A few reflections

Now that I’ve been home for about a week, I’ve had time to absorb the five and a half week experience of the trip. I’m still amazed that I managed to pull this whole thing off – almost 11,000 miles through the northwestern quadrant of North America, in areas that were more isolated and remote than I’ve traveled in before. When I’ve been in northern Scandinavia, much further north latitude-wise than I went on this trip, I’ve always had the feeling of being much more closely connected to mainstream civilization – in terms of culture, communication, roads, services, and other aspects associated with settlement. Upper British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska feel like frontier areas, still awaiting full integration into the world system. People go there because they want to get away from “normal” society, and the result is a peculiar mix of individuals who don’t necessarily fit well into our ideas of what modern society is all about. I hate to admit it, but the old TV show, Northern Exposure, had an element of veracity that I didn’t expect to find in the reality of life in these areas.

So, to answer a few questions that I’ve gotten. “Isn’t it hard to ride such long distances on a motorcycle? Don’t you cramp up? I can’t go more than 400 miles in a car without getting tired.” Neither can I – but riding a motorcycle is a very different kind of experience than driving in an automobile. In a car, you only use a part of your attention, which is why most of us listen to the radio, talk on cell phones, or even use “books on tape” to distract us. On the bike, driving is a much more active experience. You’re constantly assessing what’s ahead, how you want to take the next curve, what the temperature is, and so on. All senses are engaged. I rarely listened to music (my Ipod Nano) – there was too much else to pay attention to. If I wanted to adjust something, I had to stop, get off the bike, find what I needed in my trunk or bags, change jacket liners or put on sunglasses, and then take off again. I usually only made adjustments when I had to – it was too much trouble to stop for minor things. On the other hand, I stopped often to take pictures, but had to pay a lot of attention to where I stopped. The left-to-right slope of the stopping place was quite important. Get it wrong, and the bike wouldn’t stand up! I also had to make sure the bike was in 1^st gear when I stopped – leave it in neutral on the sidestand on a downslope, I found, and the bike would roll off the stand and fall over. It happened the second day out, and I didn’t make the mistake again. For a while, I was getting leg cramps – the one real danger of not moving your legs much when you’re forced to sit in the same position hour after hour. In Portland, which has the correct New Age bona fides, I was advised to take a magnesium pill once a day. I did, and the problem disappeared. I’m still taking the pills now that the trip is over!

“Doesn’t it get lonely?” For the first half of the trip, the answer is “No.” I was visiting friends and relatives, and had a great time with wonderful people. North of Vancouver, though, I often found myself wishing I had someone to share the experience with. I met lots of great people on the last portion of the trip, but it’s not the same as having a traveling companion. Marie isn’t interested in learning to ride a motorcycle, unfortunately – I’d love to do one of these trips with her. In reality, though, I think our traveling styles are a bit different, and I don’t think she’d enjoy a long-distance motorcycle journey like this. If anyone else is interested for next summer, though, let me know!

“Why didn’t you go to Denali National Park or Fairbanks? You were almost there.” As I mentioned earlier in the blog, the main reason is because I’ve already been above the Arctic Circle on multiple occasions (in Scandinavia), and I had already seen gigantic mountains, so seeing Mt. McKinley wasn’t that big a deal to me. Also, everyone I asked said that they hadn’t really seen much of Mt. McKinley – it’s almost always cloud-covered during the time of year I was there. I decided to spend more time taking side trips like the circle route to Skagway and Haines, the trip to Stuart and Hyder, and especially spending time riding down to Homer and Seward on the Kenai Peninsula. No regrets – they were all incredibly beautiful rides.

“Would you do it again?” I doubt that I’ll ever do another trip that’s as much of a marathon as this one – not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because there aren’t that many other places where it’s possible to cover this much distance through such interesting landscapes over a month-long time period. Riding through upper British Columbia on the Cassiar Highway, on the Alcan in Yukon Territory, and down the Glenn Highway – there’s not much that can compare with those experiences. I’d go back to Alaska again, but not on a driving or biking trip. Been there, done that.

