Twelve hours a day in the saddle might bore some people, but not me. When the landscape is devoid of scenery and the road is straight and flat, my obsessive/compulsive personality endlessly replays my life's most painful mistakes and embarrassing moments. So riding from New Mexico to Alaska and back is no problem. I've banked more than enough material to keep my mind agonizingly occupied for 7,500 miles.

This was something I had been planning since I got my first motorcycle when I was 13 years old. All my young life my mother would shake her finger at me each time motorcycle roared by. "You'll never have one of those!" she'd admonish. Dad must have felt differently, for while Mom was out of town one weekend he went with me down to the local Honda shop and we bought a 1967 Honda 50 with money I'd earned with my paper route. I never saw Mom and Dad speak to each other again, but from that point on my mind was filled with dreams of seeing faraway places, and riding to Alaska was the grandest dream of all.

My goal was not really to see Alaska, just to get there. A picture of me next to the Welcome To Alaska sign would be my trophy. The Alaska Highway is about 1500 miles long, but there's a whole lot of Canada between here and there, and a whole lot of USA even before that. I figured about 3500 miles from my southern New Mexico home to the end of the Alaska Highway. Distance wasn't the problem. After all, I'm a member in good standing of the Iron Butt Association (or, as my daughter calls it, the Dumb Butt Association). No, the problem was time; I only had two weeks to make the trip. Which is why I went by myself. Most people find the idea of riding 7000 miles in two weeks about as appealing as two weeks in the dentist's chair.

Oh! Canada
Three days to Calgary became my mantra as I streaked across New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Trying to get as many miles behind me as possible, I stuck to the Interstate most of the way and used up a lot of those old memories just trying to stay awake. Entering Canada, I found the rolling green landscapes of Alberta quite pretty, but after days of nothing else it was like riding across a 2000-mile golf course.

Since I occasionally watch The Red Green Show on PBS, I figured I knew all about Canadians. You know, plaid shirts, a fondness for chains saws, and a habit of ending every sentence with eh? But nothing prepared me for their incredible friendliness. Exchanging money at a bank near Edmonton, the teller spread the word that I was motorcycling through Canada. Customers and bankers alike warmly welcomed me and wished me a good trip. Then, as I was checking my tire pressure, a fellow spread a map across the hood of his car and showed me all the great roads in British Columbia. A little later, returning to the bike after a quick lunch, I found a note clipped to my tank bag that said, Hope you have a great holiday up here! Gotta love 'em, eh?

The teller gave me $450 Canadian dollars for the $300 US I gave her and I immediately took a liking to their monetary system. Whether it was the price of gas or the cost of a hamburger, I would always take heart in the fact that the actual price was about a third less than I was paying. The same goes for the speed limit. It's fun to see 110 as the posted speed, even though that's kilometers-per-hour and only 66 mph to us Americans. Canadians seem to have a penchant for low speed limits. Even the superhighways are posted at a leisurely 110 km/h, but everyone - even the police - seems to ignore it.

The Alaska Highway
Green and monotonous, the view didn't change much as I headed west toward Dawson Creek, mile zero of the famed Alaska Highway. I imagined a remote frontier town with log buildings and armed Mounties on horseback. Instead I found a Super 8 motel and cable TV. The first few miles of the Highway were no more eventful than the last 2000, but gradually things went from boring to beautiful to breathtaking, culminating with magnificent Muncho Lake reflecting the towering mountains behind it. Big horn sheep flocked across the road at Stone Mountain. A bear ambled in front of me. This was a very big day, filled with the things I had been anticipating for 2000 miles. Coming from the Rocky Mountain West, I've seen plenty of rugged, snow-covered peaks, but this country was filled with endless forests, wide rivers and huge lakes as well. The day's final delight was crossing the long and lovely suspension bridge over the Liard River.

Liard Hot Springs was the ideal place to spend my first night on the Highway. Sitting in the hot mineral water was a perfect prescription for a weary motorcyclist. Too bad there wasn't one of these at the end of every day. A couple of dozen people shared the pools with me. A sign warned that clothing must be worn, but there wasn't anyone there I wanted to see in anything less than what they had on. They probably felt the same about me.

