2015 Ural National Rally Day

Today, Saturday, was the 5th annual Ural National Rally Day. Basically a virtual rally where they send out scoresheets and numbers and you try and rack up as many points as possible. Fortunately, from a point gathering perspective, it was raining/sleeting/snowing for most of the time I was out. Plus I had previously mapped out 35 km of dirt roads. Today, they were kind of slippery as some of the mud was frozen. And the rain put water in a couple of the creeks carrying runoff so there were four water crossings to add to the scoresheet.

The weather meant that Bridget didn't participate this year. It really felt cold as I had to leave the visor open for most of the day to prevent fogging and I should've wore the heated liner.

There were additional points for roadside attractions, and superlatives. The superlatives are the whatever-most locations for your state, country, etc. and are incredibly simple in Fairbanks. The local Denny's has a big sign posted as the "Northern most Denny's". And the local Harley shop sells t-shirts with the claim as the northern most HD shop. It is in North America but there are shops in Norway that are a lot further north. This is the Large Animal Research Station with musk ox and caribou as well as other animals and is a popular tourist stop.

 Another popular tourist item are these mileage signs. This one happens to be at the Geophysical Institute at the University. On the rally, I ended up going out to the pipeline viewpoint on the Steese Hwy and out to the Santa Clause House in North Pole. Only 104 km total as it was starting to get cold with temperatures hovering right around freezing for most of the day.

Just another touristy shot of the front of the museum. There were quite a few runners out today with some training for the Equinox Marathon which I believe is next Saturday. There were a number of runners on the Ester Dome dirt roads probably training as the route runs to the top of the Dome before dropping down a chute.

This is the visitor's center at Creamer's Field. There was a tour bus dropping off a bunch of Asian tourists. I believe they were Japanese based on appearance as I didn't here them talking much. The leaves are pretty much all changed and starting to fall off the trees. A strong wind yesterday afternoon helped somewhat.

This is outside of the volunteer supported air museum. By early afternoon, I headed home as the snow and ice was starting to sting as I had to leave my visor open to prevent fogging. All in all, I managed to accumulate 2225 points which is almost three times what I had last year. The sleet, snow and dirt roads really adds to the points!

Tomorrow is the "First Last Ride of the Year" for the local BMW group. I sent out the email last week. We'll see who (if anyone) shows up...