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Ride Guide

Alaska: Into the Last Great Frontier

Five days, six riders, 1,600 miles and the 49th state add up to one big adventure

You’ve either gone, or you want to go.

Alaska calls to motorcyclists like no other place.

It’s the last frontier. The literal end of the map. And for many, the fact that it can be done is reason enough to do it.

Can a destination that has loomed so large in our minds ever live up to the hype?

That’s what we wanted to find out when six adventurers—Managing Editor Bill Wood, Senior Editor Grant Parsons, Kawasaki’s Karl Edmondson, Lloyd Liebetrau and Larry Toby of L&M Productions, and world traveler Dr. Greg Frazier—headed for Alaska last July.

And after a week on the road, they told us, unequivocally and without hesitation:

The reality doesn’t just match the hype—it’s better.

Trust us. You need to go. Find out why on the pages that follow.

Kawasaki KLR650: The bike that conquered Alaska
Alaska is not the kind of place where you want something that isn’t up for the job. Which is why, when we learned that we’d be riding Kawasaki KLR650s for our most ambitious Ride Guide ever, we were thrilled.

Alaska is big, wild and untamed. It’s a place that demands to be taken on its own terms— which is just fine with us, even if it means fixing a flat tire on the way to McCarthy.

Trying to stay ahead of a hailstorm along the Denali Highway.

Trying to comprehend the Homer Spit.