Date: 10/08
City: Vancouver, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 147
Cumulative kilometre: 57055
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We packed the bike and said goodbye to Dave in the morning, the weather was a bit foggy and coolish. We arrived at the border a short while later. Dave suggested choosing a smaller border crossing, since waiting times on the main one could be very long, so we did. We got over the border in no time. When we came closer to Vancouver, it got hotter and hotter. We found a reasonable priced hotel close to/in downtown.


After we unpacked, we organized some brochures to make up our mind what we would like to see. At the end we settled for visiting Stanley Park, which is just a large green park area in downtown Vancouver. Just before we arrived at the park, we passed a square with sculptures which carried huge life vests. That made us curious, so we parked the bike and had a closer look.

It turned out that this was a Life Vest awareness exercise and the organizer dressed the sculptures with the oversized live vests. Sigrid actively participated for the good course; I guess she has to grow a bit before the vest fitsJ

We found out that the sculptures are called the A-maze-ing Laughter sculptures, and they don’t wear life vests normally J


Then we entered the park, following the road along the beach. All of the sudden we saw lots of people doing synchronized yoga.

It turned out that this was a yoga event where people would do yoga for the whole day. Exploring close by we found some totem poles, so we had a look at these and their story as well.


Some of the poles even had an explanation on the side.


And looking back from the totem poles, across the bay, was downtown Vancouver, I like the contrast from old to new.

We continued to ride around the park and took a couple of pictures before we settled on a place to watch the sunset.



During the time we were sitting and watching the sunset, a guy proposed just in front of us and she was over the moon, well you couldn’t ignore the screaming of joy.


We just sat back and enjoyed the sunset.


After sunset we drove home, what a beautiful day.

Date: 11/08
City: Vancouver, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 23
Cumulative kilometre: 57078
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, rain, Sunny, warm

It was raining in the morning, so we took our time to get ready. The plan for today was to have a look at the Grouse Mountain and if the weather permits, walking up a path that is called ‘the grind’. As we found out, it is a 2.9km path with 850m elevation, well that doesn’t sound too bad, doesn’t it? We arrived in the car park and left as much riding gear as possible at the bike. The weather was great and the sun was shining, so off we went.


A sign suggested that an average person would need something between 90..120 minutes to get to the top and the record is 23 minutes. After the first quarter it was obvious that we would take us around two hours to get to the top. Below are some pictures where we tried to look relaxed J


But this is how it rellay looked at the quarter and half way marks:


People told us that it gets even steeper after the half way mark, I thougth they were joking.

But in the end we made it, around two hours.

From here on we used the chairlift to get to the Eye of the Wind, which is a wind turbine with a viewing platform on top.

The top of the turbine had a nice view over Vancouver; unfortunately it was a bit hazy today.


For safety reasons it was not allowed to walk the Grind down, so we had to use the lift (phew…). The plan for tomorrow is to get back to the Seattle motorcyclist retreat, Gaila’s and Tad’s casa.

Date: 30/07
City: Whitehorse, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 633
Cumulative kilometre: 56401
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm

We relaxed yesterday, so we were up early… Like, really early. Around 4 AM we decided to have a last dip in the hot spring. We were the only ones there, great, the whole hot spring for us.

When the sun came up, we decided to go back to the tent. We met a ranger and he told us that we just missed a Moose with her calf. I’m not sure if there are really moose around or if they just say so to tourists to make them come and look for the mystical creatures J

We had breakfast and packed up the tent and went on our way. Just around the corner from the camp ground we found this sign and then a Bison herd not far from there.

 

We arrived in Watson Lake, this time the weather was great. So we decided to have a closer look at the Sign Post Forest.

On our way back to Whitehorse, we had a brief stop at a nice lake. Sigrid couldn’t resist testing how cold the water was.

Just before Whitehorse we could see a bit of a rainbow, so we slowed down to allow the rain ahead of us and took our time to get there.

Today we also had to stop a couple of times to clear our visors and when we had a look at our front light, we saw why.

After settling in our rooms we went our for dinner, in a restaurant that a couple of people suggested to us. The food was great and we enjoyed the evening.

 

Date: 31/07
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 440
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

Today we were aiming for Haines. Since it was only around 400km away, we did not rush. Below is Sigrid in thinking pose. I must admit, this road is one of the most beautiful roads on our trip.

