If you've been on a long road trip, you are familiar with the phenomenon of leapfrogging other travelers along the way. You stop for gas or a bite, and then start remembering vehicles with unique bumper stickers, or passengers, or cargo as you pass them again. Here on the Alaska Highway, *everybody* you pass is the same people, because there's only one road and very few travelers. Early on today, I passed an oversized load hauling pipeline looking stuff that had to be headed for Alaska and the oilfields. As I was stopped for a scenery pic some time later, they came chugging by, putting me behind them once again. Not much later, I resumed the lead as they checked their load in a pull-off and I breezed effortlessly by. This repeated itself a few more times, and at these primitive fuel and supply stops I came to notice a different pheomenon: The handles to the gas pumps are COLD! There's no permafrost here, and in most if not all tanks are stanchioned above ground, but July is definitely different around here and that liquid gold apparently never gets warm.
Finally, I got to the lodge where I was to spend the night. I got my keys, went around back to unload and settle in, and when I headed back around to the restaurant, I found the the pipeline transport crew had pulled in to call it a day as well.
As with most overnights up here, there were a bunch of motorcyclists stopped for the night. There was a 75-year-old lady that reminded me of my mom, but with a her own bike and a sidecar, and another dozen or so riders of all kinds from all places. The two guys I sat near at the end of a long dining table had left the Eastern US like 4 days ago by basically throwing some stuff on their bikes, fueling up, and heading for Palmer, Alaska to watch them launch cars off a cliff on the 4th of July. There are videos of this on YouTube where they basically brick the gas pedals, reach in, and drop 'em in gear with a yee-haw. All the people at the bottom cheer, yell, spill their beers and shoot the phone videos for us. But the 4th of July was yesterday, and they still weren't even near Alaska yet. I don't think they ever had a chance.
The story of how these guys spent their previous night is fantastic: Hopelessly low on fuel at 2 am, still light enough to see, surrounded by natives in a village somewhere unknown. One of them offered to deliver them gas, all of them delivered a serious sense of uncertainty about their immediate future. The older guy simply didn't have anymore and slumped into a handlebar nap. The gung ho guy almost certainly was a jarhead, and I mean that in the nicest way, but he was broad shouldered, fearless and seemed to have permanently adopted the high and tight haircut. He had been everywhere on that Kawasaki. He gave absolutely zero fucks.
His exhausted buddy had decided to tag along on a brand new $50,000 CVO Harley, which was now absolutely covered in crud and likely pitted to oblivion. He was still notably less enthused at this stage, but happy to have a cold beer and be within steps of a bed.
The next day's ride was an uneventful one to Carmacks, YT, a one horse town in the Yukon where everything you buy comes from the same place, and that's where the rustic hotel is. As I was getting ready to pull out that morning for the day's adventure, I met a guy and his son doing the same, and the quick conversation with them really warmed my heart. So cool.
There are only the three land crossings from the Alaska Highway in Canada southwest into the Alaskan Panhandle, and they all lead only to the ocean. Two other roads hop the 141st Meridian that makes up the main vertical border between the countries. The Alaska Highway is one. The Klondike Highway is the more northern, and on that route, the adventurer has the option to take an even more primitive road, the Dempster Highway, to the Arctic Ocean in Canada's Northwest Territory. I'm taking the Klondike where it branches off just west of Whitehorse, the capital and only proper city in the Yukon, but I'm skipping the Dempster, and will be returned to the Alaska Highway a day or two further west. I stopped in Whitehorse for some scenic pictures along the Yukon river, and then, warned by overhead message boards, "inquired locally" as to the current situation with the wildfires along the Klondike Highway. The park employee looked at me like I had three heads. I took that as a non-issue and decided to fuel up and roll with it. For some reason, I did not fill the aux fuel bladder.
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