ROF= Ring of fire Odyssey MEF-H = Marine Expeditionary Force- Hargus
AK- ALaska journey
October 17, 2017
AK roads 2, Back to, this has been the mother of all road trips of a lifetime. road trip Alaska.
This has been an ordeal, not the pretty things on the brochures of a map of Alaska.
This IS the Last Frontier, for tourists. We will talk about that in another post.
This has been a road trip that wrecks your front end alignment, and Brakes, your suspension system on your vehicle. Nobody tells you about how bad the roads are in Alaska. They tell you on youtube that the roads are bad.
I will tell you now, these roads are horrible. Beyond normal travel.
If somebody told me they had driven their vehicle to Alaska, I would not buy it.
In Alaska, there are Frost heaves on the road. Frost heaves are where the permafrost Tundra have Frozen. About 5 to 6 feet under the road and have been frozen for 10 Thousand Years. The top 2 or 3 ft have thawed out and expanded and contracted with the summer season for the previous few years.
This makes an expansion, contraction, a heave. This can be a v-shaped dip of 2 inches, or 1 foot from 50 to 200 fee long on the road.
Driving the Alaska roads, the state of Alaska has at least put a red flag at the start of the ice heaves Thank you Alaska. These heaves are from 2 in, to a foot deep, of a dip in the road.
it is very common to see drag scars on the Heaves from vehicle shocks and suspension scrapes in these heaves.
That is on the good roads.
The state of Alaska constantly is fixing these heaves and bad roads. There are road construction sections where, the road fix is a layer of tar, and a layer of dirt, of which the soil dirt pebble stone and will wash off from, and leave the layer of pebble gravel, which in Alaska is half inch pebble River Rock. That... is Road repair in Alaska.
You will go through construction zones constantly., Where there are one-lane roads while the work Crews fix the frost heaves and damaged roads. These construction zones, 1 Lane driving will be on Alaska repaired roads. These repairs on roads are, a swept off road, a layer of by cumin tar, and a dump truck of dirt Rock, pebble rock.
The layer of dirt Rock will stick to the tar, and eventually the rain will wash the dirt off of the road, leaving the rock pebble surface... This is Road repair in Alaska.
We went through single Lane Road repair sections where there was dust, then immediately went through rain shower, then the dust would stick to your vehicle, and cover and brown dust like you had been in the wilderness for 5 years.
You never drink twice from the same stream.
Just because you wander doesn't mean you're lost.
by Uncle Hargus: Last of the Independents
Have Bear,
Will Travel
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