Not long before Haines we went over the Canadian/Alaska border and were on our last stretch of road in Alaska.

The view was just great, one Glacier after another and the mountains got higher and higher as we came closer to Haines.

On our way we found this nifty device in the river. As we found out later, it is a Salmon counter used by the fishery department to get an estimate of the number of Salmon coming up the stream. According to these numbers they decide the length of the fishing season.

After trying a couple of hotels and getting put off by the prices, we decided to camp. We pitched the tent and went out for dinner to a restaurant overlooking the harbour and this view from our table:

After a great meal we drove to a small river where the brown bears were fishing for Salmon. We got lucky and saw a bear catching a couple of salmon. As it got darker, it got more difficult to get a good picture, so we decided to try again tomorrow.

Date: 01/08
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

The view from our camping spot looked nice, particularly in the morning.

But when we tried to extend our stay by two days we had a case of dejavue. Our camp spot was booked and we had to move. Since we had training from the hot springs, we moved quicker than last time. The new site was a bit more secluded in the forest, but didn’t have the view onto the lake.

The rest of the day we planned a bit more on the rest of our trip. It looks like we can borrow Hugo’s BMW, so we had a closer look at what we would like to see in Europe. In the evening we went bear watching, this time without any success. Well tomorrow is another day.

Date: 02/08
City: Haines, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

In the morning our camping spot looked even more like it was in an enchanted forest. So we made our breakfast and went to town for food shopping.

Below is the view from the Main street in Haines, isn’t it beautiful?

Later we went back to the lake and had a look for bears again. This time we picked another spot where we meet Aniemike, a girl from Holland riding her KLR650 and travelling slowly through Alaska. Previously she travelled through Australia and other parts of the world before she started this longer journey.

We talked for a while and went back to our campground. We didn’t see any bears today either. Tomorrow afternoon we will get onto the ferry to Juneau, which is just four hours from Haines.

Date: 27/07
City: Leard Hot Springs, Canada Kilometres ridden: 633
Cumulative kilometre: 55768
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm

We arrived in Watson Lake without any problems. After filling up the bikes we had a brief look at the sign post forest.

We saw the black clouds getting closer and closer, so we decided not to spend too much time here and continue on. We put our raingear on and headed off. After 50km the heavy rain started, but it didn’t last long, it seemed that we went in the opposite direction of the rain. The rest of the ride was nice, except for the last 20km where we hit another rain front. We saw a Bison! It was bigger than the ones we saw in Yellowstone. We stopped on the side of the road and took some pictures. A bit later we saw more! I took pictures of the Bison on the left hand side when a bull came charging from the right and stopped in the middle of the road. He started a staring contest with one of the other bulls. At this point of time it was raining heavily, but we didn’t dare to move. After an agonising long time the contest was finished, the bull moved to the side and we took off, phew!


When we arrived at the campground, all our gear was wet, but we stayed dry.

So we pitched the tent jumped into our bathers and went to the hot spring. Since it was raining and coolish, we saw mist in the air which added a magic touch to the hot springs.


 

Date: 28/07
City: Leard Hot Springs, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 55768
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm

We really liked it here, so we tried to extend our stay for two more days, but the place we pitched our tent was booked, so we had to move it. We started to dismantle the tent when we heard a friendly hello. It was Leslie, one of the Irish motorcycle rider we met in Dawson City where we spent an evening at Gertie’s Diamond Tooth Saloon :). With his help moving the tent was easy, we picked it up and carried it over, the move was done in no time!

We walked over to Leslie’s camp site and met Gerard and Ilene (the Irish couple whom we meet in Dawson) again, They had used the time wisely for another soak in the hot pool. They told us about their new friends; an Australian couple, Adrian and Lauren. They planned to travel together a bit, and were meeting here in a short while. So we stayed to meet them. Turned out they had travelled to Dead Horse on Adrian’s 1200GS and were now heading down to Ushuaia. After chatting and taking pictures the group left and we went back into the hot spring.


Coming back from the hotspring we made some interior design modifications to our tent to allow our gear to dry easier… I still hat a spare pole, so we set something up.