Despite all the terrible things I'd heard about it, the Alaska Highway -- also known as the Alcan -- is as fine a piece of asphalt as I've ever ridden; smooth, wide and well maintained. No need for a GS or a KLR. In fact, Gold Wings and Electra Glides - some two-up and pulling trailers - are the most commonly seen two-wheelers. There's a terrific camaraderie among motorcyclists up here. If you've made it this far, you're a serious rider and no one cares what brand you're on. The nearest poseur is a thousand miles away.

About the only blemishes on the road are some long stretches of construction and the steel grate deck bridges. Now I had read about these bridges so I wasn't too surprised when I crossed my first one and the front wheel began to weave. What I was not prepared for was looking down and seeing the river far below. A touch of acrophobia goes nicely with a lack of control. The bridge at Teslin may be the longest steel grate bridge of them all, and the deck sections have sagged to create an up-and-down motion to go with the side-to-side gyrations. Add a little rain and you've got the ultimate cocktail of terror. But take it easy, let the front wheel go where it wants, and you get across just fine.

Gas and food are no problem on the Alcan. Little gas station/cafes appear every hour or so. Some are pretty funky, with gas pumps that look like they belong in front of Goober's service station in Mayberry. Often only a single grade of gas is available and sometimes the facilities are just pit toilets. I never saw a credit card reader on a gas pump but plastic is accepted virtually everywhere.

The weather turned cool and cloudy as I entered Watson Lake the next day; bad weather was moving in. This is the home of the famous Signpost Forest. What started with some lonely G.I. nailing up a sign pointing to his hometown now contains some 30,000 signs. Being from Roswell I couldn't wait to nail up my International UFO Museum sign, but I left it at home. My memory just hasn't been the same since that alien abduction.

It began to rain as I neared Whitehorse, making the short construction zone at the edge of town a real mud bog. With about 20,000 residents, Whitehorse is the biggest city in the Yukon and caters to tourists eager to retrace the steps of the Stampeders of the Klondike Gold Rush. Everything strives to look old and much of it is, despite the golden arches on Main Street and the Harley dealership on the edge of town.

Kluane National Park was the highlight of the next day's ride, even though rain and low clouds obscured most of the mountains. Its centerpiece is glacier-fed Kluane Lake, huge and turquoise blue. Despite the breathtaking beauty, crowds and traffic are non-existent. That's something you notice up here. There are no condos on the lakes or homes on the hilltops. Other than the Highway and its traffic, the land looks pretty much the way it has for thousands of years. That's the real beauty of the ride.

Since bears are not part of my normal riding experience, the first time one strolled across the highway I felt like Jack Hanna. After my seventh or eighth bear, they almost seemed commonplace. When I saw one munching berries next to the road, I rode right up and took his picture. (I did leave the motorcycle running, just in case I looked more appetizing than the berries.) The last bear I saw was hunched in the woods doing a number two -- which, I suppose, answers that age-old question.

Moose, elk, caribou and big horn sheep all cross the Highway with enough frequency to warrant big warning signs. Road kills seem rare, though, since traffic is light and the Canadian government wisely keeps the forest cut back far enough from the road that critters are easily spotted before they become fender ornaments.

Later that day came the crossing of the Alaska border, the holy grail of my trip, followed by a spirited round of picture-taking, securing forever the proof of my success. Shortly after this joyous moment the rain began to fall. Not the spotty, on-again off-again Canadian rain encountered earlier. No, this was a full-fledged drenching rain worthy of America's biggest state.

A hundred miles ahead lay the day's destination, the town of Tok (pronounced "toke" and appropriately located "over the line"), and it rained all the way there. It rained all night and it was still raining the next morning. Pouring me a second cup of coffee, the waitress said it had been raining for a week and was supposed to rain for a week more. No point in trying to wait it out.

