Riding statistics to Alaska and back home

Curious on some riding statistics others have had on their Alaska adventures, so if you have a moment, how about sharing the following?

1. How many miles was your trip up there and back?

2. How many days was your trip?

3. How many hours average did you ride each day?

4. What was your miles per hour average for the trip?

5. On the US side, did you do interstate or back roads mostly?

6. What state or city is home?

7. If you knew you'd be hurting for time...did you try to pad miles at the beginning, or the end of the trip?

I know everybody is different and each person has unique riding styles and needs for breaks/food/gas/sight-seeing, but just curious as to what everybody else's numbers were like...if you tracked any of the above.

Answers in orange.

Grinnin , if you were take the #4 question as it was asked then your "" MPH AVERAGE FOR THE TRIP " is only 7.764 mph. !
( 15000 miles spread out over 46 days of 24 hours each)
Mastery might have worded it more precisely asking perhaps what was your
"Sort of typical driving distance each day" or " what is your typical perceived
preferred rate of travel" .
An average is not a real world number but a statistic
Or just leave that question out, nobody knows what their " average speed " is anyway .

FWIW-if you plan on the doing the Dalton-take it seriously. On a big bike like a Harley, take it very seriously.

Drop me a PM if I can help. Dad and I did in 2011, he was 70 at the time.

Originally Posted by Mastery
Curious on some riding statistics others have had on their Alaska adventures, so if you have a moment, how about sharing the following?

1. How many miles was your trip up there and back?

16,500; the scenic route

2. How many days was your trip?

105

3. How many hours average did you ride each day?

7-8, for each ride day, we did ALOT of days off to hike, fish, pick blueberries on the tundra, basically enjoy the area.

4. What was your miles per hour average for the trip?

NO Clue!

5. On the US side, did you do interstate or back roads mostly?

Almost all US and State 2 lane.

6. What state or city is home?

Knoxville, TN area

7. If you knew you'd be hurting for time...did you try to pad miles at the beginning, or the end of the trip?

We weren't hurting for time, just wanted to get out before we got snowed in for the winter!

Make miles when you feel like it and the weather is in your favor.

Our basic plan was to head north until 1/2 of our time or money was gone and then start back. In honesty though , it took us about 5 weeks to cross the border to AK on the way to Tok and about 2 and 1/2 weeks to get back. We did alot of National parks and the Canadian Rockies on the way up, coming back we did the Alaskan Hwy and once we left the mtns near Dawson Creek, BC we really picked up the pace across the plains.



I know everybody is different and each person has unique riding styles and needs for breaks/food/gas/sight-seeing, but just curious as to what everybody else's numbers were like...if you tracked any of the above.

I did the ride in 2012 on Victory Vision - http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=827740


.

Other miscellaneous data:
Two sets of tires mounted during the trip, chain and sprockets replaced midway
24 rolls of film (trip was was in 2000 )

I will make this trip again. Next time I will take twice as long as I did.
I didn't have much time to plan so I didn't know what to see and what to avoid.

I don't think my answers are going to help much...

1. How many miles was your trip up there and back? @ 12,500 miles

2. How many days was your trip? 4 weeks, but rode to Seattle via Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Crater Lake in one week, parked the bikes in Seattle, flew back home and worked for a month, then flew back, picked up the bikes, and did the next three weeks consecutive.

3. How many hours average did you ride each day? Probably around 10 average. Gets fuzzy up north when the sun doesn't set until real late, or at all, we would be riding much later than we would if it got dark.

4. What was your miles per hour average for the trip? Unknown, but you can do the math. Had some downtime for repair and maintenance (there's a trip report in that somewhere!), and RAIN! We saw rain in some form or fashion 19 of the 21 consecutive days, and more on the ride to Seattle. Only one day was hard rain for a long time = drowned rats on the Cassier Highway.


5. On the US side, did you do interstate or back roads mostly? Mix, but mostly 2 lane. I-40 to Amarillo, I-5 from Portland to Seattle, I-29 from Sioux City to Joplin.