At night we got the camp fire going and cooked dinner on it. I love to play with fire J


Date: 29/07
City: Leard Hot Springs, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 55135
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, warm

It was raining during the night and we had some water on our tent but luckily the inside was dry.


For our breakfast Sigrid collected some Raspberries. I thought, it was cruel to pinch the food from the bears, they’ll need it for the winter, but it sure tasted nice 🙂

Well, that’s it; the rest of the day was only soaking and sleeping, hmmm, life can be hard. Tomorrow we will ride back to Whitehorse and from there to Haines, where we hop onto the ferry to Juneau.

 

Date: 24/07 -25/07/2013
City: Whitehorse, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 533
Cumulative kilometre: 55135
Street: One lane paved, road works
Weather: Cloudy, warm

We had a great night yesterday, I found plenty of Yukon Gold and so we had a late start. The roads were great and we had only a bit of drizzle along the way. In Whitehorse I oiled my chain and found a piece of metal stuck in my tyre. It turned out to be a piece of metal that wasn’t quite long enough to poke a hole into my tube which was lucky.


Date: 25/07
City: Whitehorse, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 55135
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm, rain

Today we were busy planning the rest of the trip, the ferry from Haines to Bellingham, the visit in Vancouver and the time in Europe and South Africa. When we tried to book the ferry, we found out that there was no vehicle space left, so we booked it a week later. The additional week we’ll use for a couple of days in the Leard Hot springs, Haines and Juneau. Our provisions were running low so we walked to the next supermarket. On the way we found this sculpture, not sure what it was all about, but it looked intriguing.

When we arrive at the supermarked, I had my fight with a shopping trolly. You had to put a dollar in to get it, but that stupid thing didn’t let go of the chain to the previous trolly and was stuborn as well,wanting to take my dollar. So I tried a couple of different trollies, all showed the same symptoms…. Eventually I figured it out, you had to poke the end of the chain back on top of the dollar slot. Great! I love technology J


On our way back, Sigrid mentioned that we had not taken any pictures of the special power points – they are available on all car parks and the cars have the matching plugs hanging out of their bonnet. This is for the winter, when the temperatures go to -40. Then you plug the plug into the power point to keep the engine warm, otherwise people would have a hard time to get the engine started again.


Date: 26/07
City: Whitehorse, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 55135
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, warm/ rain, cold

It was raining and the weather forecast said heavy rain for Leard River as well. We decided to sit it out and do a bit of maintenance. Can you spot the difference? J


Time for some more planning and updating of the blog.
When it stopped raining later that day we had a look at the tram and the steamboat at the entrance of Whitehorse.

Well, we had a look from the outside – we arrived too late to be able to tour the inside. We toyed with the idea to get the steamboat into the water, maybe we can ship with it to Bellingham? Well, at least I tried.

On our way back we stumbled across some interesting totem poles.


And this is me doing the blog J

Tomorrow we will leave and go to the Leard Hotspring and soak there for two full days.

Date: 20/07 – 21/07/2013
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 512
Cumulative kilometre: 54311
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm/ Cloudy, cold, rain

It was raining during the night but when we got up it stopped. What this really shows is that if you sleep long enough the weather will be fine. So we packed our bikes, said goodbye our host and set off to Tok.  On our way was the Mantanuska Glacier, so we stopped and took a picture of it.

We continuned until Delta Junction where we filled up the bikes and had something to eat. At this precise moment it started to rain heavily, lucky that we were inside. The rain stopped after a while and we continued, following the dark clouds in front of us. The nice thing about following clouds is that you don’t get wet and you can see usually a rainbow. On the picture on the right you can see it – look to the end of the road.


The disadvantage is that the great mountains around you are covered in clouds 🙁


When we arrived in Tok, it looked pretty dark and started to rain. The weather looked the same the next morning, so we decided to stay a day before we take off to Chicken and Dawson City, which would have the last bit of planed gravel road of our trip.

Date: 22/07
City: Dawson City, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 291
Cumulative kilometre: 54602
Street: One lane paved, dirt road
Weather: Sunny, warm

Waiting a day has paid off. The weather today was gorgeous, not too hot and not too cold – just right. The landscape and the road were fantastic.

We arrived in Chicken and went to the old town. Downtown Chicken consists of three shops and a toilet block, the population in winter is fifteen. So first we went to the statue in the central plaza of chicken.

