This morning we rode the entire 3 miles it took to leave Canada and enter Alaska again. To the lovely Ghost Town of Hyder. Hyder has a population of 87, and is the most eastlerly town in Alaska, entered only by passing through Canada first.

Hyder is at the head of Portland canal a 130 mile long fjord, part of which is the border between the U.S and Canada. The other side of town leads to Tongass National Forest containing Fish Creek and Salmon Glacier.

Tongass is part of the Pacific temperate rain forest and has many endanger flora and fauna.

We visited Fish Creek today, where there is a boardwalk above the creek, where we could view the pink and chum salmon spawning, after their long haul from the Pacific Ocean. We hoped to see bears catching the fish, but although there had been sitings early this morning, and qite a few yesterday we didn’t see any.  We were told that it was a record year for the Salmon run, the largest amount were swimming upstream since 2006.  This meant that the bears had easy pickings, and were entering the creek at a much easier place further downstream, that unfortunately was not viewable. However, there were still a number of stalwarts, who apparently come every year to view the spectacle with their very long camera lenses, and just because it’s fabulous.

It was totally peaceful sitting there for a couple of hours watching the evolution of life, as the fish dragged themselves to their birthplace, spawned and turned over to die.  There was also a huge shoal of Chum Salmon, who live in the area of their birth for two years before they break on downstream and out to the ocean, to grow fat and live their lives before returning to their origins in about 4 years time. There were adult and baby seagulls also enjoying a salmon feast, but apart from that as the fish break down they help boost the nutrients in the creek for future generations of salmon.

After that we made our way back to Ripley Creek Inn, for the evening, thinking about those bears probably all up there feasting as soon as we turned our backs!

It was a beautiful morning as we set off on our stunning route on the Cassiar Highway today. 

Only a few patches of road construction held us up en route, it seemed strange how we would ride on our own for miles, but when we arrived at roadworks or a service area, the area was suddenly overrun with all types of vehicle and people.

Although during the last few weeks we have met fewer people, there have still been some really good encounters.  However, there are those that only want to come over to tell us about how they’ve done it so much better, bigger, louder than we have.  These types have a set of favourite questions, that usually go like this:

Where are you from?

What is the bike? We then tell them it is an 800 cc BMW

Is the bike powerful enough for the sidecar? Paul used to be very patient with this, but now his retort is: well, we’re here aren’t we?

Turning to me: Is the sidecar comfortable?, yes say I (thinking to myself no, I’ve chosen to ride along in a torture device, for fun).

This is followed by all the facts to prove how much better they are than us, such as that they ride 500 miles in a morning, have ridden the world 5 times over (even to places you can’t get to by bike). 

They will also ‘share’ how much better their luggage/helmets/petrol cans/camera/stickers whatever are than ours.

Sometimes this kind of thing can make us laugh to ourselves for hours, other days it can become tedious, and grind you down.

Mind you, all the lovely people we meet far outweigh those wallys, thank goodness. Those people, you won’t see any photos of!

The last 40 miles of our ride today was through a glacial valley, where one glacier followed another, some were now quite small and there were also a lot of spectacular waterfalls, and very fast moving rivers.

Stewart is a quaint small town with some very interesting old buildings from the Gold Rush era, and the Motel we are staying in is a hotchpotch of really interesting old buldings, such as ‘The Crow’s Lodge’, ‘The Brothel’, Stewart House’ to name a few. Each building is full with antiques, and they are truly characterful.

We really enjoyed staying at Johnson’s Crossing Lodge the last two nights, it was nothing special, a very tiny bedroom, a little bit run down outside, but it had an absolute bellyful of character.  Frank and Sandy who own and run the lodge, have owned it for three years, and say they have never worked so hard for so little! Sandy bakes fresh bread and cakes all day, plus provides meals to an ever flowing amount of customers in the cosy cafeteria, which is full of Alaskan books, jewellery, postcards, moccasins, knits etc.  The most popular are the ‘world famous’ cinnamon buns, which sadly Paul doesn’t like and I can’t eat, but Paul had a lovely apple turnover and a tremendous great blueberry ‘scone’ (on separate days, of course!), and the chicken soup was amazing.  The couple had a few words for everybody, and a good sense of humour (Frank described his as arid), and made us feel right at home.