“How did the bike hold up?” Simply put – incredibly well. I wore out a set of Metzler 880 tires – but getting 11,000 miles out of them over the kinds of roads I was on for half of the trip is pretty amazing. They’re a harder compound tire than many riders like, but what you give up in “grippiness” you more than make up for in wear. I never had a problem with them – and I was riding in rainy conditions for half of my trip. I burned out one halogen headlight bulb and one riding light. I snapped the left driver’s footpeg when I dropped the bike in Paul and Marybeth’s driveway in San Anselmo trying to negotiate the u-turn as I entered – probably the most dangerous spot of riding on the entire journey. And my Ipod Nano quit on me just as I got to North Dakota and I-94 – really, really bad timing, that. I switched to synthetic oil when I got my oil change in Portland; I’m a little overdue for another change, but I managed to go 6500 miles. I can hear that the rocker arms are slightly out of adjustment. I’m having a major tune-up and oil change done next Friday at Moon Motors in Monticello, MN. So I can’t really complain – the bike performed beautifully. It’s by far the best bike I’ve ever owned, and I fully expect it to last another 51,000 miles or more.

“What does Marie think about this kind of trip?” I think she was worried. Motorcycling is inherently dangerous. You can only control so much of the situation, and there are a lot of factors that can impinge on your well-being and safety when you ride. I try to minimize my risks. I wear a somewhat unusual riding outfit made by Motoport – it’s a mesh Kevlar outfit with significant tri-core foam armor and multiple liners. I always wear good waterproof motorcycling boots, gloves, and a helmet with excellent eye protection. I make sure that I rest frequently, stretch, stay hydrated, and am alert when I ride. But I’m also getting on towards 60, have significant health issues, and have a tendency to be bull-headed, perhaps pushing myself beyond my limits. And of course I can’t control what other drivers do. Still, I keep the risks as low as I can, and I called Marie every day to let her know where I was and how I was doing. When I did have a medical issue, I saw a doctor and had it taken care of. I stopped riding when conditions got unsafe. So, Marie is willing to accept the risks that I take, knowing how much I enjoy the experience of these trips. Plus, we get to take another trip to the Left Coast together in a couple of weeks – by airplane and automobile.

So, that ends the Odyssey for this year. I’m already thinking about next year. Any suggestions?

Jasper, Banff, Glacier -- and home

The road home continued with a startlingly beautiful ride through Jasper and Banff National Parks in Canada. I had been there once before – as a teenager on a forced vacation with my parents. They, of course, were very well intentioned, trying to take the family to gorgeous places, but as a 15-year old I was having none of it. I have only vague memories of that trip, and so my new encounter with Jasper and Banff was like a first meeting, but this time with decades of experience against which to measure what I was seeing. Suffice it to say that driving the length of the two parks is a breath-taking journey, even after the not inconsiderable glories of Alaska, Yukon Territory, and the Pacific Coast.

One of the advantages of the current desperate economic recession is that travel is down – way down – and the roads that are normally clogged with giant RVs and minivans of disgruntled teenagers are mostly absent. In Jasper, the northern of the two parks, I often had the road to myself. Based on recommendations from Ray and Bea (from Hinton, Aunt Bea’s B & B, where I stayed the night before venturing southward through the parks), I took the Maligne Lake road, a two-hour side trip to a pristine lake at the head of a glacially-formed box canyon. Among the treats on the way up – an elk feeding by the side of the road, largely oblivious to passerby (although the reverse wasn’t true – the traffic jam of gawkers would have done New York City proud), a black bear, and several large horned sheep.

Jasper itself is fairly upscale and surprisingly calm. The town is tourist-oriented, but in a Northern California sort of way. I had lunch in a very nice Greek restaurant, and most of the tables were empty, despite the fact that the food was quite reasonable (for this part of Canada) and very good. I also stopped in at a major Native artifacts store – very high quality goods, and very little in the way of customers. After lunch, I continued on the Ice Fields Parkway, past the Columbian Ice Fields and into Banff National Park. I made a conscious decision to skip the town of Banff itself, as well as Lake Louise, spending the time instead exploring a couple of side roads, including the one to Bow Lake overlook, which offers spectacular views of a glacier and a glacial lake. I finally rode out of the parks and into Kootenai Park late in the day, ending up at Radium Hot Springs for the night.

Radium Hot Springs is famous for – of course – its hot springs. The name itself must be a little bit of a Chamber of Commerce nightmare. It probably seemed like a great moniker back in the day, but radium has different connotations to us today than it did when you could buy seltzer bottles with radium linings to produce “irradiated” water. I managed to find a nice, clean motel. There were about a dozen motorcycles in the parking lot – this is a major destination for cruisers before heading up the parkway into the two national parks. Despite the fact that they looked a bit on the tough side, the bikers turned out to be very friendly, and were quite forthcoming with advice on good places to eat and ride. Most were impressed with the fact that I was returning from Alaska – this is more an area for day or weekend trippers from Edmonton or Calgary.

