Arctic Circle

This leg was quite an adventure.  From Fairbanks to the Circle wayside and back was right at 400 miles, about a third paved.  The rest was gravel, or dirt, or mud, or construction.  The permafrost plays hell on the roads.  Even fairly recent pavement is crumbling and  buckled.  A cruiser crashed right in front of me on the slippery mud in a construction zone.  I had just switched off the helmet cam.

At the start of the Dalton Highway

We had so many conflicting reports of fuel stops along the way that we went and bought spare gas cans for today's run.  Turned out that we really didn't need them because the fuel stops were about 140 miles apart.

With the crappy road in mind, we had new tires mounted by a guy who does this stuff out of his house, 24/7.  The price was reasonable, his workmanship was good, but those attributes were offset by a tirade of BS so deep it was over our boots.  I'm amazed how someone who never stop talking long enough to learn anything can be an expert on everything.  But it was worth it as the tires proved their value today.

Getting tires and an abundance of advice on bikes, politics, guns, society . . .

May not need this tread for the rest of the trip, but today it was well worth it.

The two roads that took us from Fairbanks to the Arctic  Circle, the Elliot and Dalton Highways, follow the Alaska Pipeline as it travels from the North Shore oil reserves at Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez.  I could see it along much of the road today and there's a place where it's open to the public to check out.

Not that I had a desire to do this

A cleaning pig that goes through the pipe too clean it

Cooling fins to keep the permafrost frosted

View of the pipeline along the road

My mission today was to pour Curt's ashes at the Circle.  It was a solemn event and my emotions caught me off guard

So many nice people.  Phil and Amanda took the photo of Curt and I

The Coldfoot visitors bureau (really!!) was passing out Circle certificates.  Gotta have one of these babies!

Close up of the certificate

This place wasn't open for business

Then we stopped at the Hotspot Cafe

Where we had good food, met lots of fun people.

It was really more fun than it looks!

The out house.  For real.

Closeup of the outhouse sign

The urinal was an inverted bleach bottle with the bottom cut off. 

It had instructions

This was the gas we found. 

Wooden planks on the bridge over the Yukon River