Day 36

July 4

Staying here in Fairbanks one more day to rest and do a few things to the bike.  Tomorrow I will head south to Denali N.P. for a few days of camping and hiking within the park and hopefully get to see Denali though reportedly only 30% of visitors have seen the mountain this season.  It has been a rainy and overcast season for this part of the world so far this year.

The trip to Deadhorse and Mainley Hot Springs and return to Fairbanks took five days and four nights and was almost 1200 miles of mostly dirt and gravel roads.  Michael O'Donovan and I made the trip together and are going to Denali together tomorrow.  The trip to Deadhorse was quite challenging because of the rain which made the roads very slippery and the going rather slow.  We camped at Marian Creek, about five miles north of Coldfoot which is the half-way point.  From Coldfoot to Deadhorse is 240 miles.  The first night at Marian Creek was dry and we arose to a cloudy but dry morning but before we could get packed up it began to rain and we packed up our tents soaking wet.  It rained on us until we reached the top of Antigun Pass through the Brooks Range and began the descent to the North Slope and the tundra.  We were, in fact, entering a desert where north of the tree line and land only a few inches of soil thaws for a couple of months of the year. The tundra is quite wet because what water there is has nowhere to go because the permafrost is as much as 2000 feet deep. I did not see much wild life on the trip but did see a couple of moose, doll sheep, and assorted small animals...no grizzlies, musk oxen or polar bears.

Six months ago the thought of riding a motor bike to Deadhorse, Ak was not even a dream...the Arctic Circle was my goal and that seemed almost like going to the moon.  So far this trip has done nothing but wet my appetite for more adventure travel and tomorrow I will continue the adventure.  More will be revealed...