After a good dinner at an Austrian restaurant (Helna’s Stube – a bit pricy but excellent food) and an even better night’s sleep, I woke on the early side, determined to make some distance. The next part of the route was to head down through southeastern British Columbia to the tiny town of Roosville, where I crossed back into the US. From there I rode down to Glacier National Park. I had heard about the Going to the Sun Highway, built in the 1930s, and supposedly one of the really wonderful drives in the west. What I didn’t realize was that this road is also a magnet for all of the tourists who consider Banff and Jasper too far to drive (plus adding the hassle of crossing the border). Everyone and their mother seemed to be on that tiny two-lane road that snaked its way up to Larson Summit, at around 6500 feet. The Park Service does what it can to keep the traffic down – they have frequent shuttle buses that traverse the route, including some that are replicas of the 1930s era red buses that tourists originally took over the pass. Be that as it may, pick-ups, RVs, motorcyclists, and minivans clogged the road. There were frequent turnouts, but many eschewed them, preferring to jam on the brakes in the middle of the road to drink in the magnificent scenery for a few seconds before continuing up the steep grade. For the motorcyclist following them, this was quite problematic – bikes work best when they have some forward momentum to utilize. Having to stop suddenly on a steep upgrade, coordinate brakes and shifting, all while attempting not to burn up the clutch getting started again from a standing start (sometimes on a hairpin turn!) was a challenge. By the time I got to the summit I was cursing my decision to do the road. Oddly, on the downward side I didn’t have any such problems, and I started to make some good time.

After reaching St. Mary’s, I headed down for US 2, the main route across northern Montana. It’s a two-lane road, but impeccably maintained, and I was able to motor along at 75, only slowing down when I came to the infrequent towns – Browning, Cut Bank, Chester, Gildford, Havre, Chinook, Harlem, Malta, Saco, Hinsdale, and Glasgow. I should have filled the tank in Malta, not realizing that on July 4^th Eve the sole gas station in many of the towns I passed through would be closed for the night. I was showing “Empty” or very close to it when I pulled into Hinsdale and found a convenience store still open, thanks in part to a rodeo that was being held in town. Pick-up trucks filled with teenagers were cruising both of the streets of the town, and I was able to fill the tank. It had rained late in the afternoon, and as the sun broke beneath the clouds, there was a glorious sunset. The road was damp, but the air was cool and I was enjoying looking at the cloud formations and the quality of the light. Finally, around 10:00 p.m., I pulled into Glasgow and decided to give it up for the night – it was too dark to see the road easily, and I was worried about deer wandering onto the roadway. I spent the night at La Casa Motel, in their last available room.

I woke early – around 4:30 a.m. – as it got light. I decided to get a really early start and see if I could make the Twin Cities by evening. Letting my GPS route me, I dropped down due south from Wolf Point to Circle on Montana 13, which had hardly a single curve in it for 50 miles. Then it was another 50 miles southeast to Glendive, where I picked up Interstate 94. From there, I put the bike on cruise control, and rode the rest of the day through eastern Montana, across North Dakota, through Fargo and Moorhead, and down to the Twin Cities, arriving around 7:30 p.m.-- in time to join Marie, her mother, and friends for a barbecue at the Freshmans’ house.

On this last day I had ridden through cloudy, cool weather; light rain from Bismarck to Jamestown, South Dakota; and increasingly hot and humid weather when I crossed into Minnesota. I noticed a lot of motorcycles as I got closer to Minnesota – with almost no one wearing much in the way of protective gear –tee-shirts, no helmets, no boots. Even in the heat and humidity I was quite comfortable in my gear, thanks to the mesh Kevlar my suit is made of.

So, after a few hours of socializing, and realizing that I was dog tired, I got back on the bike and started to head home. As I crossed the rebuilt Interstate 35 bridge, at 10:00 p.m., the Minneapolis fireworks started, lighting up the sky. I pulled off, and turned down towards St. Anthony Main, where I watched the rest of the display from the saddle of my bike for twenty more minutes. I looked at my odometer – the mileage for the day was at 776 miles, which seemed vaguely patriotic. Total mileage for the day, when I finally reached home – 780 miles, a new record for me.

