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"Nirvana? that's the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out." - Zonker Harris, Doonesbury Webster's offers two definitions of nirvana. The first is a Buddhist state of existence that requires the extinction of desire and individual consciousness - something most of us will never achieve in case you were wondering, downing 18 beers at the family picnic does effectively obliterate your consciousness and desire, but it doesn't count - I already...

  The Boeing 767-300 banked easily on our final approach into the city, the dawn's light glinting off the aluminum skin of the wings. Out of my window seat I could see that we had dropped way below the peaks, the mighty Andes reaching towards the sky like some angry stone gods as ou LAN aircraft flew just out of their reach. soon we were just floating above the farms and in seconds the familiar...

2010 Dust to Dawson Adventure   Participants: Phil, Annette, Wym, Marty, Norman, Bill, Derek, Brenden   Wednesday, June 23rd   We met in the MotoQuest Tours parking lot at around 8:30AM. The riders came from all over the United States, with only one representative from Canada. Three of the riders had never been to Alaska before. The skies were overcast and the temperature hovered around 60 degrees.   Our goal for the day was the...

From Tangle Lakes to Cantwell on the Denali Highway.   Above: The Denali Highway. The Denali Highway is a 115 mile long graded dirt road that runs between Paxon, on the Richardson Highway on the east, and Cantwell, on the Parks Highway on the west. We started our ride from the Tangle Lakes Lodge, our hotel stopping point, 20 miles along the Denali Highway from Paxon.   This image shows a representative scene repeated often...

Chatanika to Tangle Lakes via Alaska Highway, Richardson Highway and Denali Highway. 210 miles.       Above: Chatanika Lodge. For reasons never explained to me, the lodge didn't open for the anticipated 7:00 AM breakfast. We rode to Fairbanks to have breakfast at Sophie's Station Inn, the hotel where we stayed on our first night out from Anchorage.   Chatanika is on the Steese Highway which runs northeast from Fairbanks, to Circle, on the...

  Direction, Coldfoot to Chatanika, on the Steese highway: 260 miles   Above: Trucks at Coldfoot. Coldfoot, formerly a gold mining camp, is today a truck stop about half way between Fairbanks and Deadhorse. The BLM has and interpretive center and interesting story boards depicting the mining history placed throughout the "stop." I'm not sure you can call Coldfoot a town. Accommodations are similar (modular buildings) to those in Deadhorse and just as expensive. There...

At noon, our motorcycle tour group started our 240 ride south from Deadhorse to Coldfoot. .   Above: Arctic Fox on the haul road ten miles south of Deadhorse. I was riding behind Val, and Colin and Shirley (scoll for pics). They were good spotters and stopped for this fox.   Above: Caribou on the tundra off the Haul Road, 30 miles south of Deadhorse. The north slope caribou herd numbers about 30,000. Here are...

Over a year ago my friend Jim, from Williamstown, MA asked if I wanted to join him on a motorcycle ride to Prudhoe Bay in May/June of 2010. We would meet, he suggested, in Edmonton, and then ride up the Alaska Highway together. Jim would be a good riding companion. Jim is a near life long rider and motorcycle aficionado. He owns one of thirteen Britton motorcycles and has other rare bikes in his collection....

  Above: Posing inside Motoquest's Anchorage shop, (left to right) Rob Glenney, Jason, and Phil Freeman of Motoquest Tours. Phil is the managing partner of Motoquest Tours www.motoquesttours.com. Rob leads tours and keeps the bikes up and running...Motoquest keeps about 25 bikes at its shop location on Spenard Road near Anchorage International Airport. Jason, a new hire this year, is a mechanic who drives "Jethro," the back up support vehicle for the tour (crew cab...

    Above: Mwah (sic) at the Alaska Pipeline viewpoint 11 miles north of Fairbanks. Half the 800 mile long pipeline is above ground as seen in the pic. The pipeline has been placed above ground in locations where placing it underground would be inhibited by perma frost, or, where the potential for pipeline or environmental damage was high due to unstable earth. The above ground pipeline rests on "shoes" which can slide back and...

Above:  Signs on the haul road, direction Deadhorse, at Coldfoot.  Our bikes might make 240 miles... but, they might not.  "Jethro," the follow truck, will gas us all up at the half way mark, Atigun Pass.  Coldfoot, in the old days a gold camp, is now a truck stop, with modular rooms for paying visitors, and a 24 hour restaurant, 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the haul road.    Our group spent the...

