Fresh air & sunshine!

A friend and I road our motorcycles to Anchorage last weekend to attend the annual Alaska Airman's aviation trade show.  Luckily even though the forecast for the weekend was scattered showers for almost the entire route we had mostly sunshine.  And the rain was limited to about 10 drops on the return trip.

One thing there is plenty of in Alaska in early May is fresh air... that's not necessarily the case on the Parks highway later in the year.  This highway which runs 360 miles from Anchorage to Fairbanks gets a tremendous amount of RV traffic from all the tourists.  It's mostly two lane, with the occasional passing lane on long climbing sections... and pretty twisty.  So driving it in the summer with all the motorhomes can get a bit frustrating.  But no motorhomes were out this early in the year, so the road was wide open.  How ever there was still a considerable amount of snow at the higher elevations, which covers about 250 miles of the trip... which means it was cold!  I had just recevied my new Belstaff riding suit the morning we left, so I was pretty comfortable... but my riding partner was way under dressed and suffered for it.

The drive along the parks highway is truely a breath taking trip.  You drive right through the Alaska range past the Denali National Park.  I've done it numerous times in a car, and several in small general aviation aircraft, but this was my first trip on a motorcycle.  The sheer exposure you experience while riding a motorcycle makes the scenery even more dramatic... there's nothing between you and the mountains.  What a terrific experience!

We had planned to tent camp once we got to Anchorage, but unfortunately all the parks and camp grounds were still closed until May 15th... so we ended up having to get a hotel room while we were there.  But it was nice to be warm and have a shower right there.

The aviation trade show was fun, just about everything you can imagine for an airplane was for sale there.  I managed to make it out however spending only $20 on a DVD about float plane flying in Alaska.

Here are a couple of pictures I took on the trip down... looks chilly doesn't it?  Sure was a beautiful ride.