6. What state or city is home? FSM, Arkansas

7. If you knew you'd be hurting for time...did you try to pad miles at the beginning, or the end of the trip? Both, I've really seen all of Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico on the "local" rides, and I hate riding the Great Plains, so pretty much blew thru them. Interstates don't get my motor running, so blew down those making miles to get home. But found some nice roads just following the front wheel off the interstates.

Answers in red.

Plan to ride at least part of it. I ride seriously wherever I go on this big ass bike...but know enough that the road and snot-like substance they spray on it means 100% concentration on the riding on roads like the Dalton. I have no problem saying "um, no" if the road or weather gets bad, and turning a different direction.

I went to the foot of the Dempster and was prepared to ride it then or see other sights then come back when the weather improved. Turned out that the weather was fine when I first got there.

The same may work for you on the Dalton although it's closer to the end of the line.

Plan your trip based on your available time and your trip goals. Then factor in a 20% change of plans contingency for the unexpected.

I rode from Alabama to Fairbanks and back during the 2001 Ironbutt rally. 11 days and just under 11000 miles. Rode 16-18 hours a day. It was one of the best rides of my life.

When I ride there again, I'll probably ride like that until I get to Canada and also across some of the more monotonous parts there. Then take more time for the fun parts. And ramp up the miles again on the way home.

Great thread. I'm looking...check that... I'm GOING to make this run next year (2015). One can never start too early with getting an idea of route(s), time and Adventure that waits ahead.

I'm leaving in ten weeks. Plan to share my numbers when I get back. Has been interesting to see the different riding styles people have for the Last Frontier ride.

Oh yes... the diversity of riding styles for any and all trips. So many personal factors come into place.

I'm wanting to SHIP my bike across country to either Seattle or Oregon. I've done pretty much all of the US on 2 wheels and since I have a time constraint , I would rather save the days for riding Alaska. However, that's looking like it will add up to be a hefty price tag. :eek1 The good thing about it is... regardless of how and where, it will be a good ride.


Do you have a "route" / plan mapped out yet?

I'm leaving in 11 weeks - may see you on the road. Have a flexible sked at 225-350 miles a day or so, with a day off the bike every 4-6 days. Meeting up with three high school friends from Indiana end of June in Glacier National Park. While I'd like to dip my toe in the Arctic, the priority of freedom is more important to me. We'll ride to where we ride, we'll see what we see, we'll do what we do. Hoping to make the Dawson City music fest if it works out. If not, oh well. Total trip for me will be seven weeks, just shy of 10K miles or so. I am sooooo friggin' ready to go - countin' the days...

I didn't record some stats that I think now that I'd like.

Rain. I know it rained a lot although there were only a few days when it caused much inconvenience. But I can only count 16 days when it rained. It would have been pretty easy for me to make a note of it each evening, but I didn't.

High temperatures and low temperatures. I had a thermometer. It would show an inaccurate number when parked in the sun, but generally worked OK. It would have been easy to note the temp when riding through the sleet or the week of really HOT weather but I have no idea of the actual temperatures.

Daily miles. The first few days I wrote down my daily mileage, then decided it just didn't matter. I'm GLAD I decided that and my "progress" was more relaxed. But now I don't have that information. I knew that my nuvi would record the whole distance but I didn't know that by stopping and starting so much that it would record duplicate info so often then start erasing the begining of the trip. That duplicate information makes it incredibly difficult to edit the files to get the distance for a single day with no duplicate points.

You can claim that these stats simply don't matter and in a way they don't. But I also didn't write down the number of smiles or the awe about nature. I'm glad that I wrote notes every evening. It would have been very easy to add "almanac" notes.

EDIT: I might also like more notes about shorter trips. Was that campground closed because of Irene or Ike? Is that the time I went on to Black Mountain or to a motel? Perhaps it's simply me getting old or the end of a long winter.