Our next stop was the famous saloon, which was five meters further down the main street.

I guess people must have been very drunk when they left the saloon, have a look at what they left behind…


Well after all that food and coffee, Sigrid had to go. What better place to visit, then the famous Chicken toilet block.

After we were refreshed, we felt ready to take our last dirt road challenge, the top of the world highway. We had heard all sorts of different stories, from terrible road up to easy to ride, so we will find out. Have a look at the view from the highway.


The road up the Canadian border was ok, we were still expecting something worse.

The road on the Canadian side seemed to be even better, it was dry and as good as a highway surface and we arrived the boundary from Dawson City in no time.

Only a couple of miles later, the dirt road ended and we worshiped the bitumen again. That was the last bit of dirt road, well, I should say planed dirt road, in North America. And it seemed that we have manged it without even breaking a limb… 😛  Time to celebrate!

 

A bit further down the road we stopped at the Yukon River to take the ferry to Dawson City. Dawson City is located on the other side where the Klondike feeds into the Yukon River and this was the place where they found gold in the late 18oos. Maybe we find some as well 😀

We found a nice hotel, the Midnight Sun Hotel, settled in and had a look at what we could explore tomorrow.

Date: 23/07
City: Dawson City, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 291
Cumulative kilometre: 54602
Street: One lane paved, road
Weather: Sunny, warm

In the morning we joined a guided tour through the town. It was great. There was a guide showing us around and then a lady appeared, dressed in a historical dress, at different location and told us how it was in the olden days. The restored buildings were in immaculate conditions, all restored as authenticly as possible. Below is a picture of the bank. By the way, the mesh wire in front of the teller was apparently not to prevent people from stealing money, it was mosquito wire attuned to the humongous ones that live here J

Then we had a look at the Red Feather Saloon, where I couldn’t resist having a drink – I’m only posing, honest 😛


Then we went to the post office, which was amazing. Have a look at this building, but keep in mind that in winter you have up to -40 degrees, and they didn’t know much about how to insulate a house. The amount of wood to keep this building warm during the winter was enormous.


I like the original safe in the middle.

After the walk we went back to the hotel, and I had a look what was going on in the street. When I was looking down I saw two BMW’s pulling up, both with European number plates. We met a bit later and it turned out that it was an Irish couple and their friend. They had shipped the bikes from over from Ireland. We were all keen to get to see the Cancan dance performance in Gertie’s Diamond Tooth salon, so planned to meet each other there.

In the evening we went up to the Midnight Dom. The view was spectacular and there was a huge bench – called the top of the world bench – which we had to try out.


I tried to make a picture of the two of us, by putting the photo camera on the bike and set the self timer to 10 sec. The bench was on a small hill, so I had to run up and sit down before the timer expired. On the left hand side you can see one of my multiple attempts to make it. There was always a second missing. The righ picture was taken by somebody else, which we asked after I was completely exhausted 😀


When we returned, it was time for CanCan Show. We found out that there were three difference performance every night, so we thought we have a look at the first performance and go home. After we entered the Saloon I found gold, Yucon Gold, ice cold in a 700ml bottle 😀


We found Lessli, Ilean and Gerald and organized a table after the first performance was finished. We did lots of talking and after the third performance finished, they started to close up already… well it was close to two o’clock after all. So we took a last picture and departed. Below is Lessli, Ilean and Sigrid, me and Gerald.

After finding all that gold, we will start a bit later today and ride towards Whitehorse.

Date: 03/07
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 622
Cumulative kilometre: 50894
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, rain, cold

We packed our noble steads and were hitting direction Tok. We had breakfast/lunch at Otter Falls Cutoff, a gas station with a nice road house. As we found out, we were not the only hungry ones.


The squirl tried to get into our food bag, but it didn’t succed. On the way we passed the Kluane Lake, well have a look yourself.



On the way to the border we came across the first road works where they sprayed Calcium chloride. When we stopped we realised that our gear and bikes looked now like real adventure bikes.


Not long after the road works we hit the Canada/Alaska border.


Since the sun doesn’t set early, we had plenty of time to get to Tok. Here we meet Houston and his parents again, the motorcycle riders we met a couple of days earlier in Dease Creek.

