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: 09/08
City: Seattle, Washington
Kilometres ridden: 67
Cumulative kilometre: 56908
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We meet Dave last year at the horizon unlimited meeting and he mentioned that we should visit him when we pass through Seattle the next time. With that in mind, Sigrid contacted Dave via e-mail and he was happy to see us on the weekend. So the plan for today was getting from the ferry, find a McDonalds, verify via the free internet that the world was still turning and then ride to Dave’s place. This went through my head when I looked out of the cabin window early in the morning and noticed a beautiful sunrise. It’s not very often that I’m up so early, so I had to take some pictures.

Not long after we arrived in Bellingham which was covered in fog. It looked like an acient mystic city.


From the ferry we rode torwards Dave’s home, with a short stop a McDonalds, just to see what the world was doing in the last three days. We had no internet conectivity on the ferry, so we had IWS (Internet Withdraw Symptons). Oh and finally we’ve got some response to our add in Craigslist, so our internet session took a bit longer then we thought. After setting off again we found an intersting street sign 🙂

When we arrived a bit later Ray, Dave’s son, welcomed us. Not long after, Dave arrived and he showed us around. I must admit, I really like his fully equipped workshop, it is a man’s dream. A shed filled with all the machinery you can think off. His workshop also has a serious side; Dave designed and is selling a rugged toolbox for a 1200GS. While we were talking about our trip, he fixed one of our auxiliary food pegs, which bent too far to the front. Dave was using an Arc welder and I watched curiously, since I have no idea about welding.

The same day Greg arrived. Greg is a fellow motorcycle rider from California who was just passing through. Greg and Dave met on an – interesting – guided Mexico tour. They had a lot of story’s and anecdote to share about this trip. Below is a picture of Greg on the left and Dave on the right.

In the evening we saw a deer with her fawn, just walking in Dave’s garden and eating the plums lying on the ground.

Tomorrow we will visit Vancouver for a couple of days, before we return to the Seattle biker retreat, Ted’s & Gaila’s casa 🙂

Date: 06/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We got up at 2:00 AM and packed the bikes.

We arrived at the ferry terminal in time, two hours before the ferry leaves. After getting all the paper work done, we queued and waited for the ferry to arrive. The roads around Juneau are limited, the road from the ferry ends in 24miles.

This time is was not so easy to tie the bikes down, since there were only anker points on one side of each bike, which meant that my tie-downs were too short. Luckily, a fellow bike rider had some spare and lent them to us.

In the end we tied both bikes down and moved into our canine.

After we settled in we went to the deck and let the landscape pass by. Below are some pictures of the first leg to Sitka.

And then we arrived in Sitka and hopped on a bus for a guided tour.

First we visited the St. Michaels Cathedral which had an amazing interior.



This is even more impressive when we heard that the cathedral burned down to the ground. The towns people could not extinguish the fire since the water was frozen! Instead they formed a human chain and moved as many items as possible from the church to a safe area, even the heavy chandelier! From here we had a look at the fort and continued to the smallest National Park in Alaska. Part of the park were Salmon breeding grounds. The salmon on the right hand side are half a meter or larger.

We thought that would be an ideal spot to catch salmon, but we have learned that the salmon doesn’t taste nice when they start to swim upstream to bread. The salmon actually stops feeding. Close by was a park with plenty of totem poles. The tour guide told us that there are different types of totem poles, some tell a story, some show that the area is owned by a particular clan and some are at a house entry.


Some of the totem poles were located in a building with other artifacts such as masks or clothes.

Now it was time to head back to the ferry. In the mean time the tent city at the back of the ferry got bigger. I really like that the shipping company allows people to pitch a tent instead of insisting that they hire a cabine.

That night we went to bed early as we’d been up since 2 AM.

Date: 07/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a beautiful sunrise.

After taking these pictures I went back to bed, life can be hard. A couple of hours later we got up and went to the restaurant, having a great long breakfast, with plenty of coffee. In the meantime, fog started to appear which allowed for interesting pictures.

