THE LAST ROAD NORTH

“You cheated!” John shouted at me. Now, normally I don’t take kindly to this kind of rhetoric. The thing is, John rode his BMW R1200GS from New Orleans to Fairbanks just for the privilege of taking on the final 500 miles to the top of Alaska. And I revealed that I had just flown in from California, to take a borrowed GS along the last glorious stretch. He was right about me.

Then he told me the first of many daunting stories I would hear about the Dalton Highway. There was a thundershower, he said, lashing him with rain and hail so violently that he pulled over. When he tried to go again, the surface of the road had become so slippery that his bike wouldn’t move. “These will be better,” he said, gesturing to the Continental TKC80 knobs on my borrowed R1200GS Adventure. John shook my hand and wished me well, but the stories from the legendary road kept coming—foremost, the notorious train of semitrucks that call the Haul Road home.

I’d heard tales of holes punched in windshields and side mirrors taken off by the wake of rocks kicked up behind tens of thousands of pounds. “If you don’t move over for the truckers,” one fellow said between puffs of a Marlboro Red, “they’ll just run you over.” Another local, after learning I was headed north, offered me information on our Lord and Savior Jesus