The Denali Highway, built as first access road to the Denali National Park back in the day now is a quiet gravel road with little traffic but the occasional Motorhome. We picked a perfect day for the ride, not too hot and not too cold. The gravel was nicely graded and easy to drive. Halfway in the road we went for some apple pie and cinnamon rolls in the Sluice Box, originally a miners Bar, the tradition of tucking a $1 bill to the wall and writing one’s name on it is still kept up. Can you spot ours?The rest of the day was a ride trough a tranquil landscape disturbed only by the buzzing of our engines and the occasional F16 breaking the sound barrier.
The next two days were spent south of Glenallen relaxing, fishing and writing our blog in the laundry room by the Klutina river. After our energy was regained a day of 200 km tarmac and over 200 km gravel lay ahead of us. The first 100 km tarmac in the frisk morning air went by quickly and soon we arrived in Chitina which was a ghost town until a few years back. Over coffee we talked to a Vstrom rider with a broken clutch organising spares or a haul to Anchorage. If you read this: did you manage to get back home to California in time?
The gravel ride to McCarthy was easy and as a bonus we got to ride over a footbridge right at the end. Where everybody else has to get a Taxi to get to the mines from the other side of the stream, we got to ride up there. Arriving at what felt like the end of the world we found a gorgeous view of the Kennycott Glacier, an abandoned mine and a food truck serving freshly cooked meals. how good’s that?
We rode the whole way back and arrived in Glenallen late in the day, where we met a lovely couple from Germany traveling the world on their old R100GS. We had good conversations over a bottle of wine until 1 in the morning (it was still light and nobody really noticed the passing of time…).
