Fairbanks to Denali National Park

The last 4 days have felt more like a commute than the rest of the ride, so far, as we rode from Fairbanks to Anchorage with the clouds hanging low, making for less than scenic views. The first night we spun up big hills to "Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn." The name is only the tip of the obscenity in this place...the owner bought Jacob a shot and he took it out of a sheep's a** (blow-up) and then let us crash in his cabin. The next day, driving rains and blinding fogs forced us to stop in Nenana, where the river barges motor up the Yukon, bringing supplies to the Native villages. Yesterday we rode past the forest fire that is burning here, it isn't bad but it reminds us of the raging fires at home in Colorado. Now, we are in Denali National Park getting ready to head into the park, not into the wild, for the next 11 days. Jacob is pictured, above, with the bus from the film "Into the Wild." It was placed in nearby Healy, after a girl drowned trying to reach the actual bus. We met a young, disillusionment, man who just got denied from getting to the bus, after trying to swim the same swollen glacier river that trapped Chris McCandless in the wilderness...the lure of wild Alaska attracts us all.

Delta Junction to Fairbanks

We have had soo many wonderful people open their doors for us that we don't even feel like we are roughing it right now. We got to take a shower and sleep in guest beds twice in the past week. It is lake country from Delta to Fairbanks and getting quite warm. We spent an entire day at a lake swimming and not riding until 5pm because it was hot outside. We stopped by North Pole, AK and found this letter to Santa (above) from a kid. It was our favorite one. We went to the Solstice Festival yesterday in Fairbanks and are staying at a Hostel where 4 other German bike tourers are also staying. It is great to have some one to talk about biking and get to know. We are now at the Northern part of our trip and will be turning South to Denali. We are pumped!!

Glennallen to Delta

We are now 10 days and 350 miles into our Tour de Alaska and just having a ball! The weather and the views have been absolutely amazing! Since our last post, we left Glenn highway, that bordered the north side of the Chugach Mts, and entered into a landscape of rolling, permafrosted, black spruce forests with numerous lakes and meandering salmon-filled rivers. With the clear blue sky that we have been having we could see huge mountains in all directions in the distance: Chugach Mts to the south, Wrangell Mts to east, Alaskan Mts to the West and North. We past Paxon and climbed over Isabel pass in the Alaska range into Delta. The mountain views throughout the Richardson Highway of the mountains have been unbelievable: snow covered mountain peaks rising over 10,000 feet from where we stood, swollen rivers coming off of glaciers, salmon schooling in the rivers, lakes covered in ice and moose standing on the side of the road. This is the land of the midnight sun and it has led to some interesting phenomena: we are completely cooked on one side of our body because the sun goes around the horizon and not up and over, we stay up very late because the sun is still shining in our eyes at midnight, we have to put our tent in the shade because it heats up in the sunlight until sunset at 12:30, it is as bright as day ALL night so we have to cover our eyes and set an alarm to make sure we sleep in since the sun officially rises at 3:30. That said, we had our hardest day yesterday despite descending 1500 feet due to in-the-face head winds. We got out of the winds by eating lunch at a 5-star resort lodge.  Luckily, no guests were there at the time because they told us that we would not have been allowed to dine in our attire. Little did they know that we hadn't showered in 5 days and were wearing chamois that hadn't been washed in 10 days of riding!

Anchorage to Glennallen

We have made it to Glennallen today and hit the 230 mile mark. The weather has been great- sunny/cloudy, and not that rainy (yet). I think we are used to the rain from last time, and not as scared of it. We have seen a ton of moose so far (10), each with babies. We rode the Glenn Hwy from Palmer to Glennallen all along the Chugach Range. The mountains are AMAZING!! I cannot even describe how beautiful they are, and how many there are. We stopped at Manatuska Glacier and camped for a night. There are many glaciers along the way that are not named, but are massive! We have met many nice people along the way...not too many however because the Glenn is a slower road (which is good for bikers). We did 2 big days of riding, over 2 passes to get to Glennallen and are pretty impressed so far! We rented a little cabin tonight and are taking showers, doing laundry and hangout indoors. It is not needed to stay out of the rain, but it is to stay away from those big mosquitoes!!

Anchorage

We and the bikes made it safely to alaska. It rained all day yesterday while we rode through anchorage running errands and getting lost on the bike paths. We stayed at Jeff and carries last night soaking up the dry indoors. We are excited to get outside the city and camp and be in the woods. We have a hwy death mission today getting to wasilla, but we get to visit our friends Bryan and brenda tonight. The good news is it isn't raining this am

Preparing to Leave

We are headed back to Alaska. Two summers ago we adventured out on a 36 day Bike Tour across Alaska. Finding that information was outdated from the current bike touring books, we are going back to not only ride the rest of the paved roads we missed, but to write a touring book, giving all bikers inside information.

Here is a link Facebook Alaska Pictures to some of our pictures from our first bike tour in 2010.