Watson Lake to Dawson Creek to Hinton -- a soggy ride

The ride from Watson Lake, which is mainly famous for its forest of signs (more on that later) to Dawson Creek in Alberta is long under the best of conditions. When 550 of the 600 miles are rain-soaked, it loses what little charm it might otherwise have had. Don’t get me wrong – I have nothing against riding in the rain, and have done quite a bit of it on this trip. If you’re headed to the Pacific Northwest or Alaska, it comes with the territory. Some rains create a peaceful sense of melancholy, enhancing the landscape and the ride. The problem on this section of the trip is that a good bit of the landscape is quite spectacular, but also largely invisible with low cloud cover. As long as the road was good, I was able to make good time, even in the rain. It was important to keep an eye on the gas gauge – there really isn’t any room for error when it can be 100 miles between services. At the tourist info centers they even provide you with suggestions for where you should fill up.

No, the real problems came when I hit road construction. I had driven long and hard to reach Watson Lake, and I thought the worst of the construction zones were behind me (they were especially bad from Tok to Burwash Landing, on both sides of the US-Canadian border). Little did I know that the real killer was still ahead of me. I stopped in Toad River (famous for the collection of baseball-style caps nailed to the ceiling – currently around 8,000). I suppose they felt the need to compete with Watson Lake, which had cornered the market on road signs and distances to places all around the globe (a tradition started during the Second World War when a homesick Illinois boy put up a sign from his hometown with the approximate mileage – today there are something like 35,000 signs encircling the Visitors’ Center, and it seems to me that if 35,000 people are interested in showing how far it is to someplace else, that doesn’t say much for where they’re at). In any event, while eating my BLT (quite good with Canadian bacon!), I noticed a couple of mud-splattered bikers entering the store. They told me they had just come up (i.e., northwards) on some of the worst road they had ever seen. It was a construction zone in which the roadway wasn’t the normal gravel and dirt mixture, but instead just dirt, which had turned into a sea of mud with the unrelenting rain. One of them said that his bike had gone sideways on him, but that he managed to keep it upright. Within an hour I was repeating his experience. Riding through that muck was like being on an animal that was squirming, twisting, and trying to go any direction but forward. Two miles of those conditions had me exhausted – and relieved to be through it. After that, the remaining 400 miles felt like a bagatelle.

The area of southern Yukon Territory and Northern Alberta that I went through has an economy based almost entirely on resource extraction – timber, oil, gas, and coal among others. For long stretches of highway there were prominent signs warning against trespassing or parking because of the danger of poisonous gas leaks or venting. I later found out that this has to do with the natural gas extraction process. In other places huge swaths of forest had been clearcut – but reforestation was taking place. Coal extraction was carried on using monster trucks and electric shovels. I found out more about this when I stayed last night in Hinton, just outside of Jasper National Park, at Aunt Bea’s B & B. Bea and her husband Ray are now both retired, but he used to be an Alberta Forest Ranger, which mainly involved checking on remediation efforts by the natural resource companies. He also kept an eye out for poachers, and explained to me the incredibly complex laws and exceptions that make up the hunting customs of Alberta. For many people, it remains an important supplement to their diet; for others, it’s a major source of income through guiding and hunting-tourism. Ray has a house full of trophies (he hasn’t killed all of them himself – as an employee of the Park Service he often had the opportunity to get animals that had been killed by others or in accidents). Among other denizens of his living room were a stuffed bison head, a bighorn sheep, a snowy owl, a great horned owl, a black bear, a gigantic bull moose head, and various others. I spent several hours talking with Bea and Ray about life in Alberta, both then and now. They also introduced me to the rules of Canadian football – the season starts on July 1, Canada Day. Their beloved Edmonton team was playing. The field is much larger than in US football, and each team only has three downs to make ten yards (not the four we have). The game is much faster paced – lots less down time, lots more emphasis on the kicking game, and no silliness like the “fair catch” rule. When you catch the ball, you had better run with it, because the other team is going to be after your ass.

Our conversation finally ended when they informed me that I had changed time zones when I crossed into Alberta – it’s on Mountain Time, rather than Pacific. I had lost an hour, so it was time for bed.

The way home -- Anchorage to Watson Lake, YT

The trip home has a different feeling from the one coming up. I’ve been on the road for over a month, and I’ve put more than 8,000 miles on the beemer. It definitely feels like it’s time to be heading back, and the distances to be covered are a bit daunting. Without breaks for visiting with friends, this part of the trip has the feel of a long haul, and the main goal is to do it quickly and safely, taking large gulps of distance rather than small sips. In my first two days out of Anchorage, I’ve covered nearly 1,000 miles – much of it in rainy and cold weather. And some of the road construction that led to interesting experiences on the way up are mainly a pain in the ass when I’m trying to make time in the opposite direction.