Date: 04/07
City: Tok, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 50894
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, cold

Today is the 4th of July, the USA independence day. There are great celebrations all over the USA, mostly with fire works at night. Having said that, here in Tok, there won’t be any firework; they have enough problems with wild fires in the morning, so they discourage people from having fireworks. Below you can see the smoke covering the sun.

And there is the midsummer night sun, we would not see much of the firework in bright daylight anyway. So we watched the street parade with Houston and his parents. We even got some loot: candy!


Later we went to the country fare, down the street.

I like the vegetable race and the pole climbing.


The pole was covered in soap and some dollar notes hung higher up. If you can get them off the pole they are yours.

Date: 05/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 326
Cumulative kilometre: 51220
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy

Our goal today is Fairbanks, the last town before we go onto the Dalton Highway. At the petrol station we meet Michel and Jeanie, a couple riding two KLRs, we talked for a while and then took off .

It so happens that we find other motor cycle riders at petrol stations. I guess here we are in the middle of the high season and there are not too many towns before the Dalton Highway.

On our way to Fairbanks we had to pass through North Pole. No question we had to stop here to see Santa 😀


They even had a christmas tree for Australia, have a look at left picture at the tree in the middle, it is upside down.


Not long after we arrived in Fairbanks at Svens Basecamp hostel, where we got a warm welcome from Sven and his sister Nadja.

Tomorrow we will get new rear tires for both bikes. We organized that a couple of day before, so they are waiting for us J

Date: 06/07
City: Fairbanks, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre:
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a slow start, Bjoern made breakfast in the kitchen


and we slowly made our way to Adventure Cycle works, where we met Dan and Shawn. They were very patient and didn’t mind me asking questions while they were working.


They replaced both rear tyres and my front tyre. As it turned out, I was lucky since my tube nearly had a puncture, so it got replaced straight away. In addition they recommended a different tyre, Heidenau K60 with a better pattern for off-road riding.

Back in the hostel we looked at the weather forecast and decided to go tomorrow, since it should be sunny for the next couple of days.

Date: 28/06
City: Smithers, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 371
Cumulative kilometre: 48968
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, warm, drizzling

Not much happening today, there was more nice landscape and we were lucky and just avoided the heavy rain. We could see it coming in, but we arrived in Smithers without getting wet. We had looked up Wombat’s and Val’s blog and stayed in the same Fireweed hotel they did.

Date: 29/06
City: Dease Lake, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 599
Cumulative kilometre: 49567
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm, Cloudy, raining

Today we would start to travel Highway 37. It was not clear where we could find accommodation and how far the petrol stops are apart, so we stopped at New Hazelton to get some more information. It looked easy, there should be enough accommodation and fuel stops around.

The tourist office suggested that we have a look at Kitwanga, a small Indian reserve that has an exhibition of totem poles.

The landscape was great, I realy could get used to traveling through this area 😀

We arrived in Dease Lake and found some nice accommodation.

Date: 30/06
City: Upper Liard, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 246
Cumulative kilometre: 49813
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

We started a bit later since we only had 250km to go. Tomorrow is the 1st July where the 146th Canada day is celebrated, so we bought some flags to put them onto our bikes.

We left British Columbia and entered the Yukon today. The landscape was still awesome.

On our way to Dawson Creek we found some nice accomodation, the only disadvantage was that the wifi connection was a bit weak, so Sigrid had to get close to the main house to get connection.

It was the first time that we made contact with the famous Alaskan mosquitos, so Sigrid was not sitting there for very long 😉

Date: 01/07
City: Whitehorse, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 427
Cumulative kilometre: 50240
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, rain, cold

Around 4 AM the mosquitos lined up for breakfast in our room. We couldn’t find where they were coming from, but for every killed mosquito there were at least two new ones, so we left relatively early. Our first break was in Teslin, a road house with a petrol station, where we made lots of new friends.

On the way to Whitehorse it started to rain, so we were really happy when we found a motel with an underground car park.

Date: 02/07
City: Takhini Hot Springs, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 32
Cumulative kilometre: 50272
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm /cloudy, rain, cold

Today we planned to have an easy day and go to the hot springs close by and camp there. We sensibly pitched the tent first and then went to the hot spring.

