USA) are now in the books!

All that is left now is for the trip to start and for the weather gods to be good to us!