I’m eschewing picture taking, for the most part, in the interest of keeping the mileage up, and also because the weather conditions aren’t very cooperative. I’ve included a few shots, but you can see the low clouds. What you can’t feel, however, is the chill – the temperatures are often in the high 40s and low 50s, and the rain adds a further chill. My rain gear is doing its job properly, as is the electric liner for my jacket, so I’m often fairly toasty as I zip along at 65 or 70. I wish I had a better system for my hands, though – my deerskin gloves with silk liners aren’t waterproof, and the Aerostich “lobster claw” overmitts are a pain to put on and take off – and they don’t give me as much control as gloves alone do. Even with the heated bike grips, without the lobster claws my hands get cold. This is an area that needs improvement.

There are several sections of roads that deserve comment. For about 40 miles on either side of the Alaskan border – from about Tok in the north to Burwash Landing in Yukon Territory, the roads are being rebuilt, and the conditions are awful – especially when it is raining. Even where the road isn’t gravel and mud, the numerous frost heaves mean that you have to pay very close attention, particularly when you’re riding at speed. Some of the RVs have been wallowing around like fishing boats in rough seas. Last night, around 10:00 p.m., in a driving rain, on one of these sections, a bull moose stepped into the road. I slowed way down, we regarded each other, he crossed and then crashed through the brush on the other side, and I continued. Today my “animal adventure” was a very large brown bear. I had been forewarned by an RV that flashed its lights at me, and saw another RV and a pickup pulled over. I went through slowly, looking at the bear. I don’t feel quite as protected as those in cars and trucks. I think the bear would at least need a can-opener to get at the contents, whereas I felt a bit more like a crudite on a plate.

Tonight I’m at the Airport Bed and Breakfast near the tiny airport in Watson Lake. This is a town that is having trouble surviving. The woman who runs the B & B just got a job as the community development officer in town, and we talked for a while about what development means up here. There simply isn’t much that Watson Lake can use to attract tourists – other, nearby places have much more in the way of physical beauty (glaciers, salmon streams, etc.), all of which are lacking in Watson Lake. As the southernmost town in Yukon Territory they may have to settle for becoming a waste transfer station for garbage collected in the rest of Yukon Territory. Not very glamorous, but jobs are jobs. Meanwhile, two of the three hotels in town are closed, and the whole place seems tired and worn out.

Tomorrow – on to Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, and points south (and east).

Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula

I spent a total of five days in Anchorage and traveling to the Kenai Peninsula. Riding into Anchorage via the Glenn Highway is nothing short of spectacular – which makes reaching the city that much more of an anti-climax. As I noted earlier, there is a huge disjuncture between Anchorage’s setting, and what has been done with it. Nevertheless, there are a couple of things worth seeing – most of them involving getting away from the city and into the natural environment. Potter’s Marsh, for instance, is a world-class bird-watching area. The area of Flattop has superb hiking trails – along with bear and moose. On the cultural side, my favorites were a visit to the Alaska Heritage Center, which presents the life and culture of the five major native groups in the state. It’s an active exhibition – there are small-scale settlements of each group, along with interpreters who explain how subsistence and other activities took place. Another find was the outstanding collection of native artifacts housed in the main Wells Fargo Bank Building – quite a ways from the tourist areas downtown, but worth a visit (and free, to boot).

For the most part, though, Anchorage has about as much charm as Plano, TX, or Bakersfield, CA. Everything is horrifically expensive, and the amount of tourista crap downtown, catering especially to the cruise ships that call here, is breathtaking. One of the hyped destinations, Glacier Brewhouse, was actually pretty good – even the beers were decent. Overall, though, it’s best to get out of town to see the things that make Alaska interesting.

I made a strategic decision to forgo the long loop trip to Denali and Fairbanks. The chances of actually seeing Mount McKinley are iffy, at best (it’s usually covered by clouds, and that was the forecast for while I’m here). Fairbanks’ main attraction is that it’s the jumping off point for the Haul Road up to Point Barrow, and is one of the easier points from which to reach the Arctic Circle. Otherwise it has a huge military presence, and is also where many of the oil workers from the northern fields live, traveling up for two week stints in the fields, then two weeks back in Fairbanks. As I’ve been above the Circle on a number of occasions, I didn’t feel a burning need to do so again. Instead, I decided to spend a couple of days riding down to Homer, which is set in one of the most magnificent settings imaginable -- on the shore of Kachemak Bay, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, with numerous glaciers, and even a couple of active volcanos. Homer is the Halibut Fishing Capital of Alaska – and people come in droves in their RVs to camp on the Homer Spit and haul in the halibut. Homer is also home to some oddities – for instance, the Alaska Yurt Village, a collection of yurts for sale, which also house a number of counter culture emporia. These are much bigger than you might think – one of them was the size of a small house, heated with a woodstove. Most of the denizens seem to be more refugees from the 1960s and 70s. The town also has a great restaurant – the Café Cups – which someone had tipped me to. Great food, and a wonderful setting.

