1969-1970 Motorcycle Ride from Kodiak Island, Alaska to Birmingham, Alabama

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Raw file: 1969-1970 Alaska to Alabama rev 5.gpx (6.15 MB)

My entire ride in both Garmin BaseCamp as a GPX file and 2013 Streets & Trips as an EST file is attached.

Thanks to Jack Gustafson, Roger Bliss and Tom Hogland, the ride from Anchorage to Mount McKinley and on to Fairbanks accurately follows the only roads that were open in 1969.

This was a much tougher project than I ever imagined because of the way modern mapping programs auto-route, which forced me to add many "shaping points" to make the route conform to the actual 1969 / 1970 motorcycle ride.

Kodiak Island, Alaska to Birmingham, Alabama on a Triumph Bonneville motorcycle starting on August 27, 1969.

Over 2000 miles of gravel road in every conceivable state of disrepair.

8082 mile trip not including casual riding at stops along the way. Notable multiday stops:

* Anchorage - 3 nights

* Mount McKinley - 3 nights (totally different than it is now ... if it was a National Park in 1969, I did not know it. I saw no one else.)

* Whitehorse - 10 nights (met a female Mcgill University Medical School student by chance enroute to the Yukon River Fish Ladder. She had been left on the side of the road by her boyfriend after a fight. Make that ex-boyfriend)

* Vancouver - 2 nights

* Seattle - 3 nights (stayed on Lake Washington in the home of a friend I met salmon fishing in Naknek, Alaska)

* Squamish Chief - 3 nights (Seattle / Naknek friend and several of his rock climbing friends took me to climb the 2200 foot granite dome)

* Seattle again - 3 nights

* San Francisco area - 3 nights

* Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke at her mother's house in Corona Del Mar - 3 nights (Amanda Blake aka Beverly Neil is my 1st cousin)

* San Diego / Tijuana area - 3 nights

* Aspen - approx. 112 nights (snow skied 100 days)