At lunch time we arrived in Ketchican, where we took a guided tour again.

We visited again a park with totem poles, this time we got more information. Some stories are owned by a wood carver, so nobody else can tell the story, some belong to a clan and some are public domain.

We also got some explanation about the carvings inside and outside of a house.

Not long after that we returned to the ferry and left Ketchikan. The sunset looked great, while a solid cloud front was coming from one side, we could see the sun disappearing in the part that wasn’t covered.

Date: 08/08
City: Ferry, Alaska
Kilometers ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometer: 56841
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We didn’t stop today at all, so it was a day for just sitting on the ferry and letting the landscape pass by. In fact, it was so relaxing that we only took pictures on two occasions, first when we saw some Wales and second at the sunset. I was a bit slow with the camera, so the whales had nearly disappeared by the time I took the picture.

The sunset took its time, so I got some pictures of it

Tomorrow we will leave the ferry and visit Dave, a fellow motorcycle rider we met at the Horizon Unlimited meeting last year. He offered us accommodation when we are in Washington state, so we happily accepted.

Date: 03/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden:
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, warm

Got up earlier, went to the lake to see bears, no success, but we saw a bald eagle on other side of the river.

We went back, made breakfast, packed up and sat on the veranda where we had Wi-Fi and did some communicating with Australia.

Around noon we went to town and had lunch before riding to the ferry. After we checked in we had plenty of time, so we thought we give the bear another chance to show up, still no success. But the river looked like the one from the John West advertisements , all the guys lined up and fishing for Salmon.

Later we went back to the ferry, hopped on, tied the bikes down and had a stunning four hour cruise.

The glaciers were just passing in front of us, one bigger than the next.

 

 

When we arrived in Juneau, we were intrigued by a large Glacier just behind the town which was something worthwhile exploring during our stay.

When we arrived in our hotel, it was around 22:00 and it started to get dark again. The hotel had some rustic charm and they tried to keep the interior as historic as possible. Well they changed the gas lights to electric lights, I think that might have been all 😛

 

Date: 04/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Rain, warm

It was raining the whole day. In the afternoon, we decided to get our raingear out and walk around a bit. We went to the harbour where all cruise liner moored. It is hard to see the sheer size of these boats until you get a bit closer to one.

The Radiance of the Sea already looked quite impressive from the back, but from the side you could see that they even had lifts to bring passengers onto their deck.

 

We went a bit further into the touristy area, where they had plenty of Jewlery stores. They were really empty, but looking at the size of these ships, I can imagine that all the shops are full if one or two of the cruize ships arrive. We found a large bear, so we took the mandetory pictures.

 

Since it was still raining, we decided to go to the pub and have dinner there. Here we realized that we would miss out on one of Juneaus main attraction, the Goldfish Race… Bummer 😉

Date: 05/08
City: Juneau, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 56841
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, Cloudy, Rain, warm

In the morning we looked out of the window and it was still raining, but looking at the weather forecast gave us hope, the rain should stop in the afternoon. So we took it easy, had a loooong breakfast and got ready around noon to visit the glacier. When we arrived at the glacier the rain stopped and the sun started to poke through the clouds. The view onto the glacier was stunning.

We walked around and found a board walk leading away from the Glacier, which made us curious. It was leading along a small lake to a tiny river and there were bears fishing for salmon. It was a mother with her two cubs, we were excited.

 

Below you can easily see the salmon in the water.

And then we found a porcupine, it was sitting in a tree. Somebody showed it to us, otherwise I would have missed it. I didn’t know that porcupines could climb trees. On our way back to the glacier we found a young porcupine munching grass on the side of the board walk. We could have a close look at one and could find out where its head and tail was :D.

 

We decided to get a bit closer to the glacier. The size is always deceiving, so I zoomed into the water fall on the right hand side and you have the people as a reference.

 

After walking along the park for a while, we decided to buy some food and nibbles for our three day ferry trip. Val and Wombat mentioned that the prices on the ferry were a bit steep. We went to a shopping centre. I liked the totem poles at the drive through pharmacy.