The next day, I rode out East End Road, which took me to the furthest distance from Minnesota I would reach. Again, stunning views of the glaciers and mountains across the bay. It was hard finding a place to park, though – a lot of people who move to Alaska definitely are here for the isolation – and they don’t want to be bothered by people, especially tourists. The number of no parking and no trespassing signs was daunting. It was hard to find a place to pull off the road to take a picture.

I headed back up the Kenai Peninsula, taking the side trip to Seward that I had skipped on the way down. I went into Kenai Fjords National Park, to hike up to Exit Glacier, one of the most accessible of the dozens of glaciers in the area. Excellent interpretation, and amazing views. As usual, it didn’t seem possible to capture the scope of things with a camera (but I tried!)

Seward, like many of the destinations up here, was less impressive than the journey to get there. Unfortunately, most people seem to pay more attention to the official destinations, and miss what is really amazing – the sweep of the landscape, the scale that it presents, and the variations in near, middle and far distance. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride down the Kenai and back – a total trip of about 600 miles over two days. This is maybe the most beautiful part of Alaska.

After the Kenai, I spent a last night in Anchorage (in the Highland Glen B & B – one of the best finds of my trip). Today (Sunday), I started home. I managed 525 miles, going up the Glenn Highway to the Richardson Highway, hitting the Alaska Highway at Tok, and continuing on into Yukon Territory and Burwash Landing, where I now am. But it’s after midnight, and time for bed. Yawn . . .

Tok Junction to Anchorage -- and the Glenn Highway

My stopping point on Tuesday was Beaver Creek, just short of the border between Yukon Territory and Alaska. Before leaving Beaver Creek I tried to figure out if there would be a place to stay in Anchorage. The desk clerk at the motel in Beaver Creek noted that the same chain had an establishment in Anchorage, but when she called, she first found that it was booked solid for Wednesday night, and then that it cost over $200 per night. I blanched. I started trying to call bed and breakfasts, but they were all booked, too. I finally found a Marriott at what seemed to be the standard low-end price -- $200 per night. At least they had a no-fee cancellation policy. In all of this, I was constrained by the fact that I couldn’t use my cell phone, and was pretty much limited to places with 800 numbers. So I started the 440 mile trip to Anchorage, not knowing what to expect.

About 70 miles into the trip, after crossing the border and clearing customs, I arrived in Tok Junction, where the roads to Fairbanks and Anchorage split. Looking around, I saw a microwave tower, and on a hunch tried my cell phone. Much to my surprise, it worked, and I started calling some of the bed and breakfasts I hadn’t been able to get to earlier because they didn’t have 800 numbers. The first one I called was booked, but gave me the number for the Anchorage Bed and Breakfast Hotline (really!). I called, and quickly was set up with a room at the Highland Glenn B & B. The Hotline person even called the Marriott for me to cancel the previous reservation. Buoyed and relieved, I got ready to leave Tok. (Which, by the way, is pronounced like “toke,” which some of you may remember as a verb from the late 60s.) As I got ready to hit the road, I decided to go to the general store for something to eat, intrigued by a sign that indicated they sold “health food.” Second big surprise in Tok – one of Alaska’s three (count ‘em) health food stores is located here (the other two are in Fairbanks and Anchorage) – and the Tok store was remarkably well stocked and friendly. In addition to yoghurt covered peanuts and rice and almond crackers (no wheat or gluten!), I purchased a Virgil’s Root Beer, made in a microbrewery somewhere. It was probably the best I’ve had. So, all in all Tok was full of surprises!

