Alaska Run day 6

Today proved to be a long one. Mike and I got up around 6:30 and were on the road after breakfast about 7:30. This place had breakfast for us, but it was nothing like yesterday. Cereal and a banana for me.


We traveled on Hwy 97 for quite aways. There was lots of scenery.


The country here is beautiful, but it could use some rain.

We turned off onto Hwy 99 when we came across Seton Indian Reservation. It looked like a post card.


We are lunch there at Reynold's Hotel. We had Buffalo burgers. There were other bikers having lunch there too. Some left when we got there and others arrived after we did. Apparently this was the place to go.
You never know just you might see on a road trip. We ran across this guy. I had to stop and ask him what he was doing. He said he considered himself a street artist. He was heading toward some gathering of artists. We wished him well and off we went again.
WE began to climb into mountains again. This time it was the North Cascades. This it the "back side" of Whistler.
Our day wouldn't be complete without more gravel and some construction
delays.
While we sere stopped, I noticed a stop sign for the "other direction." It is written in "First Nation." The indians up there are of course, not native Americans, they call them First Nation.

More climbing up towards the snow. We were up around 4000 feet today. It was over 70 degrees there.

At Whistler, we stoppod for a butt break. Besides, I had to get something for my grand daughter.
Some of the people we saw there were pretty tall. They were dressed up for a party. After buying a few things atWhistler, we headed back down the mountains toward Vancouver BC. The traffic got heavy when we got near town. We hadn't been in any traffic to speak of for a whole week. We found we hadn't missed it much.



Mike got pretty good at taking pictures with his camera. He took this one of us while waiting our turn at US Customs.
We Only had to wait about 10-15 minutes and we were through. The guy I had grilled me about the Yukon. He said he had a Road King and he has always wanted to go up there, but wasn't sure of the roads. I told him that if we had made it, so could he. He handed my passport back with a smile and I was on my way.

Here I am heading home after about 3000 miles of fun on my HOG. Both Mike and I have CB radios on our bikes and they sure came in handy on this trip. We had great communications so we could coordinate turns, stops, fuel needs etc. And we didn't have to scream to hear each other.


One last stop in Arlington for gas and dinner. Denny's was right next door to the Shell station so we just ate there. Pot roast and iced tea for me.

After 6 days on the road and 3064 miles, my bike was in bad need of a wash job...


and a new rear tire. This one is beyond worn out. Time to get the tools out.

All in all this was a pretty fun week for me. Mike and I had fun seeing some new things and we added another state to our list of places we have been in. For me, Alaska was my 34th state. The Yukon we decided to add on as a bonus. That added nearly 1000 miles to our trip, and took us through some very scenic places. It was a great decision to go up there.

Hope you enjoyed reading about my travels.

Alaska Run day 5

Today we used NO RAIN GEAR. Any day like that on a motorcycle trip is a good one. We left Ft Saint John after our free buffet breakfast. We ate like kings- (this was one of THOSE places). We gassed up and headed for Dawson Creek. Which was our planned destination last night. Going is slower then we figured on the Alaskan Highway.

Of course we ran the Alaska Highway backwards and ended up at it's beginning. It felt sorta good to have that route in my rear view mirror. It was a tough ride in spots. Our bikes looked it too.

We rode by a car wash and were unable to pass it up. The bikes didn't exactly get detailed but we knocked off most of the heavy stuff.

We didn't know it then, but the wash wouldn't last long.

A few hours into the day we passed by Chetwynd, BC. Mike said we had found a place for me (above). Below Mike found "his moose." We have seen just about every kind of critter up here except for moose. We looked hard for one. This one was carved out of wood.

Back on the road... stopped by more construction delays along Hwy 97. They were getting to be all too common.

Many times we had to follow the pilot car at 10 kilometers (about 6 miles per hour). That was tough in the loose gravel. We would have been more stable at a slightly higher speed in that soft stuff. Especially going up hill.

After leaving Chetwynd, we figured we had plenty of gas until the next place. Trouble was the next place was more than 180 miles away. That took us by surprise because towns had been every 20-30 miles or so before that. We happened upon a construction worker who was on his way home for the weekend. He sold us a can of gas, which we split. That got us into Prince George. Where we ate lunch (at 5PM).

Here is a shot of some of the scenery along Hwy 97. Most of it is what we call a secondary road. The rest of it is third'n-dary (not as good as a secondary road). This was about 75 miles north of Prince George.

When we got to Prince George we had to go to the Harley store and get Tee shirts (the real reason for this trip, of course). While we were there we found this girl. She was wearing a fox tail (brown with a white tip), which you can see if you look closely. We felt this was just the thing for this blog today. She claimed to have ridden that thing from LA to Prince George. A looooooonnnnggggg ride on that thing. We think she may have fibbed a bit. She said her name was "Fox Tail Girl." OK... why not?

Our target was Whistler but the construction delays cost us several hours. We bagged it for the night at Quesnel. The last two days added up to make us about 318 miles short.

