Sunday 7th September 2008 : Into the great wide open- Big Skies over Idaho !

Heading west Highway 20 out of Idaho Falls its only a short way to the Craters of the Moon
Nationalpark - resulting from volcanic origin it is one of the spectacular volcanic sites taking us back into the past when this wonderful Earth was shaped - what in fact is still an active process these days.
It also took us back under wide open blue and sunny Idaho skies and let the 400 rather straight forward road kilometers pass quickly today, ending up in Boise Idaho.
To end the day we got kicked out of an RV-Park after we had put up our tent ( that is where all the giant American mobile homes get parked, in German its mostly called a Campground) as for "Insurance reasons" they would not allow us in with a tent . Cannot stop laughing on that in a country that sell automatic guns next to the pizza in WalMart - sorry, but just our 2 cents about that issue quickly )

So now the English blog at least is uptodate, pics to come when technique allows so - and at 2 o'clock the Blog-Doc feels tired enough to say a very warm Good Night to all our friends and families at home and thank you again for all your support on our way , that kept us and made us going again all over .
Further plans are to come, main heading goes west back to the Oregon Pacific Coast and down south from there . A big surprise is on its way too and still to come !

Good night to all !

BABA

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008 - Saturday 6th September 2008:Yellowstone and Beartoothpass

Wednesday, 3rd September 2008
Yeah - it was a sunny day ! Yesterday .
Waking up at six o'clock in the morning was no use - rather grey skies and no real light to enjoy Yellowstones unique beauty - after having ridden to the Tower Waterfalls we decide to change plans for the day and take the ride up to the Beartooth pass . As so many bikers had recommended this pass as one of the Top-Ten- Bikeroads in the US we simply do not want to miss its 3240 meter peakpoint. The road up to the pass being closed the day before due to snowfalls it is open today. We get accompanied on the way out by a large herd of buffalo along the road - bringing back the feeling of an untouched nature and past of this stunning country, before man slaughtered and extinguished them from the prairies. To find out more about buffalos (bisons ) please just click it.
A bikers smile returns into our faces riding up the wonderful and rugged pass - and its only when snow and ice on the way down the other side get too dangerous to go on , that we return back into Yellowstone Park into our tent for the night - still happy from the passride and only a little bit wet at the end of that day.

Thursday 4th September 2008
Grey Skies over paradise. Yellowstone is one of Gods special gifts to mankind- no bad weather whatsoever can spoil its unique and uncomparable beauty - facing Artist Point at the Upper and Lower Falls is an experience for a lifetime . Guess that is where the expression breathtaking beauty was born. Adding Old Faithful Geysirs with his reliable 30 m high eruptions, Geusir fields in all changing sulphuric colour variations it is not a fotographers day - but it is wonderful !
Friday 5th September 2008
Wondering why both of us felt a bit chilly at night camping in Madison , we understand better, when we get told that Yellowstone Park was the coldest spot in the US last night. Being situated around 2000 m altitude the night was around 7 degrees minus - quite a good test for the outdoor equipment - and especially for its owners :-) So we do not have to wonder about the thick icelayers on our bikes in the morning. Plenty of stunning and colurful geysirs and mud volcanoes make our day special again - like anyday in that park is a special day.
Lookng at Babas fronttyre Conti TKC 80 is sad news ;-) after 20000 km all over Siberia, Mongolia, the 2000 km really bad dirtroad Amur "Highway" in Far East, Alaskas dirtroads and Canadas rainy highlights - I have to say goodbye to this absolutely reliable and faithful friend - no more rubberlayer being left on most of its surface after riding Beartooth Pass its time for a new front tyre. Never flat, no single problem along all this tough route - that's what keeps the legends about this tyre going on. For us this is the best one in the world - as easy as that - and not due to sponsoring at all!

Saturday 6th September 2008
Time for a goodbye to Yellowstone too- and heading into a somewhat brighter Teton National Park south of Yellowstone ( the entry is included in the Yellowstoneticket ). Passing impressive Mt. Mourain we chance to meet a male and a female moose with their calf, grassing in the middle of a small lake - what a scene !
Sunlight and warmth slowly but surely we ride into a perfect Idaho sunset before we find our Campsite for the nite in Idaho Falls.