We bought what we needed and also got some credit for my mobile phone. The plan is to use it when we try to sell our bikes. Getting a connection with our supplier was not as easy, I had no reception in our room, but some on the road. So here am I standing, on the road to refill my phone account. Sigrid thought it looked funny.

By the way, have a look at my outfit, BMW boots, jacket and T-Shirt, the only thing missing is the bike. Gaila actually infected me with that thought, she lent her F650 to me… Evil 😉 But I digress…
After I managed to refill my phone account without getting run over by a car, we went on a short sight seeing tour. All of the sudden I found proof that the Roswell incident was true – an Alien was staring at me from a shop …
but he didn’t say “Don’t run I’m your friend!”  (Joke from the film Mars attack and from our Network games).

We were not sure why they put the alien there, it was an empty shop for rent, the only item in the shop was the figurine 🙂.
Finally we went back to the hotel, since we had to get up at 2AM to get to the ferry.

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: 16/07
City: Trapper Creek, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 488
Cumulative kilometre: 53425
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a dip in the hot spring in the morning which felt great! Unfortunately it made us both somewhat more tired, so packing was really slow. After we finished packing we took a couple of pictures of the surrounding before we started. It looked like some people ran out of gas and couldn’t return to Fairbanks 🙂


The day was sunny and warm, the roads were easy and the landscape beautiful. The landscape got more interesting once we passed denali park. The park is known for its hiking sites in summer and skiing\dogslide activity in winter.


We were jawning the whole day which must have been the result of the swim in the hot spring this morning. So when we filled up the bikes in Trapper Creek, we decided to call it a day and finish the last 186km tomorrow.

Date: 17/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 186
Cumulative kilometre: 53611
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We had a pleasant ride and took our time to see if we would find some Moose. We stopped at plenty of swamp and lake areas but couldn’t see any. Well I guess we have to wait until we are in Anchorage, apparently they are in the parks quite frequently.

We went to an accommodation that was recommended by some German bicycle riders we met in Fairbanks. When we arrived, Wilber – the owner – told us that he had a wireless router but didn’t know how to connect it, so we thought we make ourselves useful. We went food shopping and then to a restaurant visited by many locals, as suggested by Wilber. On the corner was a gift shop, have a look at the name 🙂


The restaurant was great, you could watch the chef prepare your meal. That was the first place since quit a while were the oysters were affordable, and as everyone knows with oysters one must have a glass of champagne 😛


After we went back, we connected and configured the wireless router, which brought memories back. Do I really have to go back to work, can’t I just keep travelling???

Date: 18/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 53611
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

Okay, today was dedicated to Moose spotting. So we went to the tourist information to get some ideas about good spotting sites.

 

Apparently in winter you can find Moose in the streets of Anchorage, they prefer the cleaned roads to the deep snow. When we walked through the streets, we didn’t see any moose, I found only a Grizzly bear, but I managed to outrun him.

Some natives were so interested in watching me be silly that they didn’t move any more….

Sigrid found a Reindeer but that was not too exiting either.

Ok, on our mission to see a Moose, we went up on a parking lot where we had a great view over Anchorage, so it would be easy to spot a moose in the town. The view over Anchorage was great. I didn’t know that Anchorage had so many mountains close by.


Anyway, we couldn’t see any moose on the road, so we decided to visit three different parks. On the first two we didn’t see any moose at all. We came up with different theories why, maybe, there are no Moose and they created these animals only to boost tourism, like Nessy from Loch Ness or the Wulpertinger. And then, in the last park, we saw it. A moose on the side of the road, can you spot it in the picture below? It is right in the middle of the picture, in the middle of the fallen tree, on the left side of the power box.

Okay, here are pictures with a zoom.


I guess that moose didn’t get the memo otherwise it would have gone before we arrived 😛

To be honest, I think it may have been the a guy from the tourist information wearing a moose costume ;).

Anyway, mission acomplished, we have seen a free roaming moose!