From here is it 581 miles to Gig Harbor. Barring anything (else) unforeseen, we should be home tomorrow night. I have worn my rear tire down to just about nothing. As of this evening, I have 2,460 miles on this trip and 40,974 miles on my bike.

Alaska Run 8-18-11

My bike turned over 40,000 miles just about the time we arrived in Watson Lake yesterday.

We left Watson Lake after having breakfast at Kathy's Kitchen. It was a hellofa lot better than our dinner last night. The temp was cold again to start with but it got warmer around 9:30 or 10.

It wasn't long before we came to this sign:

Then we saw this:


Some park ranger in a pick up truck was trying to herd a buffalo along the roadway with his siren and horn. He kept running up on the guy as I was trying to take a picture.

I was able to get this one, but from the wrong angle. That guy sorta pi**ed me off.



After a little while I came round a corner and there was a Caribou trotting down the road. By the time I stopped got the camera out and turned on, he was a ways off. Mike got a better shot from his angle (below).


Right after Mike took this picture, the Caribou turned around and trotted right in front of me. Of course I had my camera turned off by then. I could have spit on him if I wanted to.

We ran into a lot of Caribou a few miles further. There was a whole mess of them. Of course by the time the camera came out, they were in the wind.



Later, we saw a young goat climbing around some rocks next to the roadway. You don't see those too often. I felt lucky to get a shot of one. Notice his coloring compared to the rocks.



Every now and then we got backed up for road construction. We had to wait for the pilot car to take us across. The road was closed except for one lane while they fixed it up


Once they got us going we became swallowed up in dust. After our bikes were wet from the rain it made a spectacular mess.

Here is one of the many rain clouds we ran into today. When I saw it I said to mike, via our CB radios:" %^&!! #$%>> &*((#@$." (Translation: Hey Mike, I can see by the distant rain cloud that we should seek shelter soon before the precipitation falls on us).


We did have some magnificent scenery today. We passed through the Canadian Rockies. There was more scenery than you could shake a stick at. I had to stop and take a couple pictures for you fine folks to see.




Here's another one.


And yet another. We had to soak our eye balls after all of this stuff we saw.



We came to Ft Nelson around 2:00. It was time to eat something.



Of course I had to wash it down with something....


After over 550 miles we came to Ft St John. We tried to stay at the Super 8 (its cheap) but it was full. So were a couple others we tried. We finally found space at the Quality Inn (pricy- but it came with a buffet breakfast)
That wraps up day 4. All together, we have about 2000 miles in this trip. We are still over 1000 miles from home.

Alaska Run 8-17-11

I just had tome to put some pictures on here this morning. I will finish this later today.


After leaving our luxurious hotel in Hyder, we crossed back over into BC and ate our breakfast at this place in Stewart.


It was one of those places where they encourage everyone to sign their walls, door frame, ceiling etc. I found an open space on a ceiling beam.



Here is one view from Bear Glacier Park. The clouds hid the rest. We saw more the day before, but the rain was coming down sideways then. This is the area where we saw so many bears.

You can see by the sign that bears are common in this area. This sign post is at an intersection in the road. We came up one way and will leave the other, towards the Yukon.


If you look at the graphic above, after leaving Hyder (the bottom of the red line) we are now slightly up from that where the yellow line joins the red one. We will be following the red road up to the Yukon. After that (Thursday, we will follow the "loop" around to the right (off of the graphic) across the Canadian Rockies and back down to Prince George (which we cam through on tuesday) and back home.

Here we are on gravel going to the Yukon. We had several patches of it along the way. Our bikes are FILTHY. The temperature started in the high 30, climbed a bit into the mid 40s then dropped again as we climbed the hills. It was a cold ride.


Dease Lake is an Indian Reservation. We gassed up and ate lunch there.


Of course we had to stop at "Jade City" and get some stuff for our women. The sign there said all dogs must be on a leash. I asked her if that applied to Road Dawgs. "Yes, of course" she said. You know the rest.


After a few more miles of rain, cold, gravel and other fun stuff, we made it to the YUKON. We are either tougher than we thought or we are stupid (we are OK with either way).

I guess they don't like radar detectors in the Yukon. We don't either, but that's another story. Which reminds me..... I haven't written a ticket in OVER A WEEK.


Our trusty steeds were filthified for sure. We didn't know it yet, but they got it worse the next day.


We made it to Lake Watson. Home of the "Sigh Post Forest."

The sign post forest was started in 1942 by Carl Lindley. A home sick GI from Danville, Ill. While working on the Alaska Highway, he put up a sign pointing the way to his home town. Others followed his lead and now there are over 10,000 signs pointing from hell to breakfast.


We pulled into the first place we saw. We were beat.


Besides, they had this sign (it HAD to be good). But it really wasn't. The service really sucked.

This was one of the few places I did not tip after dinner. If you come up here. Don't stay here.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures tomorrow!!!