Bucket List Motorcycle Trip to Alaska

[Alamosa]

The Park Rangers had bear traps set up in two campsites, on the outer loop. There was a reported fatality in 2012 involving a bear. My chow let me know if there were critters out and about.

We did wild camping most of the time, but that area did not seem compatable with it. We drove quite a ways down the road before stopping.

In fact, this was probably the sketchiest ride on the whole trip. It began raining extremely hard and as we were rolling round the edge of a lake, each corner started having rocks dropped from the side wall. Luckily, the first corner was not too bad and gave us a bit of a warning.

Eventually, it got pretty bad - rocks the size of bricks to 80's vintage microwave was on the road. Each corner would have anywhere from a handful to dozens of rocks on the road. Many corners had the car and truck traffic completely at a stop because they can't get through. The storm was the only darkness we had seen in weeks and the raindrops on the visor made it very treacherous.

Definitely a high pucker value.

[Alamosa]

Yeah, the 890R looks like a pretty sweet ride. How did you like the soft luggage versus hard cases? I have a Mosko tank bag for my 1150GS but haven't pulled the trigger on the rest of ensemble.

I have never used hard luggage as the majority of my riding is off-road/BDR type rides. The soft luggage worked great on this trip. Never had any issues of water or anything else. The biggest drawback was accessing the packs on the road. I setup my pack so all the quick access clothes I needed were in one of the extension bags so I could get to them easily.

I did come up with a very strict "staging" routine that allowed all equipment to be accounted for before loading any of the top bags. This kept me from having to remove and reload. It also allowed me to go the entire trip without leaving or losing any of my gear.