 

Date: 19/07
City: Anchorage, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 188
Cumulative kilometre: 53799
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

Today we decided to have a look at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. The centre takes care of animals that wouldn’t survive in nature. The animals are not in cages, they are in large fenced in areas. The road to the centre was beautiful, meandering along the Turnagain Arm, which is part of the Cook Inlet. It reminded me a bit on the great ocean road, well with tall mountains in the background.

.

On one viewpoint we read about the Boring Tide, which occurs twice a day. The wave created can reach up to 6 feet (1.8m) and floods the whole inlet in one hit.

Unfortunately you need a very large difference between low and high tide and the next one would be in six days, too late for us. So we continued to the Conservation Centre and here we found some moose. We could look at them close enough to ascertain that these are not guys in a moose suits 😉
Well, they would have a long shift with 21 hours of day light 😉

Moose are much taller than I expected, they are the same height as horses.


There were also some Black Bears and Grizzly Bears. They look cute, but I’m happy that a fence was between us.

The grizzly got some pieces of Salmon as appetieser, I guess that would be enough to eat for me for a week.


Another Grizzly was just relaxing in the water before having a look at the visitors….


We also saw some Musk Ox roaming around.


And then was there the Lynx and the Bald Eagle.


That was a great start of the day. Our next goal was to go up to a shoulder of a glacier and touch it. The best opportunity was the Byron Glacier, not even 70km from here and only a short easy way to walk. Off we went. After getting information from the tourist office and making a small detour, we arrived at the parking lot of the Byron Glacier Trail.

After a short walk, we had a great view onto the glacier.

And here we were, at the edge of the glacier and our Diddles as well.


On our way back we made a stop at the Portage Lake, have a look at the view.

Sigrid made a new friend in the Tourist Information.

On our way back to Anchorage, we stopped at a lake on the side of the road. Sigrid had to put her feet in, this time she couldn’t stop smiling because she was completely frozen, even her face 😛


On our way back we stopped at a wet land with a great board walk, hoping to find some Moose. We didn’t see any Moose but two Bald Eagles, which was great. What a day, tomorrow we will start our trip direction Dawson City, maybe we’ll find some gold in the Klondike river 😀

 

Date: 15/07
City: Chena Hot Springs, Alaska
Kilometres ridden: 105
Cumulative kilometre: 52937
Street: One lane highway
Weather: Sunny, warm

We packed our bikes, had breakfast and took a couple of pictures of Sven’s Basecamp Hostel, our home for the last couple of days.

When we said good by, Sven just disassembled his IPhone to put a new screen in. I would be interested to see if he got it assembled again, after seeing all the tiny screws and connectors that he had to undo….

After saying good bye we were on a mission, we went to the northern most Irish pub in the Americas; the Big I.

Me visiting the Big-I from the street 🙂

Now we have seen both southern most (Ushuaia) and northern most (Fairbanks) Irish pubs. We continued for an hour before we arrived at the Chena Hot Spring. First we booked an entrance pass for the ice museum, on the way I saw a brown bear…

Then we marched to the ice museum. At this outside temperature it was hard to imagine that we could freeze, but we took our Gerbings Jacket and Gloves, which was a good decision. Here is the building from the outside.

And here is the inside. Everything is made of ice, even the chandelier.

There were three different bed rooms to visit, each with a different theme.

Outside of the bed rooms there were some ice sculptures. Below are two pictures of a rose in an ice ball, on the left with flash and on the right without.

Below is a knight fight, pictures taken from two different sides.

Have a closer look where the right knight got hit by the lance of his opponent.

Below you can see chandeliers and a tiger with a skull.

And there was the fire place, hand when you got cold hand ;-).

And the ice bar where you could purchase a drink in a hand carved glass. We didn’t want to try it, but then.. the bar tender was freezing.

I tried to get a good picture of the chirstmas tree, but none of those really showed it properly.You could either see the tree with the different colurs or us.

After all that freezing, we got changed and hopped into the hot spring, finally warm again.

Tomorrow we will start to make our way to Anchorage, the largest town in Alaska.