The Road To Manley

I woke up the next morning eager to get on the road, but I made a brief stop in Pioneer Park, a city park in the heart of Fairbanks that, in addition to kid friendly playgrounds and attractions, houses several historical artifacts that promote the early history of the state, including the rail car that then-President Warren Harding rode in 1923 when visiting the state to drive the first spike in the newly built rail system, and the SS Nenana, a renovated steam paddle ship that navigated the Chena river from 1933 until it was decommissioned in the mid 1950's. I am by no means a history buff, but walking around inside of these artifacts of the past was thrilling, and it only got better when I stumbled across an aviation "museum" on the grounds, a quirky assortment of planes and plane related objects haphazardly displayed in a circular building as odd as many of its contents.

The inside of Warren Harding's rail car. Cool.

The steam-driven paddle wheel of the SS Nenana.

The deck of the Nenana.

The aviation museum. Those are actual planes hanging from the ceiling.

The 80's called. They want their plane back.

A view of the museum from the top of a Vietnam-era helicopter.

My first moose sighting!

Ready to get on the road, I jumped on the Dalton Highway, which shoots north of Fairbanks by way of a well maintained paved road. It's the only way to get to Manley, and if it had been all I needed to do, the trip would have gone with ease. The Dalton bobbed and weaved through spectacular mountain scenery; rounded mountains covered with dense spruce and pine trees that stretched on for as far as I could see. Very few cars were on the road that early in the morning, save for the infrequent tractor trailer chugging through the landscape. Ninety miles later, I turned left onto what Alaska calls the "Elliot Highway"; the last eighty miles that bring you into Manley. Someone had grossly overestimated the quality of the road  when they deemed it worthy of the rank "highway"; the vast majority of the 80 miles goes unpaved, with obviously little work done to keep it from disrepair. I slowed down to 30 mph, and for the first ten miles or so, it didn't seem like it was going to be that bad. The conditions became more dicey as I went on, however, forcing me to slow down further in order to avoid ruts, potholes and loose gravel. My bike was certainly not made for conditions like these, and it was taking more and more effort for me to muscle through it.

The beginning of the Elliot Highway. This is the easy part, by the way.

One of the views along the road.

Part of the view from the road. The video below shows the whole view.

The picture I took right before realizing that the trip was going to change considerably.

 The payback for all of this effort was spectacular views of the mountain ranges to the south, as the road stretched on into infinite acres of untouched land. I stopped now and again to admire the scenery, take a break, and take some pictures. After nearly two hours on the road, weary from the constant weaving and jarring, I stopped again, getting off the bike to take a drink and take some pictures. When I did, my heart stopped.

The dry bag strapped to the left side of the bike, the one I had opened to take out my DSLR camera when I had stopped an hour or so earlier, was wide open, and everything that had been packed in the top half of the bag, including the camera, had fallen out. I took a quick inventory; the camera, my pinhole film camera, my Lonely Planet guidebook, my rain gear, my heated jacket liner; all of them were gone. The thought of losing this equipment, not only from the standpoint of the hundreds if not thousands of dollars it would take to replace them, but how essential some of them were to making it through this trip successfully, sent my mind reeling.

After a few choice words (that I'm choosing not to share in order to keep this blog family friendly), shouted out to no one else but the mountains around me, I knew that I needed to force myself to calm down and think clearly. I was running low on fuel, the weather looked as though it was beginning to take a turn for the worst, and I needed to make decisions fast. Should I go back and try to find what I had lost, knowing that someone could very well have picked it up already, or should I drive on to Manley, the only place within miles that would have gas? I weighed the options as rationally as I could given the situation, and made my choice.

I filled the tank with the remaining two gallons of gas that I carried in my side bag, and turned the bike around. I could not imagine driving on without trying to recover my equipment; the possibility existed that it was all still there on the road, and the thought of never knowing for certain if there was a chance to recover everything was going to be too much for me to stew over once I reached Manley.

If I reached Manley.

The ride back took almost an hour. I shaved off as much time as I could, picking up the pace relative to my drive out. The fixation with looking for my lost equipment spared me from having to think about how exhausted I was getting from the jarring ride. I pulled harder on the throttle and kept pressing on, a winding trail of dust tracing my path along the road. When I finally reached the spot where I had originally stopped and opened the bag, not one of the lost items was in sight. It was all gone.

I shut out the disappointment that should have come next, as I knew that I had more pressing issues to deal with. I had put myself in a difficult position, and again, I weighed my options. Even though I was probably within a half hour of the paved road, I knew from driving in that there wasn't a gas station for miles; nearly until Anchorage. The way to Manley, now probably over two hours back, had gas, but there was little chance of me getting there before I ran out of fuel. Confronted with two dismal choices, I opted to turn back towards Manley, hoping that someone would pass me on the road and offer assistance, even though I had only seen a small handful of vehicles pass me on what had now been almost three hours on the gravel road.

About a half an hour into the return ride, I saw a sign that I had all but ignored the first time around. The sign, pointing to a small road that broke off from the Elliot Highway, said "Minto - 11 miles". I had come across a short description of the town in Lonely Planet, but all that it said was "At mile 110 is the paved road to the Athabascan village of Minto (pop 180), which isn't know for welcoming strangers". Certainly not confidence inspiring, but with the fuel light glowing below my bike's speedometer, I had little choice but to take the gamble and take the road in. I was amazed to find that most of the twenty miles was paved, which at least was a reprieve from the burden of navigating the gravel- strewn Elliot. When I rolled into Minto proper, however, I was nowhere near prepared for what I was seeing.