Hombre and BABA (cold but happy bikers )

Tuesday 2nd of September 2008: A SUNNY RIDE INTO YELLOWSTONE :-)

We almost cannot believe it - that white stuff on our bikes in the morning is not rain anymore - it's ICE !
But the day starts with bright sunshine - at plus 2 degrees celsius and 500 kms to go for Baba to catch up with Hombres 350 from Butte to our meetingpoint in Yellowstone.
I mainly live on hot Chocolates along the way every 100 kms, until at 3 pm it finally starts to get warmer again - but what a scenery across the Highway 90 going east. Terriffic pipehead formed rocks shattered across the hills before Pipestone, just after heaving crossed bearmouthpass at 2200 m with snow right down next to the road. When I finally get to our meeting point at Mammoth Hot Springs a "welcome commitee" of Elks (Hirsche) is waiting right in the center of the little village spot. Finding Hombre again after some more search everything turns out well - especially with bigblue skies above us - feels like we were just in time.

Hombre and BABA (both sooooo happy about the sun )

Monday, 1st of September: Lost and found in Montana - Into the " Lower 48 "

Crossing an easy going border at Roosville ( after all the hassles with getting vis for the US the landborders with Canada are just the opposite way) we get into the " Lower 48 " , as Alaskans tend to call the other States of the USA south and below Alaska. We somehow adopted this term using it with some smile. Riding south Highway 93 we go through Montana - emotionally it feels like getting into one of our childhoods western movies. This is cowboy country !
Via Eureka, Whitefish and Kellispell we are due to Missoula to hit Highway 90 east to butte, when after 250 dry kilometers we get hit by a major coldfront. This one includes heavy rains, temperatures around 3 degrees Celsius and gusty winds all along the way - that all happens while Hurricane Gustav is on its way to hit New Orleans again on the other side of the country.
While Baba stops to clean his helmetvisor ( which was wet from the inside and therefore taking sight away ) Hombre is loosing sight from the front and mistakes a car with only one headlight working in his backview mirror for Hombres bike.
With our radios temporarily not plugged in it happens - Hombre carries on riding and takes off the road to Butte along the way - and we loose each other .
While I ride on towards him and keep searching him along the route and backwards for miles , he decides to slowly ride on and gets forward to Butte that night - which is one of the worst nights to drive a bike we both ever had. In addition all our regular planned retrieval manoeuvers would not fit into that special situation.
Normally it would have been easy to use our cellphones to find each other - grace to whatever reason neither my quadband Nokia nor Hombres tripleband Nokia connect to any serviceprovider - what was a problem throughout Canada already should go on all the way till we get into western Idaho.
So we both ended up in different motels along the way and finally after many different ways of trying got email contact to find out about where. Cold and tired from that day, but happy both of us were ok we slept tight - supposed to meet each other next day at 6 pm in Yellowstone Park.

Hombre (sleeping in Butte this night) and
BABA (sleeping in Missoula)

Saturday 30th - Sunday 31st August 2008 Calgary, Blackfoot and meeting wonderful Canadian Bikers

Saturday 30th August 2008
After getting our gear together we search the local BMW-Dealer in Calgary for a warranty check on Babas bike - and we run into the Blackfoot Motorcycle people - a bunch of extremely friendly and helpful people.
And if their support for us would not have been enough - we run into a crowd of friendly and interested bikers, supplying us with all the road and bikeinformation you can imagine.
Outstanding of these great guys by the end of the day is someone - we want to day a very special THANK YOU here and now .
Meeting Tim and with him his wonderful girlfriend Mary-Jane and his bikerfriend George with his gf? Heidi ( with German roots and speaking very good German) we get a warm and wonderful invitation to Tims and Mary-Janes house to stay for the night. Enjoying Georges Margeritas, Heidis Guacamole and Tims cooking its a real highlight for us again .

