Tok Cut Off: One of the many roads less travelled 3rd - 6th Aug

Although we weren’t in Whittier at this point, the weather did indeed get shittier, and this meant our wonderful scenic views quickly became obliterated by low cloud and our sights were limited to black spruce trees, grey road, endless yellow lines and a very infrequent passing RV. We took the opportunity to photograph some fireweed (the Alaskan state flower) instead. Once we got up to higher ground, there were some better views despite the cloud. By the time we reached Grizzly Lake Campground for our first night of camping, it had stopped raining and we managed to set up our tent for the first time without much ado.  Our stove proved more complicated, however, and our second attempt at getting it going was also unsuccessful (the first time it was upside down, but Paul wouldn’t let me admit that!). Luckily, our extensive experience with building fires meant we did manage to get a pit fire going and we warmed up our tinned soup on that.  Luck eventually run out when the wind started howling and the rain started falling and we huddled into the tent for an early night. It was still light (in Alaska at the moment it gets dark at 11pm and light at 4am).

After a most unsatisfactory night’s sleep, a couple of banana and fireweed ‘jelly’ (jam) sandwiches, we set off for Slana in the hope of a hot beverage and some decent food. While the latter wasn’t available, coffee was. While warming up with the coffee, we had the pleasure of meeting Mark, a Law Enforcement Park Ranger who was born in Panama and at the moment is working for a security firm in Afghanistan, although he was enquiring about a job in teaching English in Seville… He was very friendly, and full of useful information and conversation. More bad weather saw us cycle through the Mentasta mountains - also very picturesque, also obliterated by cloud and rain.

At Mentasta Lodge we got our first proper hot meal in two days and we went along to the bar for a couple of beers. We ended up meeting a character called Mike and his friend Johnny. Now Mike had a lot to say for himself - he was a committed felon (DUI just like Paris Hilton), he had seven kids: a five-year old, a three-year old, three one-year olds and a new born baby. His first child was born when he was 16 and he was 25 but born in 1984. Mike’s objectives for the evening seemed to be to drink as many litres of cheap Canadian whisky as possible (he was on number two apparently), to drink everyone at the bar under the table (which he assured us he could do) and most pressingly make us do it with him, ‘cuz we were in Alaska man’! Tempting as it was (!), it took us a long time to make him realise that it was not our intention, nor in our best interests to down a litre of booze with him. Protestations that we had to cycle to Tok the next day were met with offers to drive us there. After about an hour of trying to veer the conversation in other directions, we were finally left in peace after assurances that we would be in Tok Lodge two nights later, and he guaranteed to put $1,000 behind the bar for an all night supply of Jagerbombs (a shot of Jagermeister submerged in Red Bull). Small as Tok is, our hotel and bicycles were situated at a safe distance (and therefore out of sight) from this establishment.

We were very lucky that it wasn’t raining when we set out the following day, and we cycled up and down over the rolling hills towards Tok. At this point, I found that I was starting to see the hills as a challenge rather than an exasperating obstacle I had to get up and was glad to see that my body was finally adjusting to lengthy distances on a daily basis. The scenery was beautiful but once again the rain hit us, this time it was a heavy downpour and some of our ‘waterproof’ equipment didn’t turn out to be quite so effective.  Once the rain finally let up, we stopped for lunch at a nearly deserted state recreation site, where we tinged our bells and talked very loudly to keep those ever-present (but invisible) bears away.

The last stretch of our journey was the complete opposite to the morning - the sun came out, it became rather windy and the road was completely flat and straight - the Romans would have been proud. Just outside Tok, Paul got his first flat tyre (just as the wind became more severe and more cloud threathened rain), due to a nasty staple-like piece of metal.

We loved our motel room which came with coffee-maker, fridge, microwave (this meant I could have tea and cereal for brekkie finally!) and a TV! And we were looking forward to our well-deserved day off after six days of non-stop cycling 260 miles from Valdez.

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