Our route today took us back 180 miles along the Alaskan Highway, before turning right onto the Cassiar Highway which is going to carry us back down through Canada. This was a much smaller, and more interesting road right from the start to our stop tonight at Dease Lake.

Before we turned onto Cassiar, we stopped for a rest at the service station, and ran into another two guys on a motorbike (a brand new Africa Twin), who were filming.  They turned out to be Jamie Robinson, a motorcycle racer we used to follow in his career, and his camera man.  Jamie was making a video for his adventure travel website: www.motogeo.com and was very happy to meet us, film us briefly (uh oh), and share a photo of us onto his Instagram account, he has 49,000 followers!   It was a real pleasure to meet him, and he’s invited us to drop in for a proper cup of tea (he’s from Huddersfield), if we’re down San Pedro way in Los Angeles. How lovely.

The other big event of the day is we have reached 10,000 road miles on this trip. We have been left home for 9 weeks today, so think that is some pretty good going. Mind you, the bike looks like it’s done every one of those miles now……..

At our motel last night, there were some beautiful breakfast ingredients left in the fridge for us, so we cooked up a lovely scrambled eggs on toast this morning, whilst enjoying a very leisurely start to the day.

Today’s ride was only going to be 170 miles, so we knew we could take our time. We are still re-covering ground in the opposite direction, but it’s amazing just how much I see that I didn’t see going the other way. Although I have a three-way view, my view to the right is completely blocked out by the bike.

It was mightily cold again today, sometimes as low as 8.5 degrees celsius, so it was necessary for me to tuck myself right in under the cover of the sidecar, which is wind and rainproof.  This cover has a double skin of a thick waterproof material. I was also wearing three layers on top, with a thermal liner to my jacket, thermal under trousers, and a cover for my face.  I have always suffered more with the cold than Paul has, but even he was cold today.  We have decided that somehow, even though the temperature gauge may read 15 degrees celsius here, it seems much colder- is it the wide open spaces surrounded by mountains covered in snow? Very strange.

We have a day off tomorrow, and then the plan is to follow a different route back through Canada, called the Cassiar Highway, which we have been told is very beautiful.

For now, we are stopped at Johnson’s Crossing Lodge, at the site of a bridge spanning a gorge.  There is a population here of 15.  Accommodation is so few and far between on this Highway, you must take what is there.  The lodge seems very quirky, and interesting, and we shall have an explore further in the area tomorrow (whilst avoiding going too far into the bushes, thus avoiding the bears that are numerous here).

Last night, we finally got to eat the halibut I’d been yearning for, at Fast Eddy’s in Tok.  It was wonderful, fresh, meaty and very tasty.

This time as we rode away from the American Border we stopped for photographs of the Welcome to Alaska board, plus the border between Yukon/Alaska.  We missed this on the way in, as it’s on a bend, right before the passport control office.

Once again, the Customs Officer at the Canadian Border was most welcoming and friendly.  She was very interested in ‘that thing you’ve got going on there’, and where we’d been and were going with it.

So, we are returning on the Alcan, Alaskan Highway for now, at least, as there are just no other major roads we can take.  This meant returning to the scene of last weeks long, long construction works, with at least 40 miles of road works again, following the pilot cars, and waiting up to 15 minutes each time for the pilot car to arrive, we just seemed to time it badly today, and to wait each time.  Still, we passed the time by chatting to other people waiting, and the ‘Flag Lady’, who told us she worked three weeks on and one week off, lived in Whitehorse (150 miles away), and worked as a Flag Man from May to October each year.

The weather is most definitely colder than when we went in to Alaska, and everyone is now talking about the weather closing in soon, and getting ready for Winter.  There’s a change in the air, and the trees are on the turn.

Back to Haines Junction, although in a different Motel this time, still with a wonderful view of the mountain. We paid another visit to the Little Green Apple, a health food shop and bought some goodies to nosh in our room.