Sunday 31st August 2008
Sunday morning weather is nothing else than :STAY IN BED ! Pouring with rain at really cold 4 degrees Celsius - we cannot stop Tim and George to put on their raingear and ride with us 200 km along the rainy road to say farewell to us - not without inviting us again and George heading off to get some delicious Jerky beefmeat ( its a smoked meat specialty of the region and yes George - we enjoyed every single piece of it)
All of you four to read this - You are great and special people and Canadas face to us and the world could not be more warmhearted and wonderful than you are - you changed all the Canadian rain into a final sunlight ! And that ride we had seperates men from the boys - you are both real bikers ! Guess you know where you have to come and stay when you are in Germany ;-) ?

Keep the rubberside down !

Hombre and BABA

Friday 29 th August 2008 Banff National Park Canada

South of Jasper National Park and directly linked to it Banff National Park stretches over roughly the length of 160 km - being as scenic as Jasper it is just as - rainy !
We pass along a lot of hidden-in-the clouds-beauty again , spotting Lake Louise ( which is as beautiful as touristy) and even more scenic Lake Moraine - and it gets more and more difficult to enjoy the beauty while we put raingear on and off all day long. What a beautiful part of the world is this - nevertheless all forecasts show more rain and cold weather to come on .
A bit sad we decide to leave the rather small park more quickly than planned. Our next major destination is Yellowstone Park in Montana ( actually its in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho) and with a major coldfront coming from the west we take the plan to drive further southwest to get behind the front - and maybe stay dry for a day.
Sorry for this PC does not allow to upload pictures right now - and to be honest - from this part of the trip there is not too many really good ones - the best will follow as soon as possible again.
We end the day reaching Calgary, passing the Skijump and bobslopes of 1988 Winterolympics and camping in an RV- Park . And guess what - it's dry for the night !

That's it from the day !

Hombre and BABA

Wednesday 27th - Thursday 28th August Jasper National Park Canada

Wednesday 27th August 2008
Despite all hoping - the lowpressure rainzone stays with us , when we enter Jasper National Park from the northern entrypoint, riding up another 40 km to the esmerald green Maligne lake - which rewards us with a glimpse of sunlight for some minutes - just enough to at least take some pictures and understand some of its beauty.
Back the road we get to Maligne Canyon, a terrific natural artwork, formed by the river cutting extremely deep and steep into the rocksurface - well worth to see.
We spent the night in Maligne wilderness hostel - no showers, pothole toilets and as close to nature as a hostel can be - Jasper is stunning beutiful though hard to show on pics with almost no sunlight to take fotos - some things you have to remember from your heart :-)

Thursday 28 th August 2008
The day starts without rain ! WOW ! Cloudy and overcast though we carry on south into Jasper Park, targeting the Columbia Icefield . On the way we ride through fantastic landscapes full of rugged and steephilled 3000 something meter mountains with Mt. Elliot and its glaciers . Yet we mostly can neither see the mountains peaks we feel the majestic beauty of the scenery . With very gusty winds on the winding road Baba almost gets blown out of an otherwise easy curve - reminding us of the enourmous forces that helped to create this uncomparable scenery of the Canadian Rockies over millions of years. The Columbian Icefield we leave by the way - as even locals feel this place to have been changed in nothing much but a tourist spot - rather taking its beauty away than showing it.
Pics to follow as far as few of them allow to show it at all....

Don't miss Jasper when you get to Western Canada !

Rocky mountain greetings from
Hombre and BABA

7th September 2007 Just a temporary Blognote from Idaho Blue Skies

To let everybody at home know we are ok in Idaho Falls after more exciting and wonderful stories from Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Yellowstone and Teton Nationalpark to come as soon as possible and technique allowing - we were ways off any Internetconnection or cellphones for quite some time - and this trip is full of new and exciting stories everyday.
We hope to be back online soon - sorry for the delay.

Hallo nach Hause -
nur ein kurzes Lebenszeichen aus Idaho Falls, wo wir heute abend angekommen sind auf unserem Weg zurueck an die Westkueste und nach San Francisco.
Viele Spannende und wunderschoene Geschichten sind noch zu erzaehlen, aber aus technicschen Gruenden ( wir waren ewig ohne vernuenftigen Handy- oder Internetzugang) wird es noch etwas dauern.
Alle Englisch-Blogkritiker ( die wir durchaus verstehen ) bitte ich nocheinmal herzlich, die Begruendung fuer den englischen Blog weiter unten zu lesen - es hat nichts mit Arroganz zu tun , sondern vielmehr mit dem Versuch, auf diese Art auch den Menschen zu danken, die uns unterwegs unendlich viel Gutes tun und sehr viel Interesse daran haben wie dieses Projekt weitergeht - und ohne die es diesen Ride of change laengst nicht mehr gaebe. (Deutsch wird nachgereicht sobald es die Umstaende erlauben)

