Pothana Kambhapati is the proud winner of DELL Rugged Tablet for correctly guessing the time (i.e. Nearest Guess) of the DELL-MCP Rugged Adventure .

Looking back at our journey from San Francisco to Alaska, this is a great stroke of luck as the number of variables we faced till the very end of our journey were numerous. A bad weather day or vehicle emergency could have thrown us off by days. The sheer luck of sunny weather for 14 days during our journey to and from Alaska is what kept this time to under 7 days.
Final bit of statistics as we say good bye is that this stretch of 14 days of sunny weather is the longest, Ravi Narahari ( Native of Washington DC ) has seen since his stay in United States. The drive from California ,Oregon, Washington, British Columbia( Canada) , Yukon (Canada), Alaska to Dead Horse and back, all with sun on our shoulders. Keeping that in view we congratulate Mr. Kambhapati for his genius of guesswork.

MCP-DELL Rugged Adventure Team tiredly reports a successful return to home base in San Francisco on the 14th day of this trip. We took some more side roads on our way home and the night stop of Whistler in British Columbia (Site for 2010 Olympics) was the highlight of these four days it took us to cross remaining miles home. The consistent 10-12 hours of driving each day had started talking toll on both of us and sleeping at the wheel due to fatigue was a concern. Finally, the stories will last a life time for both of us we promise to embellish them with new angles each passing year, and as we get more grey hairs the ride will get more dangerous, the mountains will get higher and baby bears will get bigger. The sense of a completed project and journey gives both of us great satisfaction and the confidence to take other such foolhardy adventures to make our own stories.

…and do buy DELL Rugged IT products next time you are in the market!

Click Here For Latest Photos

On our way back from Dead horse Alaska we have taken the road less traveled and that has made all the difference. The end of day 7 find us camped along the river & day 8 we found a great spot in the Denali National Park to sit back and relax. Today we crossed over back into Canada and are reporting to you from a small town called Dawson in Yukon Territory. The northern lights have put up a show for us in night sky and we will sleep with a warm shower and smile on our face.

We will report occasionally as we make our way back to San Francisco and keep posting some photos to keep you updated. The final winner of this contest will be determined once I am back in the office next week, so please bear with me.

Click Here for Updated Photos..

At the end, and with the benefit of hindsight, neither the journey nor the destination seemed as important. My high school teacher mentioned something about horizons just shifting and other vistas and challenges coming into view. One moves on to other bucket lists and hopes to remember the lessons learnt from the previous endeavours.

Our drive to final city turned out to be much easier than we anticipated and as all other things in life most of the red lights we were told were never there or we missed them and reached Deadhorse around 1’O clock. That does not mean the challenge was not tough or one should take it lightly, but one does get a break and we seem to have cashed in all we had in a hurry. The city of Deadhorse and the Dalton Highway, is mostly used to service the trans-Alaska pipeline sprinkled with a few hardy souls in bicycles, motor cycles and in our case a SUV. As you drive along the 600 miles of pristine landscape the human hand is never forgotten because it is always running alongside. Ravi articulately has decided that is desolate and I agree but then there are other practical things to consider.
Till the next time Au Revoir..!

Click Here For Latest Photos

On day 6, our over night stay at Tok left us short by around 250 miles from the city of Fairbanks which is the starting point of the Dalton Highway which ends in the city of Deadhorse, on the Arctic Ocean. During the early settlement and mining of gold around Alaska, horses were shipped via rail or otherwise and the long journey left them malnourished or dead by the end of their journey,hence the name Deadhorse. Prior to this trip, both members of this Dell-MCP Rugged team believed that
“JOURNEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE DESTINATION”
For this adventure, that position is publically reversed because the destination has become all consuming for both of us. We may look into the logic of reversal of this policy for later but for now the single focus is required. The team crossed the 66° 33’ parallel to move into the Arctic Circle to pursue this goal on the 6th day of this trip. This was the final leg of our journey but stories we heard in Tok and then at Coldfoot about the weather and the road conditions did not make us warm and fuzzy about this upcoming journey.
While the stories in the bar room were disheartening , we met incredibly positive people like Gustavo, who had started on a bicycle from Buenes Aires 18 months ago and had pedaled the continent all the way to DeadHorse and was now heading back home. With his inspiring send off and some last minute checkup to our vehicle we made good time to end up at the campsite COLDFOOT which is almost half way to the end of the line for these two horses. We are well fed and have good vehicle and hope to make it to the end of the line tomorrow.

