August 18, 2007 by Naomi.

Haines was the most interesting town we had visited since Valdez - it’s a pretty town with lots of decent shops and lots to keep the visitor entertained - laundry, internet, the library, bars and the brewery down at ‘Dalton City’ (the set of the Disney film White Fang). After sampling the local beer down at said brewery, we made our way to the Fogcutter Bar where, feeling rather adventurous, we invested in $10 worth of ‘pull-tabs’ (basically paper fruit machines). The first one I opened won me $100 and Paul was not far behind winning $102 on the second batch. Luckily, after the third batch we decided to save our pennies for the pool table instead. Pull-tabs are a big pastime in Alaskan bars; unfortunately people rely on them to pay the rent and the sight of so many tabs being pulled, with beer after beer, is quite sad indeed.

Most importantly, though, we were united with Paul’s bicycle fork at the post office. We stayed in a great BandB in the Fort Seward part of town (Fort Seward Bed and Breakfast), with an excellent view overlooking the bay. Afer a day and half relaxing in Haines, it was back on the Alaskan Marine Highway to the capital Juneau. However, the ferry’s departure was considerably delayed by various over-sized cumbersome RVs which had to be reversed very slowly onto the car deck by their drivers. But cyclists never complain…

Arriving five hours later in Juneau under a still blue sky, we cycled down Juneau’s one main road to our hosts John and Stephanie’s house in North Douglas. They’d very kindly kept the delicious salmon off the barbie until our delayed arrival. Their excellent hospitality continued over the next couple of days with Stephanie giving us an off the beaten track tour (away from jostling cruise-ship tourists) of the impressive Mendenhall Glacier, icebergs and falls, and especially arranging for a family of bears to come out for a feed and a few photos (but not without a jostle with said tourists!). It did not stop there; we were taken to a delicious pot luck dinner at a fantastic beachfront wooden house with their friends, and John spent the best part of the following day replacing Paul’s fork. All of which we were very grateful for!

Juneau is a very scenic and small town nestled between towering mountains, although marred somewhat by the continuous and incongruous presence of multi-story cruiseliners coming in and out the harbour. We highly recommend Juneau’s barbers - Paul came out with a very dapper haircut - unfortunately the same cannot be said of the beauty salons, which did not meet Mari’s standard of legwax in Valdezorras (Sevilla) back home; it took twice as long, three times the price and four times the mess with very mediocre results. (Any recommendations for reasonably priced beauty salons with experienced staff further south - Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA and anywhere in between are very welcome).

Despite being a dreadful experience for my wallet and my poor legs, the two-hour session gave rise to some very interesting conversation highlighting yet more incongruous surprises about certain American values. She was a lovely girl, aged 22 and half-way through her first pregnancy. Our most interesting topic evolved when she expressed her disbelief that a sixteen-year old girl she knew was going to Thailand (and that her mother was letting her!!) when there were so many earthquakes there. This confused me somewhat as Thailand is not usually famed for its earthquakes. The confusion was rapidly resolved however, when she mentioned it wasn’t actually Thailand she was referring to but a big island with Chinese people (sic) and lots of volcanos on it - oh, Japan! This girl happily told me that she lives in a house full of guns, has three grizzly bears come regularly and feed off her rubbish, and, in all likelihood, her future children would learn to hunt. Not only this, she lives in a state where 165 earthquakes happen every week, and three out of four earthquakes that occur in the world, occur in Alaska. And Japan is scarier than Alaska? The source of this great fear of Japan was…the Discovery Channel. The blatant lack of fear of all the imminent dangers surrounding her, I will never know.

These and other necessities being completed, Paul and I headed off back to the ferry terminal, but not before I bashed and bloodied my ankle with the back of my pedal in one of my usual flappy bouts of stress…

Posted in Two for the Road - On the Road | 1 Comment »

August 18, 2007 by paulandnaomi.

This was without a doubt the most scenic road we had taken so far, and also the most isolated - luckily we’d stocked up on supplies as a sign warned of no services for the next 203km, and we felt very confident, leaving town under some very sunny skies in t-shirts and cycling shorts.