Darn! There was a power outage, effectively closing down the hot spring. Bummer! Sigrid was not happy…While we talked to the manager we found out that he moved from Berlin to Canada only a couple of years earlier, so we had plenty to talk about and before we noticed the time pass… the power was back on! Yeah! It was so nice and relaxing in the hot spring that I forgot to take pictures :D. Tomorrow we will leave Canada and enter Alaska, the last state on our list!

 

 

Date: 26/06
City: Honeymoon Campground, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 237
Cumulative kilometre: 48170
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm, drizzle

We left in the morning with the idea to take a secondary road to get to Lake Louise. When we arrived at the turnoff we saw a sign: “closed due to flooding”
Hmpf. So we decided to stay on Highway 1. It didn’t took us long to arrive at Lake Louise. What a view!

After a short stroll we continued on the Icefields Parkway, here are just a couple of pictures from different viewpoints.

Below you can see the road that we came on.

Along the way we met a fellow motorcycle rider who was working as a tour guide. He recommended that we have a look at the Athabasca Glacier which we did. Below you have a view from the road onto the Glacier.


There was a possibility to ride close to the Galicier and walk to the shoulder. The next picture is from the car park close to the Glacier. The black dots are people walking to the shoulder.


And here we are, on our way to the shoulder.


The access to the shoulder was closed off. The water under the glacier creates cavities and people can just disapear in them, so that was close enough for us.


On our way we noticed the markers with years on them. They showed where the shoulder of the Galicier was in that year, on the left picture is the marker from 1992. Looking back from here, the marker for 1914 was close to the foot of the other mountain.

It started to get late and when we passed the Honeymoon Campground, so we decided stop here. The view onto the lake was just great.

 

Date: 27/06
City: Prince George, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 427
Cumulative kilometre: 48597
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

Today we were aiming for Prince George. The landscape was again stunning, so we stopped very often to take pictures, below are just a couple of them. There was no hurry, since the sun didn’t start to set before 11PM.

And then we saw the Athabasca Falls, so we had to have a look at them as well. Once more, the view was great, but it was not possible to get one picture of the whole fall.

We contined to Mt. Robson which is the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. Well, he was hiding behind the clouds a bit, but you can get the idea of how large he is.

In the parking lot we met a group of four guys and a girl on bikes. We started to chat and they told us that they are part of a rapid response unit. These are the people which are flown in by helicoter to fight wild fires, we were impressed!

We continued, and later on had a short break at a river. Sigrid couldn’t resist, she had to dip here feet into the ice-cold water. Well, I volunteered to take the pictures, somebody has to do it, we can’t just both go and freeze our toes off 😛

When we left the parking lot we saw a new sign, I thought it looked cute.

We arrived in Prince George and had to take a picture of Mr. P. G. 😀

Date: 19 – 20/06
City: Hope, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 263
Cumulative kilometre: 46972
Street: Paved Highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain/ fresh

We settled our noble steeds and were ready to leave around 10AM. Tad and Gaila gave us last instruction how to prevent back pain during traveling, so we had a short yoga session in the garageJ. Now prepared for the road, we said good bye to our friends, and drove off.


Tad recommend that we  take a small detour to ride via Chuckanut Drive instead of the highway, which was a really good suggestion. We really enjoyed it, thanks Tad!!

Just before the border it started to drizzle, so we put our raingear on and went through the border. Not long after, the drizzle turned into a downpour, so we took it easy on the highway and looked for accommodation in Hope, our destination for today. And we found a great hotel with hot tub and a heated pool for a great price.


The next morning it was raining even harder than the previous evening, so we decided to sit in the hot tub a bit longer and have a look at the weather tomorrow. We got a mail from Gerald, a guy we met in Nasca, Peru. He invited us to his house not far from here, so we loosly made an appointment for tomorrow. We started to hear news that large areas in Alberta are flooded  and that roads are closed. As we found out, one of the roads is the one we wanted to take to Banff. Let’s see how it goes, we will have to take it one step at a time

Date: 21/06
City: Pritchard, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 289
Cumulative kilometre: 47261
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

The weather looked much better today. Looking at the road report showed us that the road to Banff is still closed due to high river levels caused by the rain last night. It was still cloudy but the heavy rain had stopped. So we packed up and left to meet Gerald. The road was in pristine condition and it was enjoyable to follow the meandering river. When we arrived at Gerald’s house we were greeted by two curious horses.


