Tok to Fairbanks, an easy day.

To take in Alaska, one needs to have a wide angle lens. In photography a wide angle lens is one that manages to capture a wider sweep of the landscape than the human eye would. Every aspect of this land is so vast a majestic that your mind, your heart, and your soul need to open wide, wide, up so that you can begin to let it all in. Aspens and conifers cover mountains and planes, while peaks rise to indescribable height, while the sky remains as blue and pure as the day it was made.

One of my latest experiences was Destruction Bay, which looks like God took a piece of the deepest, bluest sky, and inlaid it into the ground.

Da Shoe

Yesterday morning I got up in Tok, and got ready for a relatively easy ride into Fairbanks, via Delta Junction, where the official end-start point of the Alaska-Canada highway, on the Alaska side is. Outside my tent, mosquitoes that Texas would envy were looming. It is always maddening how it takes to camp a tent site. Yesterday was no different. Took me about one and a half hours to get it all done. Darn! However, the difference between pitching a tent and getting a room at the same site was $80.00. That is a lot of gas on the BeMWu.

After egg and pancake breakfast, including red and green Tabasco sauce, I left town. A few miles up the road, on of the many gigantic ‘monuments’ that Alaska seems to be famous for forced me to pull a u-ie for a photo. In this case it was a enormous red winter boot that was associated with a now defunct entertainment park. A lot of failed ‘brilliant’, or even common sense businesses litter the AlCan.

Eventually I rolled through Delta Junction, where every motorbiker has to stop to take a photo, not just of the official milepost, but of the two giant mosquitoes stand guard next to it.

There I met three riders from Tennessee. One of the things that the riding to Alaska bucket list shows off is a number of motorcycles you normally do not see in the city. These guys were riding 2 Yamaha SuperTenere and a Buell Ulyses. We did have a long conversation about human trafficking and modern day slavery, during which I managed to dispel the commonly held notion that slavery is a problem in other countries, but not in the US.

From Delta Junction, the next stop had to be North Pole. A small town just outside Fairbanks, that seems to make quite a case for the fat, white man, in the funky red suit with white fur trimmings.

From there, Fairbanks is just a stone throw away, and by 4 pm I was at the University of Alaska, where I have been staying. After getting situated, I called the team that was scheduled to change the tires and oil on the BeMWU. They told me to get right over there, and after setting their address in the GPS, I was off.

This has got to be one of the most unusual service centers I have visited. It is set up on the hills/mountains outside of Fairbanks, and a father-son team run it out of their garage. True to the spirit of adventure, you have to go up-hill on a dirt road to get there. The good news of the day was that my tires were in such good shape that there was no need to change them, so after getting the new oil in, I was able to return to UAF and retire for the night, leaving today for the glamorous chores of laundry, sleep, and general bumming around. Not to bad, considering that it has been raining most of the day. In a while I will go visit a museum that is within walking distance, and then do some prep work for the days to come.

The current plan is to head to Homer, and spend there a day or two. It seems like it may rain tomorrow, so riding in the wet weather may be in order.. I still have to decide whether I will take a day or two to make up the 576 miles between here and Homer.

As of today, I have traveled 4,476 miles (7,205 kms)