The Call Of The Wild
Because all the terrible things I had heard about the Alaska Highway turned out to be pure fiction, I scoffed when a fellow rider told me how bad the Top Of The World Highway was. It goes northeast from Tok to Dawson City and is unpaved much of the way. Even in the cold rain the first thirty or forty miles of chip-sealed road was OK. I decided the rider dispensing advice was just a cowardly fool; a wimp, unworthy of his motorcycle. Just then, at the exact moment I held that uncharitable thought, the road turned into slick, soupy mud and a passing Jeep thoroughly splashed me with it. Call it Karma or what you will, but God frequently plays jokes like this on me, probably because I'm such an easy mark.

It was the slickest stuff I'd ever tried to ride in. My handlebars seemed only vaguely related to my direction of travel and the road was narrow, steep and winding. I was thinking that it couldn't get any worse when it began to snow. Not a lot of snow, mind you, but God had to be really laughing now. After what seemed like an eternity I reached the Canadian border, the northernmost border crossing in the United States. The usual questions ensued.

"What's the purpose of your visit to Canada, business or pleasure?"
After what I'd just been through it was hard to say, "Pleasure."
"Do you have any liquor?"
"No, but I sure could use a drink."
"Any firearms?"
"Thank goodness, no. I would have shot myself by now."
"Then have a nice trip, eh."

My map showed that the road was paved at the border, but the Canadian asphalt turned out to be as bad as the Alaskan mud. They should have posted signs saying, speed controlled by potholes. Then the fog closed in; the densest fog I have ever seen, forcing me to completely stop the motorcycle from time to time. Suddenly a motor home would roar out of the fog and my life would flash before my eyes. In desperation I glued myself to the taillights of the SUV in front of me, deciding the risk of rear-ending it was far better than front-ending a Winnebago.

It took more than seven hours to make the 180 miles from Tok to Dawson City. What a welcome sight it was when the ground dropped away to reveal the Yukon River, looking as wide as the Mississippi, with Dawson City nestled on its far side. The ferry pulled up at the same time I did. There's no dock; the pilot just runs the boat into the bank and drops the ramp. The engine roars as the ferry fights the strong current to the opposite bank. Down goes the ramp and you ride into Dawson City, looking just like it must have during the Klondike gold rush days of the 1890s. The streets are dirt (or in my case, mud), sidewalks are wood and you expect to see Jack London sitting on the porch of the Eldorado Hotel. This was the payoff for the day's misery

It was Saturday night and I had been on the road since the previous Saturday. It was time to celebrate a little. After a great dinner I walked around town taking pictures, talking to folks and eating ice cream. At 10:30 the sun was still brightly shining. I asked a local what time it got dark and he replied, "August." Cute. It was weird to be sitting in a tavern at 11:00 p.m. with sun streaming in the windows. Instead of a darkened bar full of shadowy faces it was as bright as happy hour in Cancun. As I watched the typical male-female getting-close-to-closing-time behavior it occurred to me that having a broad-daylight look at your prospective partner must really cut down on promiscuity.

No surprise that it was raining in the morning. I've seen Baja finishers with less mud than my motorcycle. With the bike packed and the tank full of spendy Canadian premium (94 octane, no less!) I was off to Whitehorse for the second time. They call it the Klondike Loop, and the road was fine and scenic. The sun broke through the clouds when I reached the overlook of the "Five Fingers," the infamous rapids on the Yukon that sank so many of the Stampeders headed for the gold fields.

At the end of the day I was at Teslin and, since the rain had cleared up, I decided to camp beside the lake. The deluge began about midnight and continued as I broke camp the next morning. This country is famous for its mosquitoes, and I'm here to attest that they are the most voracious winged creatures on this earth. They're big and black and they can't wait for you to take off your helmet so they can fly into your eyes and nose, drawing blood wherever they land for more than a second. Worst of all, like F-16s, they possess all-weather capability. No matter how hard it rained, the mosquitoes were still conducting flight operations.

Cruising The Cassiar
Instead of backtracking down the Alaska Highway, I wanted to ride south on the Cassiar Highway, said to be much more scenic and remote. But the rain and the Cassiar's many unpaved miles made me hesitate. Painful memories of the Top Of The World Highway were still fresh on my mind. At the junction a couple of drivers who had just come up the Cassiar said it was no problem. The TV in the corner of the café gave me a satellite view of the massive storm that had pounded me for days, now heading off to the east with blue skies in its wake. I was wasting daylight. (Of course, up here, there's plenty to waste.)

