Moose look bigger standing on the highway then they do on the Discovery Channel. They're like camels, only with horns instead of humps. One way to imagine what it's like to ride the Alaska Highway is to envision touring African Safari USA at freeway speeds. On our trip we saw 5 black bears, 1 grizzly, 4 moose, 13 caribou, 2 fox, 1 lynx, 1 porcupine, 1 flock of mountain goats and something that looked like a Standard Poodle. By the time you stop and turn the bike around for a closer look the animals have usually bolted (except the mountain goats that appear to relish licking the pavement). This is certainly real wilderness, and unlike their more callous cousins living in our National Parks, these animals don't submit to ogling.
For every animal you merely glimpse on the highway you'll find a dozen like it stuffed, mounted and displayed proudly at gas stations, cafes and motels along the way. You can't escape the glass-eyed beasts. During one meal a local educated us about grizzly bears. He told us that officials in the area were up in arms because there had been so many bear attacks in the area. He said they had issued an official warning that people should carry bells and pepper spray with them at all times. They also advised that people learn the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat. "You can tell the black bear's scat because it will be filled with berry seeds," he said. "The grizzly's will have lots of bells and smell like pepper."
The bear-loving locals sometimes refer to motorcyclists who ride the Alaska Highway as "Meals on Wheels". They like to remind you that grizzlies can accelerate as fast as a quarter horse and carry an 800-pound moose in their jaws without letting it touch the ground. Staring up at one of the 11-foot monsters all stuffed and snarling in its glass tomb, all I could do was hope I was riding the Honda if we happened upon its brother.
Roll It, Pat It, Mark I with a @#%*!
If you're not familiar with the term "pavement break," the Alaska Highway will quickly indoctrinate you. This is where the regular road surface temporarily vanishes and some less predictable substance fills the gap. The break could be 20 feet or 20 miles, and it could be hard, soft or sickeningly soupy. The vast majority of these construction zones were mildly irritating, yet highly effective speed deterrents. A couple were completely hairball.
When we're flagged for construction in America, we normally must wait for a pilot car to guide us through the zone. Like Sunday-school teachers they lead us along, giving wide girth to any potentially litigatable situations. In Canada the flaggers stop you for a little pep talk. "We're doing a bit of maintenance up ahead, eh. It's slick as snot and a couple bikes went down this morning, but you'll be fine. Oh. And watch out for the steamrollers." So you're plowing your way through the glossy mess and the steamrollers are coming at you. To avoid them you bulldoze your way through a couple berms of decomposed granite, but oncoming semi trucks and motorhomes quickly remind you which side of the road you're on. You thread your way through the traffic, cranes and dump trucks Space Invader style, taking brief note that all the heavy equipment operators have stopped their machines and are sitting there watching you. And they're giggling. We didn't stop to curtsey.
Truthfully the road wasn't as bad as we'd heard it would be and even the worst section -- which we hit right after a heavy rain -- was only mildly terrifying. When it hadn't been raining, dust in these sections was even more of a drag.
It requires great effort to maintain a 1400-mile highway that's been laid through a sub-arctic forest in the middle of nowhere. And as if it isn't enough work to tame the frost heaves and fill about a billion cracks and pot holes each summer, there's a major effort underway to straighten and widen the famously unkempt highway. Sadly, some of the most seductively curvy sections are earmarked for reconstruction over the next five years.
You've never really felt fear until you crest a hill to find a pair of Holiday Ramblers lumbering toward you two-abreast. Yes, it's a mildly unfortunate fact that the Alaska Highway is predominated by motorhomes. The happy news is, there are about a zillion places for motorcycles to pass, and we never once grew weary. Also, since so many people bring their own accommodations, there is always room at the inn for those of us who don't plan ahead. This isn't a bad crowd to hang out with actually -- kind of the upper crust of the rec. set. People with French poodles and pacemakers usually don't venture this far into the wilderness.
I doubt the army engineers and enlisted men that first built the highway in 1942 would've thought that driving it would one day be a common quest for retired folk. The military vehicles had to be towed by bulldozers to get back down the road once they'd finished building it. In fact, it had to be rebuilt by a fleet of private contractors in 1943 to accommodate even the lightest traffic. Still, the original construction of the Alaska Highway has been catalogued right along side the Panama Canal as one of the greatest engineering feats in American history.
Proposals to build an international highway joining Alaska to the Lower 48 date back to the late 1920s and a man named Donald MacDonald, who is no relation to Ronald. It was a much-debated idea that was deemed mostly ridiculous (perhaps it was the part about the continuing bridge across the Bering Straight). MacDonald enlisted a famous sled dog adventurer named "Slim" Williams to travel on the proposed route in hopes of promoting the idea. Slim, who was 58 at the time, and a fellow zestfreak, John Logan, 20, set out from Fairbanks riding two BSA motorcycles. Upon arriving in Seattle six months later they became national heroes, but the highway remained a lost cause.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor finally ignited construction of an artery to Alaska. It was feared the lonely state was a sitting duck for future attack. President Roosevelt decided it was essential to create overland access to America's isolated asset, and with the Canadian government behind him, he ordered immediate action. The United States had agreed to pay the tab for construction of the highway, then relinquish two-thirds of it to Canada once the war was over. It was called the Pioneer Road, and a bottomless budget allowed it to be forged and fortified in a mere eight months.
Soldiers and civilians working on the highway faced extreme challenges including temperatures that would dip to -60 degrees F in the winter. Permafrost (sections of land that are permanently frozen and buried by insulating moss called muskeg) drove the engineers bananas. When you strip the vegetation off, the otherwise very stable ground turns to mush. Eventually they built much of the highway right on top of the moss. However, it's still melting permafrost that causes the dizzying dips on the highway. When you ride behind your buddies it looks like they're piloting pogosticks.
One young enlisted man mending a broken foot in Watson Lake was asked to put a new coat of paint on the nearby 635 mile marker. This particular sign had wooden arrows pointing in the general direction of major reference points like New York, Edmonton, Whitehorse and Tokyo. The homesick soldier decided to nail up an additional arrow featuring his hometown of Danville, Illinois. Since that day over 45,000 people have followed this tradition and posted signs noting their own hometown or surname. It was at the famous Sign Forest that we stopped to butcher the Yamaha's windshield, then Evans painstakingly etched the date and "Motorcycle Cruiser" into the remnant and we proudly nailed it among the masses.