Tag: Alaska bound

They say that Alaska and Yukon, in common with Illinois, have two seasons – Winter and Roadworks. The extreme cold plays havoc with the road surfaces, so when the weather improves it is a race against time to fix up as much as possible before temperatures drop again.

A lot of the roads are in great shape – but some not so much. I guess we are lucky that most are paved but when you get mile after mile of carved up roads and rain, it gets a little slippery.

The good news is that we have the bikes to deal with it, even if they are fairly heavily laden. They got properly muddy though. So much so that the border crossing guards could barely read our plates ;-).

So – we’ve run into quite a few sections of roadworks – which on the whole are not a great deal of fun on motorbikes. We see quite a few signs like this:

Encouraging – no?

The worst roadwork issues are either:

– a combination of carved up road and rain- it looks like milkshake but it feels like riding on greased ice.

– or deep gravel (particularly surprise deep gravel – take note British Columbia)

Both have had us standing up on our pegs like good adventure riders (when you are standing it’s easier to control the bike when it’s not necessarily pointing where you want…).

Still it is an ADVENTURE right? I should be inspired by all the flaggers on many longer stretches of roadworks – who operate the STOP/ SLOW signs and coordinate with a pilot car. They are without exception extremely friendly and remarkably cheerful despite standing around in rather a lot of weather all day…

​​While the rest of Northern America and Europe are suffering a heatwave – over here in Alaska/ Yukon Territory – it is a bit on the nippy side. It was around 45-55 degrees today, plus the windchill so I was wearing more layers than I did in Antarctica… Not sure what I’m going to do if the temperature drops any more…

 

 

One of the many great things about the ferries is that they stop at a few interesting places along the way – Ketchikan, Wrangell, Juneau and Haines and there’s often enough time to go and have a bit of a walk around. Not all the timings are ideal (we arrived in Juneau before 7am – so we popped in for breakfast) and the ferry terminals are mostly some way out of town (some 14 miles in the case of Juneau!).

These towns are interesting as they are so remote, but they are real working towns – that is they all have industry (lots of fishing, some mining). They all depend heavily on tourism though. I was fascinated by the tension this creates. These small towns are transformed during the short high season by the arrival of between THREE and SIX monster cruise ships every day. 12,000 day trippers certainly change the atmosphere of a town where only 14,000 people actually live.

As a result, the downtown areas are awash with souvenir shops (some gorgeous stuff from local artists and some most likely made in China…). I absolutely hated shuffling round with hoards of cruise people – (don’t you just hate other tourists when you are tourist?). What must it be like to rely on these crowds who descend on the town for a few hours then disappear? At least we got a bit of kudos for taking the ferry…

I particularly liked Ketchikan – a town where a lot of salmon go to spawn.

The fjords that line Alaska’s shoreline are stunning and are dotted with occasional small towns, many of which are not accessible by road. It turns out the easiest way of seeing this stunning scenery is by ferry…

We boarded at Prince Rupert, BC and disembarked at Haines AK.

I have to be honest -I took some persuading.  I’m pretty familiar with ferries (Living near London meant that I’ve endured the Dover Calais trip and even Harwich-Hamburg more than a few times). Ferries were pretty much all miserable. But as I wanted to see the inside passage and as I would under no circumstances go on a cruise, this was the answer.

And it was great. Clean, comfortable, well organised. Even the food tasted OK.

BUT.

THEY CLOSED THE BAR.

PERMANENTLY.

They even put stickers over all the signs that said “Cocktail Lounge/ Bar” to say “Midship Lounge”. Grrrrrr

What sort of business can’t make money on booze with a captive audience on a boat? The State of Alaska apparently.

 

 

The forecast said rain and rain it did – which sadly meant that the surrounding mountains were shrouded in clouds for much of the journey – but it was still stunning. The last 100 miles or so followed the Yellowhead highway that skirts the banks of the the Skeena River as it winds its way to the ocean. On our right we had dramatic cliffs and even more dramatic avalanche warning signs…

We squelched soggily into Prince Rupert – which we were informed by an unnervingly chirpy hotel receptionist, is the rainiest place in Canada. I can believe this based on a) all the rain and b) the fact that it has the only rainwear superstore I have ever seen (and I lived in the UK most of my life).

The town itself is not very inspiring – but it does have some rather fine hostelries where we were able to try some rather fine local beer and Sockeye.

Do you think this looks like it might fit into two bike panniers?

No me neither…. time to create the perfect capsule wardrobe that packs small and includes plenty of warm, fast drying clothes and waterproofs. Wish me luck.

But the worst thing about packing is that it makes the dog sad- I tried unsuccessfully to pack my bags in secret. She found me and went to hide in the bathroom. Here’s the face she made. It’s heartbreaking.

Part of the drive behind starting a blog again (with a shiny new URL) is that I’ve completed the first phase of a fun trip – riding motorbikes from San Francisco to Alaska.

Here are a few of the highlights. And a lowlight.

I used to blog – then I stopped. Partly as I thought that nothing would rival China which was both incredible and bizarre every single day. I also found it a little ostentatious (I was irritating myself) – Oh look here I am somewhere else incredible. So why start again? Well, I have some fun trips coming up and some people want to hear more about them and I don’t want to totally spam everyone on social media.  So here I am again.