2006 June 19 to 25

2006-06-19 Monday      see Dalton photo gallery

Fairbanks to Five Mile Camp BLM Camping area   145 miles - 5:30 hours

Woke up around 6:00 and left CG at 08:45. Up the Steese Highway and a bit outside Fairbanks went on the Elliot Highway that ends at Manley Hot Springs.

First stop was at the Pipeline Viewing Station that Alyeska had built a couple miles outside of Fairbanks, so the Princess Cruise passengers had easy access to it. I shared the experience with about 150 cruisers (the capacity of 3 large tour buses). I could discern at least 5 different languages being spoken, the predominant being mid-west brogue.

The 85 miles of the Elliot highway from the CG to the beginning of the Dalton highway were plagued by many big frost heaves, not all of them properly flagged, so it took me two and a half hours to drive.

The Dalton highway started with a bang, or rather a rattle, a rattle so violent, that I must have lost a couple of fillings in my back teeth. The first 10 miles were rather awful. I had to slow to 15-20 mph many times and even at that speed the washboard rattle was fierce. I could not find a right speed and just suffered the rattle. A MH with 22.5 tires would probably have an easier time.

My theory is, that this is to discourage the faint of heart, and separate the poseurs from the real Gravel Masters.

After about 15 miles the road improved from near lethal to medium nuisance. There were always dips and bumps, most of them flagged, they had to be taken very serious.

From mile 30 to 34 is a teaser; four miles of absolutely table top smooth asphalt. No idea why it is there, but for a couple of minutes I was able to rearrange my fillings.

At mile 38 started an eight mile long construction site. Two more-than-18-wheelers, a pickup and myself had to wait about 15 minutes for the pilot car coming from the north. The eight miles were done at less than 20 mph and there were two longer stops when D8 CATs were claiming the right of way. Nobody will argue with a D8, with the (maybe) exception of a D10.

From the end of the construction it was a quick and easy eight miles to the Yukon crossing.

Dieseled up and went on to the Five Mile Camp BLM Camping area. This a free and unsupervised former gravel pit. It is called five mile camp, because it is 5 miles from the Yukon crossing.

I first went to the Hotspot Cafe right next to the camping area and had nice talk with Julie, the lady serving me my mushroom burger.  The burger was at least as good, if not better than the ad copy in the Milepost claims. Julie advised me where to park and so I am on a breezy ridge - keeps the mosquitoes down - overlooking the cafe's parking lot.

When I will leave the trailer here tomorrow, and go up to Prudhoe Bay with the Van solo, Julie and Theresa, the two ladies running the Hotspot Cafe and Motel, promised to keep an eye on it.

Took advantage of the midnight sun and read. Linda Fairstein's novel "Kills". What a nice counterpoint to my solitude and quiet, the Big Apple's hustle and bustle as the background to a murder mystery.

2006-06-20 Tuesday        see Dalton photo gallery

Five Mile Camp to Deadhorse, AK  -  350 miles;  8 hours

Started out a bit late (11:00) since I had not finished reading my book before o'light 0:30.

1/4 mile north of the campground entry, there are gates across the road. They will be closed if the Alyeska airstrip parallel to the road is active. The airstrip is about 2500 feet of gravel with a regular WW II style control tower. A small helicopter had just landed in a meadow at the north end and two people were erecting a sleeping tent next to it. Fly-in camping.

Five mile camp is mile 70 on the Dalton, to give you a reference. It is 28 miles to Finger Mountain and 45 miles to the Arctic Circle crossing.

The first 20 miles were good gravel, with only an occasional larger pothole. A couple of miles before Finger Mountain the pavement starts and will go all the way to Coldfoot. But, the bane of paved roads here are dips and frequent short gravel sections, where there were too many potholes. The gravel sections normally have very smooth transitions from and to pavement.

The dips are the more interesting feature. If you are too fast over one, you and your passengers may get airborne inside your vehicle. In my case it was the plastic tubs in the van with my sundry stuff in it, that occasionally grabbed big air.

Dips in pavement are hard to read, there is no shadow line or any other clear indication of their existence. I became quite proficient in reading the gravel sections, but a few of the dips caught me by surprise. This is from the view of someone driving solo and at elevated speeds.

In an RV I would not go over 30-35 mph and then most of the dips are a non-issue. On the better parts of the road under the best conditions in open areas, I sometimes hit 75+ mph, even on non-paved smooth sections.

The Dalton booklet suggest a travel time of 10+ hours from Five Mile Camp to Deadhorse. My time is listed above and included plenty of Kodak moments and pauses for nature calls. Official speed limit is 50 mph, did not see one trooper, not even one radar trap.

But the Dalton is not about how fast you go, it is about what you see and whom you meet on the road. A narrative will not do the highway proper justice, so please refer to the picture gallery which I kept in driving sequence.

One remark about the kind of vehicle you will find on the Dalton.

First of all there are the big rigs, many are double tows with 36 wheels or even more. Drilling pipe, support vehicles and tankers seem to be the most prevalent loads. On bad sections of roads, they still do 50 mph and there is no chance anybody can keep up with them. So, be polite, be PC, and pull over, stop, and let them pass. They all seem to be pretty low (and correct for this road) geared, only 10% grades, like the Chandalar shelf and Atigun Pass has them in granny gear.

Second most frequent vehicle is the Alyeska pick-up truck, mostly with topper and two people on board. These are the guys who maintain and supervise the operation of the pipeline. Many times you can see them parked next to or under the pipeline. There seems to be a drive-able by those pickups right-of-way along most of the pipeline, except where the pipe is buried in a riverbed.