Click Here For Latest Photos

“COLD FOOT, ALASKA”

View Larger Map

“MILE POST 175 ON DALTON HIGHWAY”

View Larger Map

Dell-MCP rugged adventure team reached Deadhorse ,Alaska .Further updates later.

Prior to this trip, both members of this Dell-MCP Rugged team believed that
“JOURNEY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAT THE DESTINATION”.
For this adventure, that position is publically denounced.The team crossed the 66ᵒ 33’ parallel to move into the Arctic Circle. Currently they are in the city of COLD FOOT “MILE POST 175 ON DALTON HIGHWAY”.

“COLD FOOT, ALASKA”

View Larger Map

“MILE POST 175 ON DALTON HIGHWAY”

View Larger Map

Due to connectivity issues the photos and videos blog will be updated soon.

We crossed the Canada border into Alaska and with that begins the final phase of this adventure. When we started this morning we were not sure of making it this far but good roads and some heavy footed driving did the trick!!

The dilemma is that, as a song rightly states, that the eyes don’t have a tongue and the tongue does not have eyes. For me personally the words are not enough to describe the beauty and quiet of this picture I will try to paint for you all. Knowing full well it’s not doing justice to the scene. So I am going to invite you all to come and see this part of the world once, so your eyes will see what we have had the privilege to watch with our mouths agape about grand majesty and awesomeness of the scenes we have witnessed.

The early Alaskans gazed at the various streams and rivers around this area and the way the water gushed reminded them of majestic horse prancing in the wind with his white mane spraying about his head  so
they named this town , Whitehorse. If the name intrigues you, pull up the video and let your imagination go wild with our meager attempt at capturing reality. There is another story about Deadhorse, which we will describe
tomorrow or day after depending on the weather and the roads. For now, we are back in the US with the immigration officer ensuring we were reminded of this with their subtle welcome !?

We are coming towards one half of a great adventure but the most difficult ride of this journey lies ahead of us so please keep an eye out for us over next few days to see how this concludes.

Click here for Day-5 Photos

Today’s Video:

Does one go and visit a country or a place or you answer the call to an invite from the place that beckons you?

We entered the Yukon Territory in Canada late in the evening today and the rugged and stark beauty of the landscape overpowered us. We thought only music had such effect but the endless catwalk of beautiful lakes, decked in their best colors of green, sashay along the crisp highways. The majestic and watchful mountains keep an eye over all that unfolds here. One feels the hand of god everywhere. We will try to post more photos and videos so we can share this beauty with you all. The connectivity is getting sketchy so please bear with us over next few days but we promise to keep you all in the loop. Talking of bears, we saw our first Moose and Baby Bear this afternoon and are sharing the photos here. We could have reached out and cuddled the baby, the idea of angering mama bear kept us in our vehicle. The Moose was bit further and gave a distinct angry look as if we were trespassing.

Coming back to the starting thought, the people we have met during this leg of our journey so far range from Linda, the owner of the motel in Nugget City, who has on her wall a stuffed head of 1800 pound moose she shot herself after tracking it for hours. Another couple had just completed a 10 day river trip and Judy is a 73 year old grandmother who has her own farm and has done the 1500 mile trip to Whitehorse more times than she could remember. These are hardy souls and their lively and hardy nature matches the nature of the country they live in. So do we choose a place to live or the place chooses us, it’s is worth a thought.

Tomorrow we head thru city of Whitehorse after which we will enter the US territory again at beaver creek. Once we enter into US, we will stop taking entries for guessing how much time we will take to
Deadhorse as this is getting too near the final stages. If all goes as per planning we will making our final ascent to our summit during next 48 to 52 hours after we enter back into Red, White and Blue territory.

The third day of trip finds us by the lake side Burns in British Columbia (BC), Canada. We had an early luck at Hope, BC during our early morning walk when we ran into a fellow traveler who had returned from the areas of BC with updates on the travel conditions. They say, when you make up your mind to do something, then the whole world conspires to make it a success. Furthermore we ran into a 70 plus year gentlemen who had returned from a trip from BC to Nova Scotia and back which took him 2 years to complete… On a bike! We have no cause to complain or toot our horn after meeting this gentleman. Before we get too high on ourselves along comes a Canadian Copper warning us that if we go over the speeding limit by a certain click we would have had our vehicle impounded and spend a week checking out their jail facilities. The thud was heard with both of us landing on our backsides and to make matters a bit clearer for both of us.

Well all said and done, we are at a rustic camp after a dinner of steak and mashed potatoes, on an open fire grill and tents set up to crawl into….Good Night..

Click Here to See latest Photos