Alaska - Arctic Circle Ride

Its great to be back in the United States!
We always appreciated the United States but, after experiencing 47 countries, we feel extremely lucky to live here! We should all be proud.

we landed on American soil on June 7th. This was the start of quite a magnificant adventure...the ride to the Arctic C1rcle. Six cyclist friends from the midwest met us in Fairbanks. (cyclists: Paul and Kelsey Scanlon, Mark Pernitz, Frank Pollari, Joanne Snow and Jeff Freidhoff ) That day we started the adventure north with Jacky driving a 30ft motorhome.

We heard many horror stories about the Dalton Hwy...loose gravel, mud, many semis, grizzlies, mountain passes, an unbearable amount of mosquitos and black flies, etc. Much to our surprise, the gravel was not that bad, the semis were very curteous and slowed way down, we didn't have to use the revolver or shotgun and we didn't run into black flies (until we hit the way north). What they were dead right about was the extremely hilly terrain and the amount of mosquitos. Many of us had huge welts covering all parts of our bodies. We all learned the mosquito dance.

Ward's dream was reached when we hit the Arctic Circle on June 11th. From there we continued up to Coldfoot to visit the most northern bar in North America.

During this trip Ward caught 5 fish which made a fantastic supper one night, we went to a natural hot springs, told a ton of lies, watched the sun that never set, biked 356 miles and managed to all stay sane and get along. That is quite an accomplishment when you have 8 people living in a 30ft motorhome for 7 days.

Great trip!