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www. FavoriteRidesAndDestinations. com | ridermagazine. com
SPRING 2017 ISSUE 01 / VOL. 02
Heed the advice to be prepared with tools, water and food. A rock shard, shaped like an arrowhead, punctured my fresh tire 100 miles from Prudhoe Bay and any help. Practice fixing a flat before you leave. travel. But my“ no-plan plan” was to pick only the day of departure and the day when I would start heading back, with passage on the Alaska Marine Highway for the run from Haines, Alaska, to Bellingham, Washington. That way each day turned out to be a fresh adventure.
I had assembled a good core of camping equipment, but scanning threads on the web and reading helpful books prompted me to get more stuff like bug spray, mosquito netting and supplies to sustain me in the event of a breakdown. I began a packing list a few months prior to leaving on the big trip and modified it as needed after each local campout. Leaving mid-June from Southern California, I had to prepare for temperatures ranging from below freezing in Alaska to over 100 degrees, and from sunny skies to fire-hose intensity thunderstorms. It was worthwhile; almost everything got a workout.
Don’ t worry too much about forgetting something; there are plenty of places to get what you need. I learned this the hard way when a sloppy packing job left me needing to replace the tent that fell off my bike somewhere along the way.( Lesson: dry bags shrink when they lose air—
From the dock at Valdez, the view across Prince William Sound is of glacier-topped mountains. This area gets as much as 30-40 feet of snowfall per year. The sound is full of marine animals and a boat ride is an absolute must.