There is NO point in spending any more time than 1 night in Prudhoe Bay unless you working there and so after the compulsory “arctic ocean tour”, I was back on the road and decided to head straight for Fairbanks, 800km away, rather than the customary 2 day ride. You could be forgiven for thinking that the “Arctic ocean tour” is a boat cruise, but no, its a bus ride to the shore of the arctic ocean where you can go for a stroll and a swim and join a small but elite group of crazy people brave enough to venture into the freezing waters…like me!!
The Prudhoe Bay forest courtesy of the oil industry!!
NO! Its not a Speedo banana hammock! Its my jocks!!
I was on the road by about midday and fortunately, the days here are super long with sunsets around midnight at this time of the year so daylight was no concern notwithstanding 800km of Dalton Highway! The return trip was the same but different in that I got to see different aspects of the view that one cant see when travelling North! Once again, very humbled and privileged to have ridden this road and super fortunate to have hit Pristine weather on the return leg!
Loads of this going on on the Dalton!!
The only mishap took place about 100km outside of Fairbanks whilst I was up on the pegs, enjoying a challenging section of dirt when a wasp flew into my face, clipped the underside of my glasses and flipped into the void between eye and lens whereafter it was severely pissed off and let my lower eyelid know all about it!! Not pleasant but must have been SUPER funny to watch because I screamed like a girl on a rainy day parade whilst trying to keep both hands on the bars and bring the bike to a standstill from 100km/h on gravel…it was the longest 10 seconds of my life!!!
Constant companions, or perhaps competitors is a better word!!
The Dalton claims another Motoquest victim!!
And at the beginning/end of the Dalton!!
Anyway, got into Fairbanks at about 22h00 and headed straight for a self clean carwash to use the high pressure washers to get the sodium chloride off the bike because when that stuff hardens it doesn’t come off!!
