Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

With today being a short day (only 100 miles to Stewart), there was no rush to get up, and I slept soundly until around 7.30am, then showered and ate breakfast. With a departure time of “around 10”, I also had time to start work on yesterday's blog, despite the lack of Internet connection. As a result, I was last to leave just after 10, but with the sun shining and the road offering a few more curves I was quickly into the groove and passing riders who'd left earlier and were taking their time. My reasoning being that as long as I didn't get ahead of Kevin and the lead group, I wouldn't arrive too early anyway, so I might as well enjoy the ride.

The scenery continued to be as beautiful as yesterday, and coupled with clear skies, once again resulted in a number of stops to take photographs, although I'm now trying to ration myself to only the most picturesque of views, for fear that when I finally get home I'll have so many pictures to share that I'll be giving slide-shows for months...





As the road wound its way towards the mountains, signs appeared warning drivers of the need for snow chains. There was even a little lay-by set aside for drivers to use to fit them, complete with a sign offering advice on which axles/tyres they should be fitted to. I stopped, but as motorcycles were not covered on the sign, continued without fitting them (which would have been difficult anyway, as Touratech don't sell them, so I don't have any with me...).





With the chains not fitted, I continued on my way, following the road as it hugged the hillside, with spectacular views of the mountains on the other side of the valley, great folds of green and grey interspersed with the bright white of permafrost and hanging glaciers, the sun glaring down over the tops giving them a halo of bright light. Quite beautiful, but hellishly difficult to get a decent picture of...





Just when I thought the scenery had reached its peak of beauty, I rounded a corner and was confronted by the majestic sight of Bear Glacier, cascading down the mountain into the river, the bright blue of the ice in the crevasses giving it a strange, other-worldly appearance. The pictures simply don't do it justice...





One thing that was clear, though, was just how much the glacier had retreated in recent times. Looking at the area to the sides of the glacier, where it had carved away the moutain-side, you can see the height it once was, and as this hasn't yet started to grow vegetation, it must have been covered in glacial ice just a few years ago... In a few more years, this beautiful glacier will have retreated even further, and will have lost a lot of its beauty.

Riding on towards Stewart, the road dropped back into green forest, with the mountains closer and huge waterfalls cascading from the tops into the river below. With the road narrower there was nowhere to stop to take pictures, which is probably just as well or I'd have arrived in Stewart too late to join the others for lunch... As it was, I arrived just behind Kevin, Julia, Richard & Karen and Chris and Danielle, and no sooner had we all parked outside the hotel, than Kevin suggested we went to Alaska for lunch. I should point out at this point, that Stewart sits on the border between Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska, with the small town of Hyder just across the border. Here, Kevin knew, was a rather special place to have some great halibut and chips, but that would only be suitable for a small group like ours. So, we put our gear back on and rode away from the hotel before the rest arrived, and headed across the border back into Alaska. No sooner had we crossed the border and entered Hyder than the road disappeared and became a dirt track, the town of Hyder no more than a few dilapidated wooden buildings, most of which looked like “gift shops cum general stores” with a couple of spit-and-sawdust bars. But the “Alaskan Seafood Restaurant” was anything but. It was a bus...

Yes, a real bus.

Outside of which were tables and chairs. So we placed our order at the bus door, and sat and waited. Danielle ordered the fresh Dungeness Crab, for which she was given her own bib, which immediately sent her into hysterics... wonder why?





But the food was excellent, really fresh halibut so tender and succulent it just melted in your mouth, the batter crisp, and the fries really well cooked. Hard to believe it had been cooked in a bus in a dusty back-street of a run-down town in Alaska...





With our stomachs attended to, we rode back to the hotel, checked in (another superb room with a couple of large beds and an outside porch where I could put out my washing line to dry my washing) and then went for a walk around town. Stewart is an old mining town, established just over 100 years ago. It's also very small. I walked round it in about 5 minutes, and that included going in the general store looking for a beard trimmer (no success, so the Grizzly Adams look is here for a while longer) and buying something to try and shift this damn cold, and also going in the “supermarket” (no beard trimmer there either) and the “souvenir shop” (no stickers, unfortunately). Then it was back to the hotel to try and get the Internet working, which I did eventually, but it's pretty intermittent, so getting hold of Tracy is going to be a challenge...





