Alaska is known as the Land of the Last Frontier.The weather is pretty challenging at any time of the year. It is reasonably cold, colder for us Indians, and nonetheless, one of the most beautiful places for sure. The very air and landscapes left me speechless!
Having reached on the 24th of July, I immediately located our cargo agent, Classic Motion. The couple Krista and Ronald Fleece, who had a beautiful warehouse where the motorcycles reached and we went about the process of getting them out of the warehouse, post all the required signatures and documentation.
I’m still in touch with Krista and Ron who are such a wonderful couple and can and will be highly recommended for their services. They not only went out of their way to prioritize our machines to be delivered but also hosted us a farewell dinner. Ron made sure the required tools were available for us to get the bikes prepped up, helped us fill the Castrol oil into the engines, got the tire pressure checked, the wind shield of the motorcycles fitted and everything in place before bidding us all the best as we hit the road from Anchorage.
I took a couple of days during this time to go about shopping for some electronic gadgets like an additional GoPro, a drone and also getting used to the luggage and load setting. We took a day off to take the motorcycle around the beautiful town of Anchorage, which have beautiful landscapes and took some time to familiarize the load distribution of the motorcycle and the way that we could manage it fully loaded. Gupta had his first fall trying to maneuver a fully loaded machine, but there were no damages.
Anchorage is beautiful. We took an evening off with Ron and Krista and went to a beautiful pub, the 49th State Brewing Company and enjoyed a whole lot of beer from their own brewery.
On the 28th July 2018, and as planned, we hit the highway that would lead us outside of Anchorage towards the Dalton Highway. The landscapes were absolutely stunning. It was fun to be riding on one of the best roads this country has to offer, alongside some of the most challenging roads that would lay ahead. We reached Fairbanks, which is otherwise known as the Gateway to the Arctic and just outside of Fairbanks, we had access to the Denali Highway, from which point we were able to have a prolonged glimpse of the Denali Peak, which is otherwise supposed to be very shy and can get into hiding in no time. A lot of people who appreciate it and said we were blessed to see the Denali for such a long time. Indeed, such a beautiful snowcapped peak of the Denali was absolutely mesmerizing.
The Route Alaska 11 would actually go along the pipeline, which would lead all the way to Prudhoe Bay, a cordoned off gas town, which is where there are plenty of oil pump stations pumping oil out all along the highway. The entire length of this pipeline is over 800 miles and crosses three mountain ranges and more than 500 rivers and streams.
This is what makes The Dalton Highway one of the most rugged as the entire length of the highway is gravel ridden and predominantly only the trucks that transport oil or related materials use this highway. From statistics that’s available on the public domains, it appears that there are a lot of overland travelers landing in Anchorage, Alaska, either by car or two wheeler, but most of them would head south towards Seattle, State of Washington and hook up on the Pan-American Highway going South.
A record of only 2% of the overland travelers would eventually head North. And we’re most happy to be one amongst those 2% of travelers who would dare to hit the road heading North towards the Arctic Ocean.