After that, I headed down to the Hub of Alaska, the junction between the northern and southern routes at Glenallen, where I picked up the Glenn Highway. Now, most of the roads in Alaska are, at a minimum, beautiful. So I had to wonder why this one was picked out to be a National Scenic Byway. For the first 150 miles, I was still wondering. The scenery was varied and wonderful, but it didn’t quite rise to the level of spectacular. Then I rounded a bend and caught sight of the Wrangell and St. Elias ranges – snow capped, with glaciers, tips shrouded in clouds – and had my answer. The rest of the trip to Anchorage was fabulously beautiful – one glacially carved valley after another, and a set of views that could have produced a full deck of Transcendentalist Trading Cards without any problem. I tried to take some pictures, but quickly realized that the camera really wasn’t doing the scenes justice – the scale was simply too immense, and the interplay of elements too complex to be captured, at least by the likes of me. If you like what you see in the pictures I’ve included here, you should realize that they capture about 20% of what it was like to travel through this landscape. Stopping at turnouts produced one Ansel Adams experience after another – and I’m simply not the photographer he was, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

I came down off the Glenn Highway to find that the area around Anchorage is one strip mall suburb after another, but set in a magnificent natural environment. (Unlike Oregonians, Alaskans seems rather blasé about their setting, and don’t seem to mind that they’re trashing it up with what they build.) I let my GPS guide me into Anchorage, and found out another aspect of the area – it has dramatic shifts in micro-climate. I went from sunny skies to a drenching downpour in a matter of minutes. The riding was tricky in this rain, which surprised me, because I’ve been in and out of rain for days now, and am quite used to tooling along in all matter of wetness. Alaskans use studded snowtires in the winter, cutting fairly deep trenches in their highways. In heavy rain, in low-lying areas, the water pools in these ruts, and it’s easy to hydroplane. I finally figured out that I needed to be on the crown between the tire tracks, and after that the riding was fine. The downpour stopped as quickly as it had started, and I continued on the B & B.

It turned out to be the last surprise of the day. Unlike most of the dumps I’ve been staying in (except for the Guardhouse B & B in Haines, which I very much liked), the Highland Glenn is beautiful. The rooms are immense, and facilities are great (a sauna in my own bathroom, and a hot tub on the deck!). All of this for $100 per night (special sale rates – I don’t know why – but thank-you, lady at the Anchorage Bed and Breakfast Hotline!).

So, tomorrow I’ll explore a bit more of Anchorage and head south to the wildlife refuge on the road that goes to Seward and to Homer. Then up to Fairbanks, and I’ll start heading home after the weekend. But now, it’s close to bedtime, so I’ll sign off for today (Wednesday).

Hyder, Whitehorse, Skagway and Haines

When I last posted, I was in Smithers, BC, the last place for about 600 miles that was what I would normally call a town, by which I mean a place with a fairly good assortment of what we think of as urban amenities – franchise restaurants, single-purpose stores (rather than general stores), and the like. I drove through mile after mile (or kilometer after kilometer – it is Canada, after all) of spruce forests, flanked by towering mountains, often crossing or running alongside of gigantic, swollen streams. The road was paved nearly the whole way, but the nature of the paving changed from asphalt to sealcoat, a much rougher surface on which lane markings were haphazard at best. In many places the road turned to graded, packed dirt and gravel – mostly where water or slides had washed out the paved surface. One of the keys to building and maintaining roads in this part of the world is ensuring that water has somewhere to go under, rather than over the road. When culverts get blocked, the result is usually a washout or slide, necessitating constant road maintenance. North of Dease Lake, there was also an unfinished section of the road, with about 30 miles of dirt and gravel surface, heavily washboarded. The beemer now looks like it’s been in a bout of mud-wrestling. Because I’m likely to encounter much more of the same until I hit the area past Tok (pronounced “toke”), it seems rather pointless to do a thorough cleaning of the bike right now.

North of Smithers I took a three-hour detour off Hwy 37 onto 37A to Stewart, BC and Hyder, Alaska. So I finally made it to Alaska -- for about 20 minutes, before heading back to Stewart. Hyder is the southernmost town in Alaska reachable by road – and there isn’t much there. Stewart isn’t any great shakes, either -- The reason for making the detour was the trip itself, which was breathtakingly beautiful. I saw perhaps a dozen glaciers en route. I also saw a black bear, and a moose. I've heard from other motorcyclists that the wildlife gets more and more prevalent the further north you go. I also found that mosquitos are especially thick near the coastal areas. Hyder and Stewart are at the head of the Portland Canal, the world's sixth-longest fjord, and the headwaters are very marshy and swampy -- perfect breeding ground for our little friends.

It is interesting to see the difference between Canada and the US, even in these out-of-the-way places. Stewart has paved streets, fairly neatly kept houses, and services. Hyder doesn't have much of anything except for a café, a gift shop, a lot of empty buildings, and a motel that caters to bikers and kayakers. (There was a biker rally in Hyder this weekend -- I saw lots of Harleys on the road to Stewart and Hyder as I was returning to Hwy 37.)