The third group is highway maintenance vehicles, graders, bucket loaders, caterpillars and big double tow clamshell trailers who bring gravel to construction sites, often for tens of miles.

The fourth group is the tourist vehicles: Princess cruise line buses, 15 passenger Ford Vans from Arctic Adventures, all kind of passenger cars, SUVs, pick-ups, motorcycles and bicycles, yes, bicycles.

I saw quite a few solo and three groups of two female bicyclists, also a couple on a tandem bike. All bicyclist I saw were southbound, so they may have flown into Prudhoe Bay. There were no apparent support vehicles I could identify. All the bicycles were skinny tire road bikes, no hybrids or mountain bikes and they all had double panniers front and back plus front and rear carriers. They all looked very much overloaded to me and I hope they did not have too many flats.

The motor bikes were mostly the BMW Tourer kind and a few large motocross bikes. No Harleys or Honda Goldwings. There was one side car, looked like a Ural (BMW clone) to me.

Very few RVs, most the pickup camper type, some small TTs and one or two small Class C. No big fivers or MHs that I saw.

Arrived in Deadhorse @ 18:45 and checked into the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. I had reserved a room from Coldfoot, which has a public phone. The hotel caters mostly to the oilfield personnel and has a definite working flair. Three meals a day are part of the package. The food is cafeteria style, but excellent and plenty, and snacks and sandwiches to go can be had anytime. Breakfast is from 04:15 to 08:00; lunch from 11:30 to 13:00 and supper from 18:00 to 20:00.

There is a strict non-alcohol policy. Get caught and you have to sleep outside in one of the icy puddles. The low drone of the power generator outside my window, that was darkened by aluminum foil affixed with duck tape, lulled me to a deep sleep.

2006-06-21 Wednesday               see Dalton photo gallery

Deadhorse to Five Mile Camp   - 350 miles; 9:00 hours

Started out at 08:30 after fueling in one of the most curious gas stations I so far encountered. The regular type gas and diesel pumps were inside a building, not a bad idea, if it can get to forty and more below.

One advantage of doing the same road back and forth is that on the return trip you already know what to expect and can plan for the things you missed on the northbound leg. From as picture taking point you also have the difference in light conditions, late evening sun northbound, early morning sun southbound and vice versa.

Again, a picture is worth a thousand words, therefore please click here for the photo gallery.

One photo deserves to be here. For me it expresses the essence of the Dalton highway.

The endless empty road, the different vegetation on both sides, the majestic wall of Sukapak Mountain rising in the distance, and above all of it, the ever-changing Arctic sky.

Arrived back at the trailer in Five Mile Camp @ 17:30, tired, but happy.

2006-06-22 Thursday                 

Five Mile Camp

Day of semi-rest and recreation. Spent almost two hours on the water well to clean the Van from all the road grime. No pressure washer, but a steady flow of crystal clear spring water. There is a potable water spring near by, and this site is for more dirty operations. There is also a very functional dump station nearby.

Put up the desktop computer, fired up Kraftwerk #2 and did a lot of picture sorting, editing and preparation for web publishing.

Nice breeze keeps the skeeters to a manageable level.

In the evening drove 5 miles north to a clearing and stayed there for half an hour to look for wildlife. Only absolute quiet, just a couple of bird calls, no wildlife. Will try a different spot tomorrow.

The movie of the evening was Sergio Leone's "Once upon a Time in the West", IMO one of the best westerns ever done. This time I especially liked the parts shot in Monument Valley, recognizing many spots I just recently had been to myself.

2006-06-23 Friday                      

Five Mile Camp

Run out of water yesterday, so this morning hooked up perfunctorily and drove very, very slowly the quarter mile to the potable water well and took on a tank full of delicious, icy spring water. My tank monitor system is pretty useless, it indicated a 1/3 tank full, when the pump started sucking air.

Household chores and further editing of pictures and web. So far I have taken more than 500 pictures on the Dalton.

2006-06-24 Saturday              

Five Mile Camp

The four fivers with the families of some of the crews from the construction site about 15 miles south of here have, all moved from their old spot in the trees and bushes to higher, bare ground. I guess it is because of the mosquitoes are much less a nuisance here with the wind blowing almost constantly.

They moved their big construction size generator, who runs all the time, to a space that gives me more noise exposure, but I hardly notice it after a while.

Another Class C RV parked behind me for the night, and low and behold, it is another middle-aged German couple. They are from Westphalia and have their friends' rig, which has problems with vapor lock and the engine loosing all power, so they decided not to drive to Deadhorse and tomorrow return to Fairbanks instead.

I invited them over for a beer and we shared a couple of stories.

The construction people at about 21:00 started a very lively party, with loud music and even some fireworks or guns going off?  Do not know how long it lasted, I went to sleep anyway.

2006-06-25 Sunday                       

Five Mile Camp

All quiet on the Dalton Front this morning. Did some hoovering. It is incredible how much dust is still in the rig. Almost as bad as after Burning Man.

Took the Van and went south for a couple of miles past the Yukon, then turned around and shot the photos I missed, coming up seven days ago. The mighty Yukon and its bridge is well worth a photo stop.

Took on some fuel at the Yukon Crossing. 50.00 USD at 3.699 per Gallon is only 13.5 gallons, but it should be plenty to get me to Fairbanks.

From Yukon crossing phoned the Chena Marina CG for reservations for tomorrow.

More picture album stuff to do, so I can publish tomorrow.

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