Angels and Demons RIDING TWO-UP SOUTH THROUGH ALASKA

A not-so-warm welcome as we entered Hatchers Pass from Willow to Palmer, Alaska.

- Tim Notier

Reaching Deadhorse, Alaska, on our KTM 1190 R was a bullet point that was now proudly displayed on our inReach GPS tracker. It was a singular dot among a thousand others from Chicago to Ushuaia in the Americas and from Cape Town to Kenya in Africa.

The thick blue line that represented our travels to date looked like we had covered half the world on two wheels, but it only reflected a thin thread delicately weaved through three continents. Something that didn't take away from the fact that Marisa and I had traveled from sea to shining sea and had been beaten down by torrential rain and snow and nearly burnt to a crisp on hot sunny days all along the way.

We had heard nightmarish tales from fellow travelers of just how difficult the journey up the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks could be. But we accepted the challenge, knowing that it's often the struggles and victories along the way that bond memories together. To our surprise, our journey north was easy in comparison to the horror story we'd prepared for. We experienced two consecutive sunny days without mechanical issues or massive amounts of rain. The trio of man, woman, and machine had luckily avoided the forewarned muddy stew of a road that so many others had experienced.

We celebrated the Arctic Circle and continued to follow the Alaskan Pipeline through a surreal landscape of mountains and lakes. Marisa giggled over her intercom, and I stopped often to take pictures of the wide-open vistas as we rode toward the end of the Dalton. Once we reached Deadhorse, I pulled the motorcycle in front of the iconic sign for a photo and said to Marisa, "I don't see what all the fuss was about. That wasn't a hard ride at all."

A RUDE AWAKENING