We settled in and not long after Mike, his friend, came over to say hello. We talked for a while when he mentioned that his horses need new shoes and that the farrier would do this tomorrow morning. Great, we’ll check it out, since I haven’t seen a Ferrier at work. We talked for a while and after dinner Gerald showed us around his property. He has some hundred chickens and when we told him that we had four and would bring them to the Vet if they got sick, he smiled.


The two horse that greeted us where Mike’s, so we had a short stroll to see Geralds horses which were on another field.

After a nice salmon dinner we chatted for a while before going to bed. What a pleasant day.

Date: 22/06
City: Halcyon Hot Springs, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 318
Cumulative kilometre: 47579
Street: City roads
Weather: Sunny, warm

After breakfast we went to a place where Mike’s horses got new shoes and a pedicure. It was the first time that I saw how it’s done.


We watched the farrier for a while. Then we returned to Gerald’s house, packed the bikes, took a couple pictures before we said good bye.


We decided to make a detour and stay at a hot spring, and see when the road to Banff is open again. So we followed the scenic Highway One and when it started to rain, we pulled in at a rest stop. By chance this was the place where the last spike was driven to finish the Ocean to Ocean railway connection.


We put our raingear on and continued to our final location a hot spring. To get to the hot spring we had to make a ferry crossing, which was not that exciting since it was pouring down when we crossed the river.

After a short ride we arrived at the Halcyon Hot Springs, let’s say we didn’t camp since it was raining; instead we took a nice block house.

The pool was nice and warm, so we stayed there until sunset, the view from there was just amazing.


At night we looked at the internet and found out that the road to Banff was open again!

Date: 23/06 – 25/06
City: Banff, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 423
Cumulative kilometre: 48002
Street: single/double lane highway
Weather: Sunny, cloudy, rainy, foggy/ warm, cold

We couldn’t resist having a dip in the morning before we left.

Today the rain was gone so we went back over the ferry to Highway One. This time the ferry crossing was really enjoyable.

The scenery on the highway looks more impressive when it doesn’t rain.

The next mountain pass had a bit of fog, which looked great.


The road to Banff has been open, but everything south or east from Banff was still closed. When we arrived in Banff we got an idea why. The part of the park was flooded by the river close bye.


In Banff we got a nice hotel with a great view from the room, have a look.


I really like this area with the beautiful scenery. The next few days we took some time for maintenance, strolled through Banff and hiked to the hoodoos, a stone formation that looks like a column. The view was as always fantastic and the sign posting for the tracking path was, well, lets say fair :P. Sometimes we were not sure if we were on the right way or if we were walking in a dry river bed. I think was possibly was both. 😀

When we arrived, there were tour busses, that’s when we realised that we could have followed the road….But what would be the fun in that? 😛

Sigrid did well with her leg getting over that terrain.


On our way we saw some Ground squirrels and met some deer which weren’t bothered by us at all.


Arriving back in Banff, we decided to have a look around before we returned to the hotel. We had a look at the Dominion Park Branch. In this building Canadas first National Park was declared in 1885. The building looked great and the view back to Banff and the mountains behind was just awesome.


Tomorrow we will start our last leg, getting up to Alaska and then to Prudhoe Bay.

Date: 31/08
City: Grand Falls, Montana
Miles ridden: 214
Cumulative miles: 11618

Since we had an indoor pool, we went for a swim in the morning.


Then we had breakfast and packed up to get over the border and sort our I93 form out. After a 30 minutes ride we arrived at the Canada/US border. The officer was very friendly and supportive, and after paying $6 each we got our new I93 form. It really was that simple. We were all happy that it went so well and we could stay in the US until February next year. (Well, technically we will leave the US beginning of October). The landscape has now changed to large plains which was not as exciting as the Glacier NP. We stopped in a town called Two Medicine at the dinosaur center which has the world largest dinosaur on display.

 

The dinosaur was a replica of bones found nearby, it was a quite impressive size, I couldn’t get it into one photo.

There were plenty of other exhibits

and we could have spent at least a few more hours there, but it was late and we would like to make it to Grand Falls tonight. So we mounted our bikes and rode to Grand Falls. The plan is to get to Custer’s last stand in the next two days and then continue to Rapid City to get our bike service done.