Indeed, the Cassiar is a much better route. It meanders between two great mountain ranges, with snow-covered peaks lining both sides of the road. The pavement, when it's there, is just a narrow strip of asphalt without any striping, but it's in good shape and filled with great curves. The dreaded unpaved sections were so good that they were hard to distinguish from the paved parts. Construction was another matter. Long delays gave me plenty of time to not only get friendly with several flagmen, but to pretty much hear their entire life stories.

There aren't as many places to gas-up or eat or spend the night along the Cassiar. At a café in Dease Lake I asked if there was a lodge or something an hour or so down the road. The answer was yes, but don't miss it because there's not much after that. I located the lodge - or at least its sign - and turned into the driveway. A fellow with a chain saw popped out of nowhere and cheerfully said hello. Yes, he had a vacancy and he was certainly glad to have me. By the time I realized I had the wrong driveway I was hauling my gear into a log cabin without water or electricity, and an old-fashioned outhouse across the yard. It was austere but clean and cozy and cheap -- only $20. (Canadian dollars at that.) Besides, it's tough to say no to a happy guy with a chain saw.

Near the end of the Cassiar I took the side trip to Stewart and Hyder, which turned out to be a fabulous ride with tremendous vistas, perfect asphalt and almost no traffic. The road winds through a narrow canyon with steep, snowy mountains on either side. You pass several glaciers and the biggest, known as Bear Glacier, comes almost to the road. Stewart bills itself as the northernmost ice-free port in Canada. Hyder bills itself as being next to Stewart. They're in separate countries, but only the customs officers seem to care.

Kitwanga is the official end of the Cassiar Highway as it meets the Yellowhead Highway. Once on the Yellowhead you feel like you're back in civilization. Farms and small towns become part of the scenery; the mountains take a supporting, but still beautiful, role and the price of gas falls by a third. Lots of motorcyclists take the ferry up from Vancouver to Prince Rupert and ride the Yellowhead eastward to Jasper and Banff National Parks. It's a long, beautiful ride without the challenges of the Alcan and the Cassiar.

For those who can't make it all the way to Alaska, I say go to Jasper and Banff and call it good enough. These parks have the most spectacular concentration of scenery I've ever seen. Breathtaking mountains, scores of glaciers, beautiful lakes and lots of wildlife rival anything you'll see in Alaska, and it's all just a couple of hundred miles north of the border. I had avoided the parks on the way up, fearing the bumper-to-bumper traffic that plagues Yellowstone in the summer, but there was none of that. Traffic is fast and light along the highway they call Icefields Parkway.

I heard that there was great camping at Lake Louise, so I was pleased not to see any campground full signs as I approached the booth. What I did see was a small no tents sign stuck on the window. Seems an irritable mother bear was prowling the area at night and the no-see-um netting in my tent wouldn't offer adequate protection. The attendant directed me to the apparently bear-free overflow campground, but not before taking my seven dollars. Overflow camping was a roadside gravel pit lined with RVs, small barking dogs and a porta-potty. No wonder the bears avoided the place. Ah, but the next morning I watched the sun come up over the bright blue mirror-like waters of Lake Louise and all was forgiven.

As I made my way south toward the U.S. border I could feel the end of my journey looming like Monday morning, even though it was far from over. My route home steered away from the Interstates and over the more scenic roads through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. It reminded me that there is plenty of great riding in the lower 48.

"Hello?"
"Honey, it's me. I just can't ride another mile. You've got to come get me."
"Where are you?"
"The end of the driveway."

Thus ended the adventure. 7,641 miles in just 15 days, including an 855-mile endurance test the last day. My motorcycle is getting some well-deserved rest and a thorough cleaning. Same goes for me. Now I'm asking myself the same question as, I suppose, everyone who has realized a long-held dream. What do I do now? Hmm… Hand me that atlas.