Bis dahin freuen wir uns auf alles , was wir hier mit allen teilen duerfen, die es trotz etwas mehr Muehe noch interessiert )

Hombre und BABA ( Blue Skies over Idaho )

REUPDATED Monday 18th August - Tuesday 26 th August 2008 WET-WILD- and WONDERFUL CANADA

Monday 18th August 2008
We are leaving Fairbanks at rather rainy conditions, with skies slightly clearing up during the day . We keep hoping for some sunshine to ride up the dirtroad Top-of-the- World-Highway, taking us all the way to the Canadian border along a magnificient route.
Weather is on and off with some scattered rain, cloudy mostly and some sunshine spots, giving us an idea of the beauty surrounding us on the way.
Spotting Caribous and some black bear along the road we finally head into Chicken Alaska- allegedly Alaskas smallest "City" with 20 permanent residents - whatever it is , it's one of the funniest places up there and well worth a visit for its setup, but even more than that for its people. Our staying there in our tent included a demonstration of a homebuilt canonbomb sort of thing, tearing apart by an enourmous explosion some ladies panties one of the girls gave to the guys to blast it with their machine - crazy but nice fellows out there in the wild at minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter . While you camp outside in your tent, they tell you not to be worried about the grizzlies around - if one should show up at night , we shall just call them and they will help us with their 20 guns around !

Chicken Alaska

Tuesday, 19th August 2008
We cross the Canadian border along the Top-of-the-world-Highway, facing no real bordercheck but just some friendly questions about who we are and where we are going -
and WE ARE IN CANADA !

Top-of-the-World-Highway

After crossing the Yukon on a ferry down we ride into Dawson City - situated at the confluence with the Klondyke it was from here, that the Klondyke-Goldrush in 1896 took off - leadin more than 100 000 desperate and hopefilled goldseekers on their way over the Chillkootpass to the Yukon - of whom only 35 000 ever got there at all - and very few of them ever got rich at all.
Dawson is carefully restored , maintained and partly left alone to keep the atmosphere of these days alive - pics are soon to follow- but getting access to a fast internetconnection in this part of Canada is not that easy - so please apologize for pics only getting on later.
We spent the night above a noisy and smoky bar in an 1898 built old and pretty rundown hotel in town - and we guess not one of the guys in that pub is not a drunkard - many of who are native people - a population in which alcoholism is a sad and konown problem these days.

Dawson Impresssions

Dawson Westminster "Hotel

Wednesday 20th August 2008
Next morning surprises us with splendid sunlight - how much more we would have enjoyed it, if we had known, that it would be the last real sunshine for quite a long time- not meaning we had too much of it in Alaska before.
We take a lot of scenic goldrushpictures before we head off again, following the road south , running in a dull and rainy riding day. Glimpses of the cloudcoverd mountains let us guess about the beauty of the nature surrounding us , while the day takes us into the not really spectacular, but scenic city of Whitehorse, where we spent the night in a friendly familyhostel.

Thursday 21st August 2008
Having met Kyla, a Canadian female Ducatista ( That is an expression for the Ducati-Riders ) at Denali park, she got us invited to visit her for a free Glacier flight and see her glasblowing business in Skagway, Alaska, 140 km down south from Whitehorse.
Despite the weather is not at all looking flyable, we make up our minds to take the extraway to Skagway - we get rewarded with loads of water from above , but yet we cross a spectacular landscape again, including the totally misty White Pass, where we cross back into Alaska again.
We finfd Kyla in her glassblowing shop as well as a hostelplace in the scenich, but somewhat very touristy setup of Skagway. Slowly but surely that rain is getting on our nerves ...:-)

Friday 22nd August 2008 Weather and rain permitting no flying at all we say Goodbye to Kyla as well as to Skagway and
we are back to paved road on the route to Watson Lake, with continoous rain on and off 10 times a day, thus creating very dangerous bridgecrossings. This due to the fact , that many of the riverbridges are covered with either wood or even worse steelroasts, that get extremely slippery when wet - so bikers take care on these bridges !!!
The rest of the day is rain routine till Watson lake, camping outdoors in our tent.

