Posted in on Sep 5th, 2018 Comments Off on Sebring, FL – August 30, 2018
This circus is over and everyone is headed home or at least elsewhere. It’s 18 months, more or less, until the next Alcan, the winter Alcan5000 in February, 2020. People are excited and saying they’re going to be in the next one. But first they have to go home and rest after this one. Jim […]
Posted in on Sep 5th, 2018 Comments Off on Fairbanks, AK – August 28, 2018
We do the TSD early in the morning. It’s the usual stage in the airport area of Fairbanks which has both a water strip for the float planes and a grass strip for the back country tail-draggers. Something for everyone. Including blocked roads for construction that the stage route instructions doesn’t know anything about. We […]
Posted in on Sep 5th, 2018 Comments Off on Fairbanks, AK – August 27, 2018
We’re up and out of the hotel by 8. We have a checkpoint in the Valdez TSD, another Alcan5000 fixture. In the winter when Valdez some years gets enormous amounts of snow, this TSD can be very tricky. There are some years where the huge amount of snow that Valdez gets is plowed into banks […]
Posted in on Sep 4th, 2018 Comments Off on Valdez, AK – August 26, 2018
The Copper River Princess Lodge is quite a bit above the usual Alaska overnight. It’s owned and operated by the Princess Cruise Lines and tries to carry the cruise experience on to land. With varied success. Great restaurant. Suitable bar. Expensive souvenir shop. Total crap wifi. Why would a cruise ship company have any knowledge […]
Posted in on Aug 30th, 2018 Comments Off on Copper River, YT – August 25, 2018
We’re up and out by 8:00. The ferry crossing to the west side of the Yukon already has a line, 2 lines actually and since the ferry is small, the rally takes 4 or 5 crossings to get to the other side. That means another mad dash to make the start of the TSD […]
Posted in on Aug 30th, 2018 Comments Off on Dawson City, YK – August 24, 2018
Our beautiful day yesterday has changed to overcast this morning. The good news is that the rain hasn’t started yet so breaking camp won’t have to be done in the rain. As usual, the riders don’t waste any time packing the sleeping bags. The tents, on the other hand, are a bit problematic and a […]
Posted in on Aug 29th, 2018 Comments Off on South Canol, YK – August 23, 2018
We made it to Watson Lake last night by about 8 PM and got dinner in the bar. Spring rolls and a donnair wrap with plenty of beer. The dining room and the bar are packed with Alcan rally people and that has displaced some evacuees from the hotel. The evacuees aren’t happy and the […]
Posted in on Aug 29th, 2018 Comments Off on Watson Lake, YK – August 22, 2018
The fires are now a quite close to Dease Lake and as recently as last week, we weren’t sure that the rally would be able to get through Dease Lake which was then under a mandatory evacuation order. Luckily for us (but not so much for the locals), the evacuation order had been lifted for […]
Posted in on Aug 29th, 2018 Comments Off on Stewart, BC – August 21, 2018
The day starts with a big TSD stage, the 11% grade. This stage was run in the 2012 Winter Alcan and because of a fatal highway accident, the stage was canceled and the rally was split in two. This year there are no problems and after Colin and I do our checkpoint, we continue on […]
Posted in on Aug 29th, 2018 Comments Off on Quesnel, BC – August 20, 2018
The rally does a ceremonial start at the portico of the Totem Lake Hotel. The real start of the rally is the first TSD which starts about 60 miles north of Kirkland in a rest area on I-5. This is where the first mistakes of the rally are made. There’s a lot of tension and […]