Above: Deadhorse St. Regis Hotel (heh heh). For a small room with a shower in which you can barely turn around, the nightly cost is $250.00. The hotel is a modular building that sits on a gravel pad placed on the tundra. Yesterday afternoon, riding the final 40 miles in temperatures below 40 degrees, I was glad to go into the hotel to warm up. I would have been happy in a shack as...

The energy on the ferry flowed from biker to biker, the excitement of the coming days built as the ship cut through the two-foot chop toward the Isle of Man. The Isle is named for the god Mananan. He protected the island from sea-based attacks by shrouding it in mist so thick that marauders couldn’t find it and turned back.   Mananan must have known we meant the Isle no harm because the sun shone...

North to Alaska One word: Epic!   Prelude by Nicole Christensen, lead guide. May 15th, 2010 Today is the day we meet all the clients for a welcome dinner and get all the logistics out of the way. I am checking and double checking things in my mind to get prepped for the trip; sat phone, check, helmet cam, check, first aid kit, check…..and of course all the paperwork for the clients to sign.  ...

Note: Kyle Basnar is an intern for this year. He is our favorite.   Blog #1: I have always had a passion for travel. While growing up I was fortunate to have a family that traveled and embraced other cultures. My past time on these family trips was usually spent breaking off from the group and trying to surround myself with the locals. Any time I could getaway by foot, bike, or motorcycle I was...

The group was outfitted with proper bikes, the gear stowed, and we were off. Two roundabouts into it and I knew it was a skookum lot. Three riding two-up and four singles, we headed north out of Bournemouth. The A roads had enough twists and turns to keep our attention. Plus land being at a premium here, there were no shoulders so the margin for error was small. Riding on the left didn’t intimidate them...

  South  Africa 3.7.08   From our Hotel in Hermanus, we could see waves crashing against cliffs as we enjoyed a buffet breakfast. We headed east along the coast towards Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa. Though the day before was hot and sunny, this day was our first taste of African rain. We put our heads down and rode for about an hour and a half before stopping in a small town for...

I left the cozy hamlet of Girdwood at just after four in the morning to catch a flight to Seattle. Once I transferred planes, I settled in for the nine hour journey to Amsterdam. I woke in some confusion cuz it felt like the plane was turning around. At that moment the captain came over the loudspeaker and said, "Good morning folks, this is your captain speaking. There's nothing to worry about but we are...

Wednesday, May 5th I slept to the sounds of a river flowing outside my window. The temperature was cool and there was absolutely no noise all night - a notable occurrence in Peru! Usually, there is a dog, somewhere in the night, barking for all its worth. I walked around the manicured courtyard of the hotel. I passed the fountain, flowers and grass and went over to a pool, which was full of brightly covered...

Monday, April 26th I arrived in Arica, Chile without incident. It was only a 9 and half hour flight from Dallas, Texas to Santiago, Chile and three more from Santiago to Arica. Since I am from Alaska, anything under 12 hours is just around the corner. As usual, the temperature in the "City of Eternal Spring" was perfect, hovering around 75 degrees F.  It almost never rains here in the heart of the Atacama Desert....

This article was in Rider Magazine and features our first Women's Ride   Alaska Women's RideBabes - Bikes - Big CountryStory by Perri CapelAlaska lures male motorcyclists like flies to honey, but getting more women from the lower 48 to tackle it on two wheels has been a challenge, says Phil Freeman, owner of Alaska Rider Tours in Anchorage. In 2007, he struck the mother lode. Eleven women signed up to tour the last frontier...

  Alaska Rider Tour's Japan: Three Island Tour   TOURNING JAPANESE by Kevin O'Shaughnessy in City Bike   As I entered yet another tunnel, one of sixty- seven that I would pass through before lunch, the thought occurred to me again, “You can only go to Japan for the first time once” and doing it on a motorcycle surely has to be one of the best ways to do it. Emerging from the tunnel a...

  Alaska's Outback In search of Alaska's Best Unknown Destinations Story by Lee Klancher Motorcycle Escape Magazine Fall 2006 "There's no law north of the Yukon River, and no God north of the Arctic Circle." -Alaskan saying At the Seaview Bar in Hope, Alaska (pop. 137), my buddy Peter Peil and I were enjoying an after-dinner beer with a local and two guys who were regular visitors. Once they learned we were in Alaska...

    Beyond the Circle Adventure Touring to Prudhoe Bay with Alaska Rider By Brian Rathjen   If the thought of riding along on a deeply graveled road gives you the chills, then you might like to move onto another story. But, if you think being a rider is all about the adventure then follow me, McDuff… Alaska Fun Facts: Alaska is larger than the four next largest states combined. Skimming the water at an...