Saturday, 23 rd August 2008
The Signpostforest (originally started when the Alaskan Highway was built in 1942 and one of the workers put up a sign with his hometown on a tree) is the one and only attraction of Watson lake. It meanwhile contains thousands and thousands of signs brought up and put on there by numerous travellers from all over the world. We keep looking for a sign of our homeregion and add our little contribution there - and mainly take a picture with the shirts on, our Russian friends from Vladivostok Prodrochki Bikers gave to us ( pics to follow as soon as possible ).
We then leave the Alaskan Highway heading on to the lesser driven Cassiar Highway 37 - more scenic and partially a dirtroad again .
The rain on the dirtpart of Cassiar Highway together with the mud covers us up within minutes , so taht we cannot see a thing anymore through our visors ! Yet the driving itself is nothing difficult compared to the Russian "Highways" - we have to use all our drinking water to at least see a little bit again !

Just mud :-)

While Hombre is already riding ahead again, I stop along the road to sort out my raingear and quickly get off my bike .
Guess who is standing 5 meters next to me on the road , when I turn round again ?
Our first Timberwolf - and it is nothing about charging or threatening at all - it's more a sensation of mutual curiousity about who is who .
While I get back on the bike again he walks around , behind and in front of me , and it is only when a truck passes by, that he escapes after a couple of minutes . Wonder what would have happened if that truck had not come ...

Sunday 24th August 2008

With more rain but back to a paved road we are driving our way along back to Alaska into a very special little town named Hyder, passing the Bearglacier and dozens of waterfalls cascading down hundresd of meters, being fed by the magnicient but mostly invisible glaciers throwning above in the cloudy skies. Hombre is spotting another wolf and bears on the road, before we get to a teriific fishcreek, where we are happy to watch 2 younger grizzlybears strwling along the little river. While they are up to collecting berries and trying to catch salmons from the creek, a baldheaded eagle is landing next to them - what an amazing site for wildlife - it even makes us forget the rain ;-)

Next we are riding up a fairytale like glacier road leading us to a mindblowing glacier scenery - not without encountering a major Grizzly along the river and crossing the street right behind Babas bike - moments to be remebered for a lifetime - just as much as the breathtaking landscape - despite you cannot take any good pictures of it due to the rain, the atmosphere is unique and wonderful - wet but happy we find a place to spend the night in Jack's bed and brweakfast, one of the really nice guys living in Hyder. With a great days impressions we fall asleep - wet after another rainy day - but happy for it !

Bear Glacier on the way to Hyder

Monday, 25th August 2008

Canadian rain is on and off all day long while we make our way back to Canada from little Hyder town through Stewart, spotting three more Blackbears alongside the wet but wonderful winding road. One of them sits only 5 meters away from the bikes, while we watch him with the engine running and first "escape"gear set to go in rocket mode. As fascinating these wild animals are - we are well aware of them being wild, untamed and - dangerous.
So we pay our respect to nature and take off after a couple of minutes "face-to-face" and almost completely forget about the rain :-) !
On to Meziadin Junction we pass the historic totempals near Kitwanga - regarded to be the oldest original totempals in Northamerica - we find they would have deserved a greater place to be shown - but yet enjoy the atmosphere that they express by their majestic simplicity.
Highway 16 takes us into Houston (Canada!, not Texas) where we spent the rainy night in our cosy tent.

Tuesday 26th August 2008

We head on ignoring the ongoing cold and rainy conditions , nothing much spectacular on the way but falling temperatures and us dreaming to rather ride a submarine but a bike.
Behind all the raincloud we believe to see a terrific mountain scenery to come closer, while we approach Jasper National Park through Prince George and some other smaller places along the way .
We think about performing anti-raindances and keep the hope for some sun on Wednesday !



Updates end !