We then chilled out for the rest of the afternoon, before meeting up again at 6.15pm for the ride back across the border into Alaska to visit Fish Creek. This is an area of the river where the salmon come to spawn, and where bears come to feed on them. It's been turned into a bit of a tourist trap, with a wooden walkway built alongside the creek for the tourists to stand and wait for the bears to come, but we couldn't pass up the chance to see them ourselves. So we rode in convoy across the border and through the dusty town of Hyder and out towards the creek, on a very dusty dirt road. Once there, we had to park about half a mile away from the walkway as the car park was full of cars, pick-up trucks and RV's. It did give me a chance to get a photo of the “fifth wheel” that sits in the back of the pick-up truck and is used to attach the RV trailer in the “poor man's RV” as in yesterday's blog. So, just for Mike, here's a picture:





Then we joined the masses on the walkway and watched the salmon spawn in the river. Just below us we could see them gather where the river-bed had formed natural bowls, then they would swish their tails to clear an area of gravel, the female depositing her eggs and the males, having fought to get as close to the female as possible would lay down their sperm on top of the eggs, before they would swish the gravel some more. Several of the fish had already started the final stage of their lives which follows the mating process, losing their colour and dying. We saw one fish go “belly up” after the mating ritual and float back along the stream on its back, its life spent. It was very relaxing watching all this fishy porn, listening to the sound of the river, and waiting patiently for the bears to arrive...





And wait we did. Patiently, standing in small groups holding hushed conversations and watching the fish, or looking at the lagoon on the other side of the walkway glancing occasional glimpses of a beaver in the water (and some ducks, too). After 3 hours or so, a bald eagle appeared and started picking at a washed-up salmon. Often eagles appear when the bears are near, as they scavenge on the freshly-killed fish the bears catch but don't finish eating. Excitement grew. And we took pictures of the eagle (which was some distance away, so my new camera was severely tested)...





And then we waited... with the light fading fast... and still we waited... and then, downstream about 300 yards away, was a black bear... it crossed the river and disappeared into the bushes again. I spotted it first and was so excited, pointing it out to the others, that I forgot to try and get a picture (as it was about twice as far away as the eagle and the light was now worse, I doubt I'd have got a decent one anyway). But we'd seen a bear. Only for it to immediately disappear, and not wander up the river to feast on the salmon in front of us as expected.

So we waited some more.

And then, after it was almost dark, we called it a day and headed back to the bikes. Mounted up and riding back to Stewart, as we drew level with the walkway I noticed a guy waving his arms frantically at us. But we couldn't stop. Damn. A couple of our group, who were dawdling at the back when walking to the bikes had been lucky and heard the ranger's radio crackle with news there was a grizzly in the area and waited a few more minutes. The story goes that the grizzly appeared just 10 minutes after we left, wandered up the river and was met by a black bear coming down the river from the opposite direction. A lot of splashing and growling ensued, then the grizzly left, walking right under the walkway and through the car park, past where the bikes had been parked just a few minutes earlier. All we could do was ride past, unable to see anything because of the trees. Damn...

Back at the hotel my stomach was rumbling, so we headed off in search of food. I fancied a pizza, but the pizza place was shut, as was everything else except the town's one bar. So we went in and ordered some “fried food” which was all they had on offer – chicken nuggets (referred to on the menu as “buffalo flings”) and fries, which were cooked in a deep-fat frying machine at one end of the bar... they stopped my stomach rumbling at least. We also had a couple of beers and a game or two of pool, whilst “enjoying” the American Rock-Pop playing and people-watching. The locals seemed to be people-watching too, as I suspect a group of foreigners drinking in their bar is not a particularly frequent occurrence on a Wednesday night...





“I've been in worse bars, but I really can't remember when...”...