Getting the itch for the open road...

I like to travel by motorcycle. I just lost my job and it's summer, so I'm thinking about taking a trip. Last year I took a 9 week trip from my home in Minneapolis out to California and then north along the west side of North America to Alaska.

I don't know if I can afford it. Probably not, but I'll probably do something anyhow. Sigh.

I've been looking at my photos from that trip and thought I'd share one of my favorites. About 10 of my pictures turned out fairly well so I thought I'd share one. If anyone cares, I can post a couple others.

I took this picture at about 3am along the Dalton Highway, which leads about 450 miles north of the Arctic Circle to stop at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. The "Highway" bit is kind of a joke. Its a rough dirt track that the locals just call the "Haul Road" or the "North Slope Haul Road". I was about 100 miles south of the ocean when I took this picture. It was the first week in July, so the sun never set but it came relatively close to the horizon (about one hand width with your arm completely outstretched) at about 2:30 am. From about 1:00am to 4:00am the sun was low enough to look like a beautiful sunset -- for over 3 hours!

Jim

Beautiful.

I took this picture at about 3am along the Dalton Highway

If you reached the Dalton highway, that means on the way there you passed within two miles of my house.

How come you didn't stop by and say hello?

tanstaafl.

About 10 of my pictures turned out fairly well

Okay, after that one, I wanna see the other 9.

more more more!

Thanks for the nice compliments, guys. I'll post a couple more. I felt kinda weird posting them, but I'm happy that some of you guys like the picture.

This one is along the Seward Highway in a part of south central Alaska called the Kenai Penninsula.

Jim

This was the scene from my camp one morning. That's Prince William Sound from a strange little place called Whittier.

Jim

WOW.

This is another shot from the tundra on the North Slope, just over the pass through the Brooks Range, supposedly the northern most mountain pass (with a road) in the world.

It was July 7 or so but very cold. I met somebody in Fairbanks and rode with them to Prudhoe Bay because I didn't want to chance it alone in case of equipment problems. Good thing, too, since the guy who rode with me had some problems. We ended up camping out on the tundra (not in this spot) for about 4 days waiting to have a replacement tire flown in for his bike. Then we changed it by hand since there were no motorcycle tools around! It worked out well, though, and I'd do it again in a second.

We rode over the pass and the weather started to get pretty bad. There was about 2" of snow accumulation when we set up camp. We shared my tent that time to help us stay warmer.
Jim

On my way home I got a nice picture of the road through Jasper National Park in Canada.

Jim

The weather wasn't always very comfortable but it was always beautiful.

I loved Alaska and I'd like to figure out how to make a living up there.

This is in the extreme SE of Alaska, way down in the panhandle. It's about 30 miles from where the final scene of Insomnia was filmed, which is actually in British Columbia.

Jim

One last one. My obligatory "Arcitc Circle" shot. The cute thing about this (to me) is that it was shot at exactly midnight on July 4 last year. That wasn't planned, it just worked out that way because I was riding up there overnights to see those beautiful sunsets that never actually became sunsets.

You can see how sunny it is at midnight. You can also see the gas can I needed to carry extra gas to get all the way up there.

Jim

Stunning, Jim. Very nice.


edit-ps, the one after Tony's post doesn't work

WOW! Those are beatiful pics. Thanks for sharing.
-Mike

Ooops, thanks. Here is the camping picture with the size reduced to fit the 200000 bytes.

Jim

Really nice stuff.
Just out of curiosity...
what kind of camera, film and lenses did you use?

Ever print any of 'em?

Yeah. What he said. I may have to pay tanstaafl a visit...

Nice. That sounds like a fun trip.

Yeah. What he said.

Ditto. Alaska / Northern Canada is definately in my plans for some future vacation....

/Michael

My obligatory "Arcitc Circle" shot.

Yeah, I really want to go there sometime....when it's freezing and dark all day!

Those pics are beautiful. I can take some consolation from finding out that it isn't *quite* as dark in February as I expected. There's even some light! I might even see that sign!

With that Bimmer you look like a candidate for a return trip with a bunch of masochists. They inaugurated a motorcycle class in the Summer Alcan in 2002 and it looks like it has caught on -- looks like almost all the entries so far are bikes. And only 5000 kilometers!

(edit: oh and I should say that it wouldn't help with your itch until *next* year) So, If not north, then where? Belize?

I may drive to the East Coast in August to, ummmm, go job hunting. Yes, job hunting. It is perhaps a forlorn hope, but I am accumulating all these new OGGs that I haven't moved onto the player yet...and new music goes so well with the open road...and beta software has been *proven* to improve driving performance!

Thanks again for all of the nice compliments, you guys.

The camera was a Contax 167MT, which I just traded on a used Contax RX. The 167MT was a great camera and I was very pleased with it. The RX has some nice additional features, but I miss the compactness of the 167. Contax uses Zeiss lenses, which are awesome until you want to buy another one.

I have a Pelican 1300 case that I keep the camera and lenses in on long trips. I keep the case in the top case on the bike, which it nearly fills. I still have some room for a few other things in there, though. I brought 4 lenses: 35/2.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.4, 135/2.8. I also brought a circular polarizing filter and yellow, orange and red filters for B&W.

I have 8x10 prints of some of those shots and there are a couple I want to print bigger. I don't do any of my own printing.

Anyhow, thanks again for the comments.

Jim