Seeing wild bison grazing on dandelions along the highway is just one of the tales being told by two men who completed a 24-day trip to Fairbanks, Alaska on their motorcycles this summer.
"With the mountains, the wildlife and the streams, it was beautiful," said Harding Athletic Director Greg Harnden who with counselor/assistant football coach Klay Bartee left Searcy June 29 and had the proverbial "trip of a lifetime."
Harnden and Bartee didn't turn around and head home until they were within 170 miles of the Arctic Circle, and when they crossed back into the Searcy city limits their odometers had registered 8,600 miles. Temperatures on the trip ranged from the high 40's at night to the mid-80's during the day, with one Alaskan day pegging out at 95 degrees.
Harnden was riding a 1,200 cc BMW R1200GS and Bartee a 1,500 cc Harley Davidson Road King.
"It was big country - a big trip with big sky and big animals," said Bartee, who coaches linebackers for the Bisons, works at the university's counseling center and has a private practice for marriage and family counseling.
For Bartee, the solitude was beneficial.
"We experienced a lot of decompression, for sure," Bartee said. "Traveling through the Yukon Territory gives you that frontier feel. You just kind of ride and look, and visiting with people you run into along the way is good."
The two passed many fellow tourists, other bikers and locals along the way and said the grades were not too steep for recreational vehicles.
On the first day out of Arkansas, Harnden's saddlebags flew off and as he doubled back to retrieve them an 18-wheeler hit the bags, sending gear flying everywhere. Luckily, Harnden retrieved all his gear unbroken and the trip continued.
Crossing the international border at Havre, Mont., the two went through a short check of their passports by officials and entered Medicine Hat, Alberta, then recrossed the border again at Banff, which is a city and a national park.
"At that point is where you hit the Canadian Rockies for the first time," Harnden said.
Harnden, who has owned about 40 bikes in the 40 years he's been riding, once toured the Swiss Alps by motorcycle with his wife and said that trip didn't compare to the scenery in British Columbia and along the Alaska Range. The terrain is similar to Colorado, Harnden said.
"We were very surprised to find that all along the Alaskan Highway everything was paved except for less than 50 miles in construction zones," Harnden said. "About 200 miles before the Alaskan border the road is terrible, with a lot of potholes, and you have to go slow."
Four or five stretches along the way, each 200-600 miles at a time, had spectacular scenery, Harnden said, especially the portion from Haynes Junction in the Yukon Territory to Haynes, Alaska. Most of the highway has a 25-yard buffer zone on each side, probably to allow more visibility of and for crossing wildlife, Harnden said.
The two brought camping gear they didn't use, staying in small motels along the way. The only place they had made reservations was in Fairbanks. Gas was plentiful all the way and the bikes averaged over 40 miles per gallon.
"The last stretch we experienced was in upper British Columbia before we got to Alaska," Harnden said. "We saw so many black bear on the side of the road that we quit counting - and moose, fox and big-horned sheep."
The weather was incredible, Harnden said, with only one day of rain for about four hours.
But the journey was the thing for the two, not the destination, and they changed their travel plans when, after reaching Fairbanks in 10 days, they got some good advice from a local.
"Our original goal was to go to the Arctic Circle," Harnden said. "I went to see the athletic director at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and he kind of revised our trip," Harnden said.
Because that last northern leg of the trip was on gravel roads frequented by gas and oil trucks, the two opted to board a slow boat to Juneau instead, a ferry that departed from Sitka and traveled south on an inland waterway, a three-day journey that allowed them to visit ports along the way.
On the return journey, Bartee developed engine trouble and was stuck in Missoula, Mont. for five days and the two split up, returning a few days apart.