Hombre and BABA (who dances with wolves :-) )

Friday 15th August - Sunday 17th August: Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs and back

Leaving Denali Park on Friday takes us some 250 km ride up to Fairbanks on the perfectly paved Northern Parks Highway , only to go on from there another 100 kms to the Chena Hot Springs ( http://www.chenahotsprings.com/). Man , after 25000 tour kilometers on this tour so far , our necks, backs and shoulders cannot get enough from the warm sulphursourced waters and massaging jets - just the somewhere around 200 kg sized masseuse kept us from asking for a massage . How sad , as she even offered "Russian Style" massaging. But our fears of getting seriouslly retraumatized after having survived the treestory beat the longing for relaxing our muscles.
In addition we find an absolutely wonderful little campsite surrounded by a crystalclear little creek and a moose walking through in the morning- so we enjoy a second day up there including a visit to the local Icemuseum before we had back to Fairbanks on Saturday afternoon - and we tell you that it was not easy - but riding home we managed to get soaked three times by the same bloody raincloud !!!!

Yet the day ended happy enough for us, running into a cosy and welcoming travellers place at Billies Hostel in Mack Boulevard- a good place to spent today as well waiting for the rainclouds to move off and complete the Blog again from the Fairbanks Visitors Center - this closing soon I will end the blog now, leaving you with the information we will be heading towards Fox tomorrow and towards the dirtroadtyped Top-of-the-world-Highway towards Dawson and Whitehorse . As I do not know yet about availibility of mobile phone or internetconnections just do NOT worry if you will not get some news for a couple of days from now on.

Cheers from Fairbanks for now

Hombre and BABA (who really needs to get off this chair now after many hours of typing)

Campsite Chena Hot Springs


Dishwasher or Golddigger ?


Ice MuseumI


Ice Museum II


Chena "transport"

Wednesday,13th August -Thursday 14th August: Denali National Park

Starting rather late after spending some breakfast time with our Alaskan neighbours on the campsite we head the final 50 kms towards Cantwell and enter the Denali National Park - there is ways to much to tell about this fantastic site to all put it up here in the Blog now - so for all of you interested please feel free to collect more information about the park here under Denali National Park .

Who has never seen the magical pictures of Mt. Mc Kinley as the crown juwel of the Alaskan Range - not mentioning the impressive wildlife and natural habitat of a unique flora and fauna.
Fortunately plans in the 1920s of the last century to built a wide and paved road into the park were given up due to intense naturists protesting, thus saving the park from Yellowstone and Yosemite destinies. Basically only a system of shuttle busses on a 90 mile dirtroad takes people into the park and out.
We stayed at a decent campsite, due to the fact we could not do reservations in time we had to use the vacancies on the first Mc Reilly Campsite - which is not that deep inside the Park as the Savage camp, but nevertheless an ok location to start off our early morning 5:30 am shuttlebustour.
We're lucky guys again - picking Mike not just as a busdriver, but as a profound knowledgesource about gamewatching and wildlife - so with the early ride we manage to see 10 Grizzly-,Brown- and Blackbears including their cubs, caribou, moose, dall sheep,fox and Golden Eagles. Wolves, lynx, marmots, and snowshoe hares we do not see, but are just as well part of the parks fauna.
After we were followed by the rain cloud last night we are fully happy to find a sunny day while travelling onwards towards Mt. Mc Kinley. Denali is the Athabascan term for Mt. McKinley, meaning “the high one.” A name that is easily understood aprroaching the foot of this 6195 m high impressive giant.
(We apologize for not putting pics on right now , but the public PCs of the last week would not allow accessing our sd-cards)
So one in 5 visistors and this only in early July are supposed to see the southern and northern twinpeaks of Mt. Mc Kinley without cloudcoverage - what a happy two German bikers we are to see its beauty both uncovered in bright sunshine ! Breathtaking sounds like a good expression to describe it.
We end a long but wonderful busride with a big grin on both our faces - Alaska is a wild and wonderful place to go !

