Trans-Canada or Alaska, then South - Starting August '16
 

Hi everyone,

my girlfriend and me are going to enjoy a bit of a break from work-life and are currently trying to figure out which routes to take. Our trip will be starting in August (not too far away) and we have around eight months to go. I'm not trying to have a very detailed plan or itinerary, for me it's part of the whole adventure to just let go! Some tips on where to go and what to see would be great though, especially some off the beaten track advice!

We'll be travelling 2-up on my F8GS. In between rides we also want get some trekking & outdoor acitivities in. We're not in a hurry, we don't want to break records. On my trip to South America we covered around 16-17k miles in 6 months, that would be our max. pace.

I'd appreciate your input and feedback around the following general ideas:

1. Ship our bike to Halifax, go across Canada and then head South along the Westcoast towards Central & South America.

2. Ship our bike to Tacoma, go North through British Columbia to Alaska, turn around and then head South along the Westcoast towards Central & South America.

3. Ship our bike to Tacoma, maybe spend some time in British Columbia but start heading South quickly.

Are we too late in the year for the first two or should we be fine for either one of those? Is there good reasons to prefer one of the other?

In Central America we would like to spend maybe a month or so to go diving and surfing and generally take some time to relax and hang out.

We would like to make it as far as Buenos Aires to meet some friends and ship our bike back to Germany. It seems like Trans-Canada could be done in 1.5 months, Tacoma to Panama City 1.5 months, then Cartagena to Buenos Aires another 1.5 months, based on rough distance (Google Maps) only, equalling maybe 150 miles a day, everyday. So if I plan with 6 months (some buffer for changes) it actually seems doable? Any of the above to muuch of a stretch?

Thanks a lot for your thoughts,
Thomas

I would go with option 2. If you arrive late August you may not get to Alaska, but BC/Alberta have some great routes.

Sounds great, but why riding 1 bike toghether?

2014 we´ve visited CA for about 3 weeks and did a nicely trip in bc with a motorhome.
We are looking forward about our trip in northamerika by bike next year.
Around 6 months, from east to west, north to south ;-)
Route is atm not yet clear, but i think we will handle it a bit like you - lets see where we are driven....

Cause of that I'm very interested in your plans and thoughts about your trip.
Maybe you could tell me more, also if you like per pm.

Thanks both.

@ Scuba: It looks like we're going with a slight variation of option 2. After having seen the Air Canada "Fly my bike" deal it looks like we're starting our trip in Calgary towards the end of July. Then whether or not we will go to Alaska we have not decided yet.

@ Daytona: One bike because even though my girlfriend got her license end of last year she does not have a lot of riding experience and does not feel comfortable to start off on a big trip just yet on her own bike. I myself could not picture doing it another way, hence the 2up. We've done trips together before, the longest being four weeks 2up on a thumper in Costa Rica, so we have a good picture of what we're in for. :) We may get a second bike along the way if she changes her mind, we'll see!

We have booked our flights and will be off to Calgary end of July! :mchappy:

Are you flying with Air Canada, "Fly my Bike Deal" ?

Yes we are! Made the most sense in our case. Need any info?

Where do you start your flight to calgary, in ffm? Is it a non-stop flight? are you on the same flight with your bike?

Yesterday I tried to make up my mind about our trip.
Maybe you can get some ideas or inspiration for your trip ;-)

https://www.google.de/maps/dir/Halif...40.7127837!3e0

what do you think about our plans, route is not fix yet.
How much time should we plan for this trip?
What is the best season in year to start?
Route is around 35`km or 22`miles
We think about starting on the eastcoast CA in halifax. Go down to NYC and drive north up to alaska. After that down south to panama city on westcoast. Then back north again on eastcoast and finish NYC or halifax.

Hi. Whats this deal about?

'Bike on a Hike'. Available at WWW.Amazon.com

http://www.aircanada.com/cargo/share...-15%2012:42:19

Nothing special, just bike transportation by Air Canada Airline.
Maybe wipe-out can give you detail informations...