  This is an article in City Bike, based in San Francisco. It is written by Kevin O'Shaughnessy in 2005. He came up to Alaska with his father and brother and rented motorcycles and took a Self-Guided Tour from us in Anchorage, and went on an adventure.     City Bike January 2006   North to Alaska…and pie Alaskan Adventure Ride   by Kevin O'Shaughnessy   It was somewhere between the towns of Chitina...

    Tobin Lampson of DualSport News joined the second stage of our Northern Expedition Adventure in 2005. Dualsport News Febuary 2006 Alaska: North to South! By Tobin Lampson   The orange-tinged jagged mountain landscapes, some 20,000 feet below, were time-lapse dissolving, frame-to-frame in my mind. It was early evening. The United jetliner was descending, leaving me in Anchorage for the night. The next morning an Alaska Airlines jet would deliver me onto another crazy...

Jamie Elvidge of Motorcycle Cruiser Magazine covered our Denali Highway Adventure in 2005 for the a now defunct magazine called Motorcycle Escape. We run a similar tour called the Northern Lights Adventure.   Motorcycle Escape Magazine   Wide Awake in Alaska   By Jamie Elvidge   Editor in Chief of Motorcycle Cruiser magazine       There are periods of time during our adult lives when we need to spend more energy doing what...

  This is Part 2 of a two-part series written by Stephan Cross, a New Zealand rider who joined us on our Prince William Sound Camp Tour the first week of August, 2002.   He wrote the article for a Kiwi-based motorcycle magazine call Bike Rider Magazine.   We do not run camp tours anymore but we do run the same itinerary. It is called The Northern Lights Adventure and features the Denali Highway....

    This is Part 1 of a two part series written by Stephan Cross, a New Zealand rider who joined us on our Prince William Sound Camp Tour the first week of August, 2002. He wrote the article for a Kiwi-based motorcycle magazine call Bike Rider Magazine. Incidentally, we do not offer camp tours anymore. I am running the very same route this year. It is called The Northern Lights Adventure, without the ferry...

This is an article by Brian Rathjen from Backroads Motorcycles, Travel & Adventure Magazine when he took our Alaska Harley-Davidson Tour.  We now call it the Best of Alaska Tour.   ALASKA-THE LAST FRONTIER   by Brian Rathjen   Jim, our pilot, gave a short laugh which filtered through the headset as the small three-seater piper made a swing arc downwards into the craggy, mountain enshrouded valley. Below us a number of mountain goats...

  This article is about the Northern Expedition Adventure that Christen Neuhauser from RoadRunner Magazine took with Alaska Rider Tours during the summer of 2004. The Late Christen Neuhauser liked to ride 500 mile days. He was not a napper. If you like napping,  you are with the right folks. If you like riding 500 miles a day, a  Custom Tour may be what you are looking for.   Little Known Facts: Christen Neuhauser...

Dr. Gregory Frazier took a Best of Alaska Tour with Alaska Rider Tours (MotoQuest) in the summer of 2003 and covered it for Dualsport News. Here is what he had to say.   NOTE: We do not offer camping tours any longer, but stay in comfortable lodge-style accommodations.   Dualsport News, April 2004   Alaska Off the Road By Dr. Gregory Frazier   Bears, mud, gravel tundra, snow, ice, fire, and fun! Throw in a...

Here is an article by late contributing editor to Rider Magazine, Lawrence Grodsky. He came with us in the first week of August on our Prince William Sound Camp Tour, 2002. We don't offer camp toursanymore, but run the same route...it's beautiful!   The article is in the March issue of Rider, 2003 featuring the Northern Lights Adventure Tour     Before the Mountains Disappeared   Story and photography by Lawrence Grodsky   To our...

My duty shift, my scheduled line of flying for July 2009, ended while I was in the Middle East. I was given a choice of travel. I could take a coach seat on United Airlines' Boeing 777 for fifteen hours from Dubai nonstop to Washington, DC, departing in a few minutes around midnight. Or I could wait until after breakfast and take a first class seat, along with my own bed in a private bedroom,...

Shanti We left Kaza and continued up the Spiti Valley. We headed past Losar, our refuge from the storm last year, and climbed Kumzum La, the 4990m pass that we had climbed twice in a blizzard. It was much less arduous with dry roads and warm temps.At the bottom of the pass we hooked a right turn to Baikal or Moon Lake. The road to the lake was challenging with several deep water crossings, loose...

Halfway done w/number 1 We took the boys on a day ride to get familiar with the bikes and left-side driving. Back up Solang Valley and they all looked solid so we headed halfway up Rhotang La for lunch. The dry road gave them some idea of what they may be in for without the added stress of hundred meter mud puddles and water crossings, plus traffic was light because we timed it so that...