Denali impressions


Denali impressions II


Mt Mc Kinley 6195 m

Tuesday 12th August 2008 : Old Denali Highway to Denali Park

Leaving Kennicott still in dry conditions, on our scenic way back west clouds kept getting bigger and darker - the usual afternoon performance - just in time when we get to the junction with the old Denali Highway at Paxston it started raining again . Just what we needed before we hit the dirtroad which is supposed to take us 200 km west to Denali Park. We are quite used to put up and undo our tent in rainy conditions in the meantime - but yet we will never like it , that's for sure!
So deciding whether to go on some stretch on the dirt road at early evening to maybe escape the rain or rather look for a campsite in the rain nearby we get back on the dirtroad. And we should be rewarded for our bravery.

So schön der Weg und so trocken die Abfahrt aus Kennicott am Morgen auch gewesen sein mag. Am frühen Nachmittag türmen sich bereits drohend wieder die ersten schwarzen Ungetümer am Himmel. Und zielgenau an der Kreuzung des Alten Denali Highways bei Paxton lassen sie ihre Wasserlast auf uns herab. Genau was wir uns gewuenscht haben, bevor wir auf die 200 km lange Erdpiste gehen.

Mittlerweile haben wir schon eine schlafwandlerische Routine beim Aufbauen unseres Zelts im Regen. Schnell sind wir , ja – aber Spaß wird uns das wohl trotzdem nie machen. Es ist später Nachmittag. Es giesst wie aus Kübeln. Wir überlegen, ob es bei Dämmerung und Wildwechsel Sinn macht, auf die Erdpiste zu fahren. Aber auch die Alternative, jetzt unser Zelt aufzubauen will irgendwie nicht überzeugen. Also fahren wir einfach in die beginnende Daemmerung hinein- und werden bald von Mutter Natur für unseren Mut belohnt.

Shortly after only a few kilometers the rain ceased and we enjoyed a fantastic scenery of rugged, brown and reddish coloured mountains with green meadows and blueish lakes . Whith the new Parkshighway having been built 1971 in the west of it linking Anchorage and Fairbanks to the Denali National Park this dirt road lost its importance to take people into the park. So travelling there is far more a deserted way to get to the park than going throug the paved Parks Highway.
Stopping after 150 kms on a really smooth and easy going dirtroad included seeing Daxes, Karibous and Moose along the way - as well as spending the night unplanned but interesting next to a drillers workcamp - including some Alaskan Amber beers in the local drillers and workers bar - one more rainy day we changed into a sunny experience just going on for it.

Nur wenige Kilometer weiter reissen die pechschwarzen Wolken am Horizont auf. Der Regen weicht Sonnenschein und eine herrliche Landschaft aus zerklüfteten, braun roten Felsen im herrlichen Kontrast mit sattgrünen Wiesen und türkisblauen kleinen Seen verwöhnt das Auge. Längst hat diese Dirtroad ihre ursprüngliche Bedeutung als frühere ungeteerte Ost-West-Hauptverbindung zum Denali Nationalpark verloren. Mit dem Bau des New Parkshighway zwischen Anchorage und Fairbanks ist sie zu einer wenig befahrenen, aber umso reivolleren Route geworden. Die Teerstrasse überlassen wir gerne den oft riesigen „mobile homes“ der vierrädrigen Alaskafans.

Die Dirtroad selbst ist voellig problemlos- Dennoch dürfe wir bei aller Schönheit der Landschaft nicht leichtsinnig werden. Allzuleicht kommt man in ein fast schwereloses Gleiten in der Weite dieser grandiosen Landschaft. Und genauso schnell kreuzt ein Dachs, ein Karibou oder noch gewaltiger- ein Elch die Strasse. Über 150 km fliegen wir so noch durch die endlosen Weiten, bis wir der unerwarteten Einladung einer Barfrau in einer kleinen Siedlung am Rand der Dirtroad folgen, unser Zelt für die Nacht aufzuschlagen. Ein geologisches Expeditions-Bohrteam hat in der einsamen kleinen Siedlung sein Basislager, von dem aus sie die Region im Auftrag verschiedener Unternehmen im Alaskasommer erkunden. Im Winter wird die Siedlung verlassen. Wir genehmigen uns ein Bier im „Saloon“ der Arbeiter- und werden um 10 Uhr abends zusammen mit ihnen vom Wirt verabschiedet – CLOSING TIME ist früh in diesen Breiten.

Along old Denali Highway

Gepostet von ride-of-change-2008 um 04:06

Hombre and BABA (standing any rain ! )