There is also an extra thread about that topic
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ler-deal-80707

Thanks Daytona. Worth to look into, it could save you a couple of bucks. The deal is that if you book your own ticket with Air Canada they'll credit you some on your ticket for the bike. On the route I'm going that saves 600 Euros for the bike. Of course you have to compare the air fares for Air Canada with those of others and so forth, they are not the cheapest, but in the end for us it made sense. Plus no crate needed and I can have some luggage on the bike.

so how much did you paid for your flight and bike transport? (ffm to calgary, right?)
are you on the same flight with your bike??

did you already book your bike shipping from southamerica back home?

Sent you a PM! Yes, we're travelling from Frankfurt to Calgary. We're not going to be on the same flight. I'm sure it would be possible, but since you only have 24 hours to get your bike out of customs etc. before you start paying money for storage I opted to drop off the bike in Frankfurt a day before our departure, they will then put the bike on a flight a day or two after ours. That gives us some time to get everything arranged in Calgary. I'm not in a rush afterall! :)

We have not booked anything for returning the bike. To be honest we're not sure at this stage where exactly we will be returning the bike from... Plan is Buenos Aires.

Great plan! Have fun!
Arriving in Calgary in July should mean plenty of time for doing AK or ...Yukon area if you like. But this is a HUGE area ... so pick and choose where you want to go. AK weather won't get nasty until September. Also, keep in mind AK is really expensive!!! Canada less expensive now.

USA West Coast weather in August/September should be fine, some fog along coast, HOT inland. No rain. Lots of tourists.
If too hot, stay on the coast. In mild, check out: Trinity Alps (California), North Rim, Grand Canyon, Utah, Colorado. All good if you have the time.

The weather in Mexico and Cent. America will be HOT all Summer until mid October. Rainy season begins in July in Central and Southern Mexico, happens all the way to Panama. Rain starts around July, goes to around November. By mid October temps in N. Mexico begin to cool. To avoid severe heat, travel in high Central Highlands, beautiful, historical and cooler.

November is best month for Southern Mexico and Central America travel. Unbelievably HOT most of the year, not great riding weather, so try for November/December if possible.

Once in S. America weather is harder to predict. Depends more on altitude and proximity to the coast and which Ocean you're near, Pacific of Atlantic. Once further South from Equator, a sort of reverse pattern happens: (Winter: May, June, July, August ... Summer: November, December, Jan, February)

Have fun, hope you have a safe ride!
bier

Thanks Mollydog! Some good information.

There's two reason I'm thinking about skipping AK.

One is because we will be arriving late July. I feel that we would need to be covering some great distances each day to make it back and forth while weather still allows? If we'd be going back through Canada around September it may already be rather cold, especially in the mountains of course. What would you think is a realistic time to make it to Prudhoe Bay and back from Calgary via the Dalton Highway without doing 400+ miles each day?

Second reason is so far we have not planned to obtain a tourist visa for the US. That gives us 90 days in the US which will start counting as soon as we enter AK, even every day we'll spend in Canada on our way back. Not critical maybe, but less flexibility in the US.

Will do. Four more weeks at work... We're subletting our apartment and just found someone willing to take it, just need to get the papers signed... Almost there. Almost there.

Hi wipe-out, sounds like a nice trip!

Its 4000 kms from Calgary to Prudhoe, bearing in mind that you will have to ride South again to Vancouver? which is another 4000 kms it totally depends on how far you want to ride each day, but allowing 3 weeks is realistic, maybe you will ride it much faster and have some time in hand.

Whichever way you do it, make sure you ride out to Banff from Calgary and go on the Icefields Parkway 93N to Jasper and then either go North to Alaska or West to the coast!

This thread gives good info about the Dalton:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...-s-don-t-71602

Where will you stay in Central America to dive for the month?

I will do some more research and planning on the Alaska route once I got work off my back. These are giving my some good indication on distances:

http://www.motoquest.com/guided-moto...nada-alaska-22
http://www.motoquest.com/guided-moto...enture-tour-28

Just using these as a reference, we're not planning on any guided tours.

I'm not sure about diving - I'm an absolute amateur and easy to impress :D Ideas are welcome! Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica...