The rest of the ride was beautiful, but in a desolate way -- fabulous mountains and forests, but hardly any people. The only economic activites are extractive -- timber, mining, etc. -- or resorts on the lakes that abound here. The resorts are pretty scrappy, though. The motel I stayed in after Smithers, in Ishkut, was very low end, but it was the only game in town (town is being way too generous -- this place didn’t even qualify as a village). It sort of reminded me of the Pedicord Apartments, by Edward and Nancy Kienholz in the Weisman Art Museum installation, or the one in Barton Fink. Norman Bates would have been quite at home. A number of the people staying there were road workers, who often do 12-hour shifts (remember, it stays light a long time up here).

From Ishkut I rode 450 miles to Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory, all but the last 125 in the rain. It was also quite cold -- only five or ten degrees above freezing at times. I had managed to get all of my gear sorted out, though, so I was actually quite toasty, with the electric jacket liner doing its job well next to my body, and the waterproof liner on top of that, keeping the rain that the mesh Kevlar jacket passes from getting me soaked. The rain doesn't bother me at all -- although the low cloud ceiling made it hard to see much of the snow-clad mountaintops I was passing by. When I got to Yukon Territory, the weather broke, and I enjoyed the sunshine for the first time in several days. (I now look a little like a reverse raccoon, I'm afraid.)

Most of the bikers I see up here are on BMW GS bikes -- the off-road ones, with big, knobby tires and not much in the way of a fairing. There have been some groups of Harley riders, too, and assorted other bikers. I'd say the numbers of motorcyclists are about the same as the number of RV drivers. The traffic has been sparse, but steady. Cars or other vehicles go by every ten to fifteen minutes or so. It may pick up now that the weekend is over -- the truckers may be back in force.

Whitehorse is by far the largest city in the Territory – with 35,000 people it has half of the population of the entire province. I quickly found that accommodations Up North can be pretty pricey. I went to the Tourist Info center (it was still open at 7:30 p.m.), and they gave me good tips, and a phone to call with (a good thing, as I haven’t had cell phone service for several days). I found a decent if not very exciting motel room, grabbed an execrable Chinese dinner (avoid the North Orient Chinese Restaurant in Whitehorse at all costs!), and conked out.

On Monday, I decided to do a major loop, taking the Klondike Highway from Whitehorse to Skagway, Alaska, the ferry to Haines, and the Chilkoot Highway to Haines Junction, where I’d rejoin the Alaska Highway. These two roads, among the most famous in the Yukon region, were developments of the trails used by the miners in the gold rush of 1898. Miners would take the steamer from Seattle to Skagway, and then head over the White Pass to Whitehorse, where they would then continue up to. Dawson. An alternative route was the Chilkoot Trail from Haines – longer, but not as brutal. A narrow gauge railroad was built from Skagway to Whitehorse early in the 20^th century – finished just as the gold gave out. During WWII this area had a major military presence, and the Al-Can highway was built, with Skagway serving as a major port facility for men and materiel. Today the gigantic cruise ships stop at Skagway, the end point of their Inside Passage cruises that can start as far south as Bellingham, Washington. As a major port of call on the cruises, the downtown of Skagway is mostly tourist shopping opportunities – a huge number of jewelry shops and souvenir emporia – nearly all of which are directly owned by the various cruise lines (although this fact is not advertised). There are a few genuine places, but not many, and every time a cruise ship docks (the port can handle up to six at a time), swarms of people descend on the main street. Despite this, the town actually has a certain charm, and its architecture and history are quite interesting. I took the historical self-guided walking tour, went to the City Museum, ate a good Thai lunch at the Starfire Restaurant, and managed to talk to some interesting people before getting ready to board the Alaska State Ferry to Haines – about an hour away. There is a bit of a difference in pricing between the Washington State Ferry system and the one up here. I paid $5 for a trip from Port Angeles to Whidbey Island in Washington – with my bike. Up here a similar short crossing cost $62. (The 4.5 hour journey to Juneau would only have cost an additional $5!)

It’s raining lightly again, but I’m in a wonderful B & B in Haines – the Guardhouse B & B. It’s a renovated officers’ house on the grounds of Fort Seward, a now-decommissioned fort built early in the 20^th century when a boundary dispute arose between the U.S. and Canada. It hasn’t been used as a military installation since 1945, and the buildings are in private hands. It’s late, and time for bed. More when I’m more awake!