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!

North from Vancouver

On Thursday morning I got an early start and left Vancouver, heading west to Horseshoe Bay, and then up the Sea to Sky Highway (99), which has just been almost completely rebuilt to get athletes and spectators to Whistler, where the alpine events for the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held. All along the route there was frenetic construction activity, putting the finishing touches on the ramps and landscaping. The road surface was superb, and made for great motorcycling in a landscape strongly reminiscent of the Norwegian fjords. Whistler Village is also being finished up – and it really is lovely (if a tad high end – it’s clear that after the games these buildings will not be used for social housing!). I was lucky enough to talk to an excellent advisor in the information center (B.C. does a fantastic job of providing help to tourists) – he told me to continue on 99 through Pemberton, and to pick up 97, the main route north through B.C., just north of Cache River. Although 99 east of Whistler hasn’t been resurfaced in 15 years, and is rather rough, he said, the views are spectacular. Right he was – it was like spending three or four hours driving through Yosemite – giant granitic batholiths reminded me of Half Dome. In Pemberton, I took a quick turn onto the airport road to see if I could get a good view of an incredibly steep river valley I had noticed off to my right, and stumbled onto the most beautiful golf course I’ve ever seen. It looked more like Shangri-la than a country club – the beautifully manicured and landscaped greens and fairways backed onto the abrupt rise of the mountains, with the hanging river valley in the background.

Once on 97, I was surprised at the amount of traffic and the level of services provided. I had expected to be at the back of beyond, but instead this road, which roughly goes up the Fraser River Valley, was filled with ranches, lakes, parks, and other signs of active economic activity. True, there were places where one could find a “no services for next 90 km” sign, but this only happened twice. I made excellent time, keeping up a steady 65 mph (and getting about 48 mpg in the process, thanks to a steady tailwind). I ran into some rain, but it was manageable, and finally stopped in Quesnel, which was the head of navigation on the Fraser River, and the jumping off point for the Canadian gold rush back in the mid-19th century. I used the 800 number listed on the map, that I’d been told by my information person in Whistler really worked quite well – 1800-HELLOBC. I was quickly connected to a live human being, and got the numbers of several motels in my price range. I wound up staying at the Caravan – and it was superb. Quiet, friendly, comfortable, free high-speed wi-fi – hard to beat for the price! The owner told me I really ought to take the time to go up to the historic town of Barkerville, about 45 miles east of Quesnel. The town was the site of a major gold strike by one Billy Barker, 1862. Today it is both preserved and rebuilt, and serves as a living history museum on the gold rush. I was quite impressed – the buildings have been redone without a lot of commercialization, using period items from early in the 20th century (towards the end of Barkerville’s heyday). Billy himself died a pauper in Vancouver in 1895. Interestingly, the tone of the reconstruction was somewhere between that of Presbyterian Church in McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the set of the recent HBO series, Deadwood. As with both of those, there is quite a bit of emphasis on the Chinese presence in the west -- they formed the backbone of the labor force.

After motoring back down to Quesnel in the rain, I headed north to Prince George, where 97 crosses Highway 16, the Yellowknife Highway, which runs from Prince Rupert in the west through Edmonton and into Jasper National Park. I headed south and west, through a driving rainstorm.

I quickly found that having just raingear on isn’t enough when it’s chilly out (which it often is in heavy rain). My riding suit is mesh Kevlar, intended to pass plenty of air. Having a waterproof liner on underneath it means all of that air is available to evaporate the water on the liner, cooling things down considerably, and chilling me to the bone. I had to stop in the rain and put on my electric jacket liner, which finally warmed me up. Lesson – get the gear on before taking off if it looks like rain. You can always take layers off if necessary. After fixing the gear, I was able to ride about 200 more miles to the town of Smithers, at the foot of some glorious snow-covered mountains. That’s where I am for the night.