Interested on the Honduras/El Salvador stretch in general. Is one to be preferred over the other regarding safety etc.? I guess plenty of people come through all the time so I'm not too worried, just trying to do my homework! :D

It depends what you want from your dives, Caribbean or Pacific - be a good idea to research more on a dedicated dive forum as I haven't been in CAmerica since 2003.
Theres a few places we used to go to in Costa Rica, Belize and Honduras. Roatan in the Bay Islands is a sweet spot to hang out for a while, BUT you have to park the bikes up in Tegucigalpa and catch a flight, which may not be ideal.

One more step in the right direction. We received our EPA exemption letter! :thumbup1:

My recommendation: book a riding traing course for your girl, both onroad and offroad. This trip is her best chance to gain experience quickly and greatly improves your trip - e g by being able to have a bit more gear on the bike(s). Personally I can' imagine doing a long trip two-up if it includes camping gear and if you need some additional clothing for hiking!

We're still alive! Just not working anymore, so considerably less interested to surf the internet... :rofl:

With work out of the way we got things moving at home. Put all our stuff into a storage room to make way for the guys renting our apartment. I felt like one of the boxtrolls there for a while...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3kgm8a1di...1.43.jpg?raw=1

Finally though the day had come, last Sunday morning I packed the bike and rode off to my parents place close to Frankfurt, from where we would have the bike transported to Canada.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xa7r6w2qis...03~2.JPG?raw=1

It's supposed to be a five hour ride from Berlin and the weather forecast was not too bad. Of course it started raining 30 minutes after I left and for the fun of it didn't stop for three hours. I was happy and singing along anyway, any day on the bike beats every day at the office, right?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h2ez9hgzxc...002.jpeg?raw=1

My girlfriend arrived a day later and we spent some time with my family. And finally yesterday, we set off to the airport to drop off the bike. Everything went supersmooth and the guys at the cargo center and Air Canada were really great to deal with. I think it didn't hurt that most of them were bikers and really enthusiastic about the trip!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hmkcl7gbfe...0007.jpg?raw=1

So now the bike is sitting at the airport until it is going to be put on a plane on Thursday. By the way, to my surprise and contradicting what I had been told before it would have been okay to have the duffel on the bike, not just the panniers (in the picture below the panniers are off for being x-rayed).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0bfhgw70mz...9.53.jpg?raw=1

And with that - we're basically off to our adventure, out and about. About 1,5 hours from now my dad's going to take us to the airport. And if no bear is going to eat us within the first couple of days into the trip I shall continue to update this thread now and then. Currently also trying to figure out Spotwalla to have some tracking.

Any recommendations for the Banff/Jasper area and how to avoid the hordes of tourists?

And anyone know how to resize the pictures directly in the [IMG] tab with attributes? Is it possible at all?

Picked up the bike today. Again, the guys at Air Canada were super helpful, even customs was a breeze. Took them just a couple of minutes to release the bike.

Bike's parked in front of the hostel now, going to start packing some stuff later today and then head out early tomorrow morning.

http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/2016...109c003fdb.jpg

We also got some bearspray. :p

Looking forward to properly be on the road again!

Welcome to Canada!


There's no real way to avoid all the Summer tourists in Banff & Jasper, but its such a beautiful area that its worth putting up with them for a few days, you can camp at Tunnel Mountain if you are staying in Banff, lots of hikes to do in the National Park. After you head past Banff on highway 1 a few kms down the road take the 1A signed 'Bow Valley Parkway' which is the back route to Lake Louise, sometimes you might see some wildlife from this road. Worth visiting Lake Louise or head to Moraine lake too for some nice views and the Columbia Icefields tour is expensive but a fun trip on the Icefields Parkway heading to Jasper, have fun!

Sounds like the perfect beginning for your trip. No trouble and everything is fine.
thx for private message, gives me a smile - thought you forgot me ;-)

enjoy your trip, looking forward to see more pictures and stories.

funfact: i´ve read your blog already months ago in preparation for our trip.

Did you already made a decision about heading north to alaska?

Really lousy WiFi connections up North. Yes, North, we're headed for Alaska. We're already in Dawson, we made over 2.500km in the past four days. Tomorrow we're gonna check out what all that fuzz around the Dempster is about. Then we're headed for Fairbanks over the Top of the World Highway, change the rear tire, attack the Dalton and return South via the Denali. Weather has been treating us well so far. Good times!

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