Day 14 - Whitehorse to Tok, Alaska. Very close now, only 300 miles to Anchorage !

Day 14– Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Start: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada
End: Tok, Alaska
Trip Miles Today: 378
Total Trip Miles: 4959

Day 14 will be fondly remembered as the day of poorer road conditions and construction zones. However, the day started out on a somewhat odd note. I departed Whitehorse with no drama and was happily sailing along, some 50 miles down the road when I noticed that the gas gauge was WAY down – like already only a quarter of a tank left. This with another 50 miles to go to the next available fuel at Haines Junction! My heart sort of skipped a beat (or two!) as I went through, in my mind, what the problem could be. Maybe the fuel gauge has failed….seems unlikely to fail in this mode. Maybe the engine controller is in some sort of default mode where it goes full rich…nah, the bike’s running too good, and there is no sort of indication of any problem in the dash. Geez, maybe the fuel tank is split and the fuel’s spilling overboard……stopped, checked, no leaking fuel! Then it came to me. The problem is that I am a moron, and I had neglected to fill the tank last night after returning from Skagway. Whew. I had pondered how I could complete the trip with some sort of failure that allowed me only to go 100 miles at a time and it wasn’t a pretty scenario. Good thing the problem is simply that I am an incompetent.

Anyway beautiful weather prevailed and the main thing to be said about today is that the condition of the roadway North of Whitehorse, and especially after Burwash Landing and the Kluane area is dramatically inferior the that of the highway further South. I also spent probably 25 miles in construction zones today – loose gravel, hard packed gravel, and mud. It’s really not so bad if one maintains a reasonable speed but the worst is the trucks and buses, all going too fast, and pelting the bike and I with rocks. Thank heavens for lexan visors. I mentioned that the road was bumpy with uneven patches, holes, frost heaves and hollows. The highway department tries to mark some of the big ones with red flags and cones but there are so many that it is easy to become numbed to their existence. Also, they clearly can’t/don’t mark them all. Be advised - if there is a red flag there is probably a bump. If there is no red flag, you cannot assume there is no bump!

The route today takes you through several regions. Most of the remaining portion of the route in Yukon continues in the same wide river valleys and around lakes in the same fashion as prior to arriving in Whitehorse. As before, snow capped peaks are not far away and almost always in sight Then, getting closer to the Alaska border the character of much of the terrain changes to large marshes, ponds, and swamps (as well as, no doubt, this year’s bumper crop of mosquitoes.) This is the kind of place where you would expect to see moose, which I did. He was a huge bull just grazing through one of those innumerable ponds. Sadly, he was too far away to get a worthwhile picture. The other wildlife sighting of the day was a very large porcupine which crossed the road in front of me, then stopped and ran alongside for as long as he could. He was a bigger animal than I expected him to be, and another critter that I had never before seen in the wild.

Rode just short of 400 miles today and will finish up the remaining 300 miles to Anchorage tomorrow. The bike has developed this cute little “thing” where it likes to stall at idle. I believe it has something to do with fuel tank venting as now, whenever I open the fuel tank to fill it there is a substantial vacuum in the tank. Just got off the phone with the BMW dealer in Anchorage and he is going to take the bike in on Friday and see what he can do with that as well as do a 6000 mile service while I am in town. Other than that, all is well and I look forward to completion of this northbound portion of the ride tomorrow and errands in Anchorage on Friday. I’m warming up to the idea of not riding for a few days and simply being a “tourist” like so many others I have met on the trip.

Thanks for reading. Cheers, Jack