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!!!

Tuesday 8-16-11

We made it to Alaska! Today was a lot more arduous then yesterday. The temperatures were in the 30s and 40s most of the day. I had to stop in Prince George where I bought another jacket from the Costco there.

We had lots of rain and road construction today, which made our progress slow. Out trek was 12 hours today (about 625 miles). We saw some pretty nice scenery going through the mountain passes. There were MANY bears along the roadway. I had to clamp on the binders twice to avoid a couple of them. We had to slow down because of our wet windshields and glasses (couldn't see). Several bears were close enough to kick as we rode by. It made me nervous not knowing of they would charge at us, but they did not. I passed by two bears less than 10 ft away (close enough for me). One of them was HUGE.

We stayed at Williams Lake, BC the first night. It was dark when we got through with dinner, so I waited until the morning to take a picture of it.

Before heading up to Hyder, we gassed up. How about that price?? (about 5.20 a gal)

They had a drive through liquor store in Hope BC. They were closed (dammit).

Vandehoof is apparently the center of BC. I figured something like that needed a picture.

Up in the mountains (somewhere) we passed by a place where the salmon have to make it through a narrow opening in the river. The rapids were swift there and the Indians were catching them in nets with long handles as they jumped. IT was sorta fun to watch. Up by the road they were selling smoked salmon. I didn't get any but it smelled GREAT.

We stopped for this guy. He actually looked both ways before he crossed.
It's hard to judge his size without anything to reference, but this guy was BIG.

It rained on us for about 150 miles. This shot was up in Bear Glacier Park. The clouds came and went all day. At the particular time this picture was taken, it is hard to see the mountains and the many many glaciers. They were stunning.

We are in Hyder, AK. We have no cable hook up, no phone the radio does not even work here. I have a room with no plug ins and an relying on battery power. Uploading pictures is PAINFUL. I will try to do 2 of them for you. I will finish today's posting tomorrow from Watson Lake in the Yukon if all goes well. This is the rain forest and everything I have is a bit soggy. Hopefully some of it will dry by morning.

We pulled into Alaska about 8:15 PM. Tired as dogs and wet as salmon. The road was one you had to watch every second.

Below is the "SELASKA INN" the only place to stay in town. It was $49.95 ($25 each). We got what we paid for.

Above was our spacious room. They called it a "sleeping room." It was so small we had to go outside to change our minds. He turned on the heat and hung our things to dry. Then we went to dinner.

The luxury bathroom was down the hall and right.

Lastly, we ate at the only diner in town. It was Halibut and beer for me (I earned it). I slept like a dead man that night.

More fun coming tomorrow.

(I had some computer trouble today and was unable to get it fixed. It was an Internet Explorer update, but my internet access (at this crappy hotel) failed during the download. I was unable to re-do it for some reason. I was able to get this posting done, but I don 't have time to get today's done - for Aug 17th. You'll have to bear with me. Sorry)

2011 Alaska Run 8-15-11

Today was an easy day. I left home and met Mike Romaine at the station where we took off (late by my standards). Mike had just come home the day before from another ride and needed to "re-tool" for this ride, so we met at 9:30 AM. That gave me time to go and get breakfast at Marcia's Silver Spoon. I got to the station early, so I read my (work) e-mail while I waited for him.

We ran right up I-5 to Belingham where we turned off onto 452. That took us to Sumas and into Canada.
The wait at the border was only about 5 minutes.

Here is a picture of Goofy Mike waiting his turn...

and being grilled by the nasty lady (he didn't like her too much.)



Before we knew it, we were in British Coumbia.


Mike took this shot of me going down the roadway. We had an easy day of it. Good weather, good roadway, not too much traffic. Although for August, it could have been warmer.




We went by Hells Gate- which is a particularly nasty spot in the Frazier River where the rapids have smashed many boats. Fortunately, we didn't have that trouble. Mike said "We went to Hells Gate and they wouldn't let us in." What a nut.



We passed through a lot of tunnels today on Hwy 97. My GPS kept saying "You have lost reception. Search for satellites?" After awhile I felt like saying: "What do you %$*^&! think?" We were in a lot of mountains for a good part of the day. There were tons of scenery.
I have a couple shots of the mountains we went through but these shots don't really do it justice. There were a lot of good places to pull off and take pictures, but Mike did most of them on the fly.
Here is the last one for the day. Toward the end of our day the got a bit chilly and we had to stop and put our coats back on. It will be cool in the morning and it is supposed to rain where we are headed.
All in all today was a fun one. We stayed at the Super 8 in Williams Lake BC but I forgot to get a picture of it. We ate at an Indian Casino just down the block. They have real beer here in Canada, not like the watered-down stuff at home.



That's all for today.

2011 Memorial Ride

July 9 and 10th 2011. Our 8th annual Law Enforcement Memorial Ride. We had about 77 participants signed up this year.

We were blessed with great weather. Jimmy Bass (our president) gave the pre-ride briefing to make sure we were all on the same page.

It's always great to see old friends we haven't seen in awhile.

We rode through the Cascades and made our way to Wenatchee, where we had our gathering.

A couple stops along the way made it comfortable for our participants. Rob used to be my old partner. He works another department now.

Roman and Diane had so much fun on the ride they kept on going to Yellowstone. He will be going with me to Alaska next month.

Marv and K-9 (Chris) are a couple of our newer members.

I got so carried away with things I didn't take very many pictures this year. This one I got from a friend who caught me at one of our stops.

This is a shot of setting up the slide show for later in the banquet hall (below).

Most folks told us they had a good time. After the dust cleared we began getting ready for next year.

I leave for Alaska in Aug 15th, 2011.

More about that later.

Toy Run Dec 4th 2010

Today I went on the Olympia Toy Run. The thermometer on my garage read 32 degrees (no ice, but just barely). My leathers felt good on the freeway today as the wind was a bit brisk.

The Toy Run is a yearly event which benefits the Salvation Army. The price to enter the event is a donated toy for under-privledged kids. I just brought $10 (an option for those of us with an aversion to the mall).

My neighbor Kevin and I went, but first we had to stop for breakfast at the Sunset Grill in Gig Harbor (I forgot to take a picture of the place). We figured all the restaurants near the event in Lacy would be full (we were right).

We arrived at the starting point about 10:30 and joined the ranks. There were many people stationed at every turn waving us in to the proper places. By the time everyone had arrived there were well over 11,000 bikes there. They packed us in like sardines. This is the first event I had ever been to with that much iron.

All sorts of people came.

This guy almost got eaten by a wolf (I wasn’t aware we had to be on the look-out for those things here).

There were bikes from hell to breakfast. This is just one small corner of the parking lot (there were several parking lots).

The Seattle Cossicks were there. I had never seen them before.

They did some of the usual things you would expect to see.

They also did some "not so usual things" too.

All of those guys have OLD Harleys from the 30s and 40s. I mean hand shifters, foot clutches and kick starters. They were pretty fun to watch.

See:

And this...

After the performance, we got on our bikes and headed out on “The Toy Run.” It was only about 5 miles long and ended in Olympia. The streets were lined with thousends of people watching and the event was escorted by the Lacy and Olympia Police Departments. The “parade” snaked along at about 20 miles an hour. Every one was well behaved.

When we got to the end, we found Santa (I hadn't expected to see him for weeks).

Here is a shot of the two best looking guys there.

When I got home I found I had only gone about 83 miles today. Short, but fun none the less.