Hello!!  Welcome to the Long Road Up! 

Just a little about the trip.  There are two roads in North America that drive into the Arctic Circle.  One is the Dempster Highway, aka Yukon Highway 5 aka Northwest Territories Highway 8, which leaves out of Dawson City, Yukon and continues north for 457 miles of dirt road to Inuvik, Northwest Territories.  The other road, called the Haul Road or Dalton Highway, leaves Fairbanks before moving north 414 miles over bumpy, dusty (or muddy), semi-trailer-infested gravel road to Deadhorse, AK.  We have chosen the Dalton Highway (for now) so that we can actually swim in the Arctic Ocean (to get to the Arctic Ocean off of the Dempster, a small plane is required from Inuvik) – assuming we make it up.  Brad says he’s not swimming, but we’ll see about that.  I hear it’s cold.

And we get to drive through Canada – home of the friendliest people in the world.  This fact is always reinforced every time I meet more Canadians.  Great people.  Ohhhh Caaanaaadaaa….

Here’s our TENTATIVE map (everything is up for change):

Pretty cool, huh?

Ah, so you probably want to meet these two perfectly normal young men.  Well, one is me (Wags), and one is Brad.  Here’s us in front of some really cool new restaurant.  Might have to check that out again upon our return.  Cafe Benelux.  Look it up…

Ok, maybe aren’t as good looking at Ewan, and maybe we don’t have the funding he had.  And maybe we don’t even have some big movie contract…  But that’s all ok because all of our decisions are made on the fly with little planning – just the way we like it.  Even the trip itself came up with almost no notice.  I had been planning on doing this trip (or something like it) alone until I saw Brad on Thursday (yes, four days ago), and he got so excited by the idea that he rearranged his schedule to drive to Alaska with me.  That’s normal, right?

I will tell you though, the packing for a trip like this can be a bit overwhelming when you consider all the details – electronics, cold weather riding gear, warm weather riding gear, camping gear, chargers, computer, gps, music, cameras, gloves,  etc, etc, etc.  It’s amazing what you end up skimping on – do I really need three pairs of socks?  Do I need to change my shirt every five days?  I mean, I’ll only be gone three weeks.  My living room for the past week or so:

The route is daunting, but the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  We’ll be dining on elephant for the next 3-4 weeks.

Give me a few days to mentally get into the blog space – the engine is running a bit low, but with a few thousand miles and a few adventures, we’ll have some stories to share.  It usually takes a couple days to scrape off the film of the grind.

Please post freely and let us know you’re out there!

–Wags and Brad.