Sunday, August 2, 2009 Field trip   We started our day at the hot springs in the temple just up from our hotel. You leave your shoes outside the temple with a man who will keep an eagle eye on them for one rupee(3cents.)Many locals bathe daily in the temple pool. The water is much hotter than you will find at a hot tub in the states. Your skin quits sending the pain signal to...

Saturday, August 1, 2009 Smells   Sally (shameless plug for alaska travel source) pulled some strings, worked her magic, threatened, cajoled or whatever and got me on Thursday's oversold flight. Mariska and Anu picked me up in Kulu and only an hour late, which is practically early in India.The first thing I noticed was the heat. 34 degrees Celcius (double it and add 30 for F, I'll do this one for you, it's 98.) Then...

Pathet Lao Caves, Vieng Xay, Laos NOTE: This blog is NOT based on an organized tour. SmugMug Gallery This is a group of friends riding the same route as our MotoQuest Tour, and having many of the same experiences that our tour participants have in Laos, but not staying in the same places as the tour participants do. We are traveling on a shoestring budget, and our lodging reflects that. During our MotoQuest Tour,...

Alaska, land of lakes and mountains, rivers and glaciers, is a long way to go for an 8 day ride so I had to pad it out a bit. There is a cute little town on the south eastern corner called Skagway, located at the end of a long fiord like inlet and so full of history that I can’t put it all in this epic.  However,   to get there I flew from Ankorage...

It started here two weeks ago and seems like two months. Every day packed full, every day packed well. That so much could occur makes us think a spell, and then think a little more. Riding at 15,000 ft in Peru. The first day out rode well, up into the mountains to get in gear, to see just what this altitude thing was all about. Back at dusk and to the top of El Moro,...

The road today kept climbing, with still debris in places. Although the strike ended two days ago, no-one seems to be in a hurry/nor responsible for cleaning up the mess. In places that are cleared, it's not cleared very far. Just to the edge of the road, thank you. Charred stumps, steel rails, piles of rocks. Yea, we remember those. Burned/melted spots in the asphalt where the tires and stumps were a-lit; shame good roads...

My, what a city. A lot of hustle & bustle, a lot of narrow, cobblestone streets, a lot of old (I said old) buildings, and the feel of strength in the air. Walked the streets for hours and hours, stopped at every plaza we happened across. Sat and talked with people (what an amazing sort), and munched on bakery goods from the Panderia. Had snacks from street vendors and ice cream from the Helado cart....

Well, it's better than the pictures.  So much so my eyes welled up upon walking thru the Gate.  A boyhood dream, finally come true.  I mean, there it is, in incredible hewn-stone glory, celebrating the sky, the mountains, and the earth.  It's in the most-inaccessible of places, on a sharp ridge dropping a thousand feet to the river, and they said Let's build something here.  To guide their planting and harvest, they constructed a rounded...

But you know, you just don't get up on a volcano all that often. The scenery was truly surreal, the air so incredibly crisp, and the view was farther than you thought you'd ever see. Headed down the other side we had bike trouble (ours), and that far out you better be prepared. We were, but sometimes there's only so much field operation you can do. The first stall (felt like running out of gas)...

We knew the day could be interesting, for we heard there was going to be a strike. Seems the populace was angry about the government selling water to Chile, and the roads in and out of Cusco and many of the neighboring communities would be blocked. Also, the train to Auguas Caliente was not going to run, which meant there was no way to get to Machu Picchu (the Inca Trail was also closed). The...

Went up in a Cessna today, almost too windy to fly. But there's cowboys here, and unless the plane's blown over on its side up indeed they go. Kinda like a bucking bronco ride (a lot), it's the only way to see the lines. So see them we did. The surveyor in me figured no big deal, for we run straight lines as well. But if you consider the remoteness, the terrain, their incredible complexity,...

Arequipa   Yes, it was a three-hour dinner on a three-story rooftop overlooking the Plaza de Armas at sunset. And it was incredible. Cold, yes, but the waiters brought serapes and we were toasty as hell. The light in the sky seemed to take forever to fade, refusing to let go until the last Magnifico was uttered. Of course the ensuing darkness was abayed by the sparkle in the plaza, where a thousand lights strung...

Laos is the forgotten destination of southern Asia, sort of squeesed in between Vietnam, Cambodia and Burma ( now called Myanmar).   A country of wonderful people, with a long and mysterious history. Like a lot of things that happen in my life, it all came about as a bit of an accident, I had been trawling the internet for adventures following my other exploits and Alaska Rider just turned up,  and it seemed like...