Now if there is one thing guaranteed to keep a cyclist on his toes (or rather his pedals), it’s an imminent raincloud. After seeing various ‘partly cloudy’ weather forecasts, we interpreted these in the Spanish sense (usually no more than two tiny clouds in the sky) and all waterproofs had been packed at the bottom of our panniers. Menacing clouds appeared from nowhere and bullied around behind us, the rays of sunshine were teasing in front of us - no matter how fast we cycled we could not catch up with them. Nasty clouds that they were, we first got pelted with whopping hailstones (partly cloudy!!!) which were quite painful little bastards, and carried on cycling as fast as we could, desperately trying to catch up with the sun. (No doubt providing great amusement to passing vehicles.) We had a break from the clouds but not for long. After stupidly deciding not to stop until the last minute to get all our raingear out of our panniers, by the time we had digged deep and waterproofed up, our clothes underneath had got soaked anyway (partly cloudy!!!). We eventually found shelter from the beastly rain at Dezadeash Lake Campground, and had a very long well-deserved break drying out clothes, eating lunch and most importantly making our first and much-appreciated cup of tea with the now functioning WhisperLite stove.

Having surveyed the clouds ourselves for our own more realistic forecast, we set off and the scenery became very impressive after Flying Squirrel Creek. Eventually the road climbed towards our last summit of the day at which point we were pursued by yet another very menacing raincloud. Of course we were very prepared for this one, but might as well not have been as it sprinkled us with about three drops of drizzle before heading off west! A steep downhill took us to Million Dollar Falls Campground where the lack of shower facilities was made up for with very clean pit toilets (well-done Yukon, but still a smelly!), a warm dinner made with the WhisperLite and shower wipes (basically wet wet ones). The falls were a short walk from the campsite - the quantity of water pounding down was very impressive - too violent unfortunately to jump in for a wash!

After yet another unsatisfactory night’s sleep in the tent, when we overslept once again and therefore headed off late for our most scenic and most challenging day yet. The prospect of staying at another campground without showers for a second night was enough to convince us that cycling 150km in one day is a good idea. The scenery was fantastic (we’ll let the photos do the talking). We also saw squirrels/chipmunks (please can anyone identify animal in photo?), a lynx, lots of crows and various piles of bear poop along the side of the road. We cycled through a high valley which followed massive glacial rivers, and which eventually took us to two summits, the first of which was sign-posted on the way downhill!! The second summit saw us complete half our journey of 70 or so km and all was meant to be rosy as the rest was downhill (a very silly assumption for a cyclist to make indeed).

When we’d cycled downhill for a good 12km (at last!), much to our dismay we encountered a very unexpected steep hill and arrived at the US border panting and sweating with the hope that this would be the last of the hills. The US border guard assured us, after confirming that we were carrying neither drugs, firearms, alcohol, over $10,000, antlers, furs or horns, that the 60 km into Haines was ‘mostly’ downhill. A very welcome pie and ice cream stop 11 kilometres later (the services promised a day and 203km earlier), provided the energy for us to slipstream our way onto Haines along the valley, with very sore bottoms and very glad that over-ambitious rides were on hold for at least a week.

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August 18, 2007 by Naomi.

After a day of rest and an afternoon in a smelly mini-bus (not sure if smell of BO was emanating from the bus seats or guy in front) from Tok to Burwash Landing, Canada had plenty of adventures in store for us. Due to lack of services at appropriate locations we decided to cover 125km in one day. The fact that it was raining when we woke up made us very reluctant to get out of bed and our early start rapidly disappeared.  Eventually we set out in the drizzle along Kluane Lake, the road we photographed from the plane a few weeks before (see photos 24th July).

Towards the end of Kluane Lake, the weather got better and just as views improved we arrived at some muddy roadworks  where they were widening the road quite literally by blasting into the mountain. We came across our first traffic build up since Anchorage and we did the usual annoying cyclits’ habit of barging to the front of the queue, where we found the ‘flagger’ who informed us we’d have to go through the roadworks in the back of her pick up. As we now had a very valuable 20 minutes to kill, an early lunch was had and we were dropped off 40 minutes later on the other side, giving us very impressive views of the valley at the southwest end of the lake.

At this stage we had only completed half our journey for the day and we faced a good hoof up the hill to the first summit, but one motorist felt it merited a photo, overtaking and stopping to take it as we cycled up the hill!  However, a smooth journey it was not to be. Half way up my clip-in pedals needed a good seeing to, the heat became too much so another stop was needed to strip off a layer, and just as we finally got to the top Paul got yet another flat tyre, just as rain threathened from various directions. Luckily when the tyre was dealt with, we predicted correctly and re-attired ourselves in waterproofs and headed back downhill in the anticipated downpour. The weather cleared quickly and after dodging more rainclouds over many rolling hills, we eventually reached Bear Summit at 1,004 metres. From the summit it was all downhill to Haines Junction but the ever present rain clouds closing in behind us eventually caught us up just out of town, and again we were soaked. Luckily the Kluane Park Inn, its motel room, just-closing Chinese restaurant (hurray - something other then grease and chips!) and sweet Canadian beer was there to welcome us tired and hungry.

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