 The town consisted of a series of tiny square shacks, evenly distributed along a road that turned back into gravel. Cars, car parts, and various debris lay strewn over many of the yards, and dogs, so malnourished that you could see their ribs, scurried along from property to property in search of food. I drove slowly along the road, wondering, with the condition that many of the homes were in, how anyone could be living in them. Reaching the end of the road, I realized that there was no gas station; in fact there was no sign of any kind of store, whatsoever. I turned the bike around, running on pure instinct at that point. I had no plan, and I was no longer weighing options and making conscious decisions. Fate had now taken over.

Instinctively, I stopped at the first person I saw, a middle aged native man with metal framed glasses, a mustache and baseball cap. He looked slightly confused as I stepped off the bike and flipped up the faceshield of my helmet, and even as he approached me and wordlessly put out his hand for me to shake it, he kept the same confused expression on his face. I explained my circumstances, and in a soft, calm voice, asked if I wanted to pitch my tent in his backyard for the night. I explained that I wanted to push on to Manley if it was possible, provoking even more perplexed looks.

By this time, more curious onlookers had arrived. A young native kid, maybe in his mid twenties, with close cropped hair and a friendly and frenetic disposition introduced himself as Izzy, practically bouncing as he smiled widely and thrust out his hand for me to shake, like a fencer jabbing with his foil. Out of the home we were standing in front of stepped an older man, vaguely pear shaped and short, wearing an oversized hooded sweatshirt that made his body type even more amorphous. He walked from the door to the edge of the porch in a way that made it seem like he was teetering on a balance beam, shifting his weight from side to side in a subtle, slow rocking motion. He had the most magnificent face; deeply carved wrinkles that made every feature more pronounced. His skin was a glossy, almost luminous reddish-brown, topped by a thick mop of mostly grey hair. He introduced himself as Loyd, and he, above all, seemed the most curious, and the most entertained, by my presence.

None of these men could fathom why I would be riding a motorcycle all the way from New Jersey to Alaska, and they were even more confounded as to how I would have made my way to Minto. The town, a strictly native settlement of only 200 people, clearly wasn't used to visitors, but as I spoke to them, I realized that they were nothing like the Lonely Planet guidebook had described them; once they established who I was (Loyd even asked me if I was an undercover police officer), they were more than willing to help, and Darrell immediately began siphoning gas from the reserve tank on the back of his pickup truck to get me on my way. When I offered to give him money, he politely declined, and Loyd quickly chimed in, "Just send us a Christmas card this year". The joke was not lost on any of us, and we all laughed as I climbed back on my bike and prepared to get back on the road. I thanked them profusely, and as they stood together on the edge of the property and waved, still both perplexed and entertained, I put the bike in gear, eased out the clutch, and made my way back to the Elliot Highway.

The loss of my rain gear and heated jacket liner hit home within the first few miles of getting back on gravel; the sky had darkened considerably and rain began to fall. The temperature, too, had dropped, and the overcast sky made visibility more difficult. I could feel a sharp pain in the muscles between my shoulder blades as I navigated around potholes and rocks, and I realized that I had been riding for more than ten hours that day, with at least another two hours ahead of me.

I pulled into Manley at nearly eleven thirty at night. Fortunately the long hours of daylight still only made it seem like a little past dusk, but I was wet, cold and thoroughly exhausted. The only place still open (and practically the only place, period) was the Roadhouse, a bar/restaurant on the opposite end of a small metal bridge that marks your arrival into Manley. I parked and dismounted the bike, the neon OPEN sign flickering as I walked the wooden pathway to the entrance. I opened the door to a darkened room, seeing the bar ahead of me through a second doorway. A small group of men were huddled together, one of them finishing the punchline of a dirty joke. The men laughed in unison, but when I walked through the threshold behind them, it immediately became silent. I asked the bartender for coffee, and when he brought it, I sat hunched over the mug, cupping both hands around it to try and warm myself. After a few more moments of uncomfortable silence, the men began talking again, oblivious to my presence.

By quarter past midnight most of the men had gone home, but a young group of native boys came in to grab a quick drink and smoke at the bar. They clearly had begun drinking much earlier in the night, staggering and swaying as they slurred their words, leaning on each other with the glassy-eyed amusement that only excessive amounts of alcohol can induce. Normally I would be weary of such a scene, as I have always been extremely cautious around people who aren't in full control of their actions; but I was far too tired to have my defenses up, and fortunately they left without incident, firing up their trucks and four-wheelers and disappearing into the rain-filled night.

The bartender pointed me in the direction of the campground, a $5 a night setup that was literally right across the road. I payed for my coffee and campsite, walked back out into the rain, and drove the motorcycle the 50 feet to the place that I would call home for the night. In defiance of the weather, I dragged a picnic table out from under a lean-to, pitching my tent underneath it to increase my chances of staying dry. I settled myself in, not knowing what I had gotten myself into by coming to this place, and wondering, as I tried to fall asleep, if the losses I had incurred were worth the trip. One way or another, I knew that this was going to change this trip forever...