73.0 ...we dillied, and we dallied...

We are now reaping the consequences of having dillied and dallied earlier on the trip. Compared with last year the summer here has been rather brief and it is now getting quite chilly. Riding in the morning means single digit °C and, if it is raining as well... and let's not mention whether there is any wind chill. We are now wearing a large number of layers. This helps packing in the mornings as we don't have to squeeze things into the bike's luggage. We just have to squeeze ourselves into our clothes.

We have headed north on the only roads that exist, the Stewart-Cassier, the Alaska and the Klondike Highway. We find petrol where we can, and the same for food and lodgings. Sometimes there is something to see, like a forest of signs, started by one of the roadbuilders years ago to indicate how far they were from everywhere else. 

Our views on remoteness have been enlarged. The Yukon seems massive but only has a population of 45,000. If you ignore the main 'city', Whitehorse, then the population of the rest of the Yukon is 10,000. 

So, having decided to visit the gold rush outpost that is Dawson City - the second largest 'city' in the Yukon with a population of 2,500 - we decided to stay an extra couple of nights... Doubtless this additional dallying will have repercussions down the line... Dawson City is also at the end of the road, at least a road as we would call one. So we will have to return on the same road, adding another day...

Arriving, damp and chilled, at our accommodation in Dawson City chalked up ten months on the trip. We shouldn't complain about the weather. We stopped to chat with two young Belgian guys on the road, Oscar and William; they were ten days into their trip - but on a tandem... We have also hit the 30,000 mile marker and are currently staying in our 183rd different accommodation. And things aren't finished yet. The road from Whitehorse to Dawson was 335 miles (530 kms) long with a couple of General Stores that sold petrol. Unfortunately the internet was down in the Yukon that day which meant no card transactions or ATMs. A Canadian couple kindly gave us $20 to buy petrol. We owe it down the line to the next people we see in need...

We thought that we had arrived somewhere remote. Dawson has seven months winter, hardly any spring or autumn and a little bit of summer.  We have been reliably informed that summer stopped at the beginning of August. Not only is Dawson at the end of the road  - no 'paved' road beyond Dawson - no paved road in Dawson! The guide, that showed us around town, laughed at our idea of remoteness and also confirmed that summer had been and gone - this was his last week as a tourist guide. No wonder our rather splendid accommodation seemed rather good value - it is closed from the 11th September. Françoise's birthday accommodation was somewhat better than a bed in a shed. Tuktoyaktuk, which is on the Arctic Ocean, and a 900km drive on gravel from Dawson; that was the guide's idea of remote. Whether 500km is remote or not, the food is remarkably good

 - and not overpriced, especially considering everything has to be trucked in.

Dawson lies on the Yukon river. The river freezes in the winter as temperatures drop below -40°C. The free ferry has long been hoisted out of the river prior to winter setting in and, when the river freezes, trucks just drive across the frozen river. We are well into Autumn now. As much as we like it here, we need to head yo warmer weather soon...

Gold... Dawson City was, and still is in a lot of ways, all about the Gold Rush of the 1890's. In three years Dawson City went from zero to 100,000 inhabitants displacing the First Nation population who had no need for gold. In those three years Dawson became the Paris of the North with eager miners paying ladies of Dawson $5 for a dance. The first prospectors became very rich. The latecomers then had to work for those already there as the plots had all been taken. The gold wasn't easy to get at and soon machines took over from prospectors with spades. Big corporations consolidated the plots that the prospectors gave up on and the town's population then decreased. Canada National Parks started buying up and refurbishing some of the buildings. All in all, despite the cold - the town, sorry City, is built on permafrost - we have really enjoyed our stay in Dawson, drinking at Bombay Peggy's, a bedroom called Klondike Kate's in a clapperboard hotel, visiting an old bar and bank as well as eating in some of the refurbished buildings. Just a shame it's so far from anywhere...

There is a short road over the top into Alaska from Dawson City. There is a Customs post that is manned on this road up until the middle of September. Unfortunately a large portion of the road is gravel and we don't really feel up to it after our escapades at the beginning of our trip back in November. So it will be an extra two days, going back down the road we came up, to eventually get to the Alaska we planned. More dallying...

Heading to the border means stopping in nowheresville again. It's no wonder electric cars don't seem to have caught on yet in this part of Canada. And the weather lets Françoise take some photos of the arrival of the 'fall'.

Our last stop in Canada, Beaver Creek (two motels with petrol, one restaurant, Buckshot Betty's), so now we can head for Alaska proper!

72.0 Fresh air is a bear necesity of life

We have suffered with traffic fumes on this and previous trips. We are travelling on main roads in Canada. However the lorries don't seem to pump out the black fumes we have endured before. And even if they did, there are the trees here. Trees and trees and trees. Fumes don't stick a chance with all these carbon guzzling trees. It was amusing to see a sign on the side of the road advertising 'Xmas trees' - we are in one of the biggest forests in the world and all one can see all around us is Xmas trees! As nice as it is though, it can get a tad monotonous and it is not always that photogenic. There is also an issue with haze. We don't think it is a heat haze as we are struggling to break into the 20's at present. Nor do we think it is fog as, most days, we are too far from the sea for it to be a sea mist. It might well be lingering smoke from forest fires...

The scenery is 'nicer' than in the south of Argentina, but it is repetitive at present and there is a similar issue to Argentina in as much as where to stop for the night and whether we will have enough petrol. Being European - we still prefer to call ourselves that - we are not used to travelling miles, or kms to do the shopping or to go on a night out. We happened to ride by a small town (another ex mining and railroad town) the other day where there just happened to be a Custom and Vintage car show that weekend. It's called a Show & Shine here, and people had come from hundreds and hundreds of kms with their cars. There are lots of rusting relics of super old American and Canadian cars and trucks in fields and outside homes as we drive by. Things that one thinks could be lovingly restored, more than likely at substantial expense. But wouldn't it be great? As far as the distances are concerned, we will need to get used to them as distances between places for coffee, petrol, or to stop over are going to further expand as we go north. 

We do however perk up a bit when we see the wildlife road signs. Bears, elks, deer, longhorn sheep and moose all figure and we are warned that we are in one of their corridors, 30 - 40km, and to take extra special care. Nothing has been seen. Is that a bear over there or a tree stump? A tree stump. Is that a herd of deer? Cows. Are those moose? Horses. At least horses are moose without the head gear. One day perhaps...

We all know that Canada is a Commonwealth country and also that in some parts of the country, a bit like Belgium, they speak French. It wasn't always like that; the First Nation Native Americans first had the English and French explorers to deal with, then the explorers became traders and then, effectively, invaders and conquerors which then led to immigrants but we use the word settlers. Immigration in Canada has been happening on a large scale recently. Not by small boats but planned by the government, as it was in Argentina just over a century ago. But now it is Asian, South East, and Indian subcontinent. It is very apparent. For example all the motel accommodation we have stayed in so far in Canada, without exception, has been owned and managed by Indian immigrant families - the modern day equivalent of our corner shops? On reading about the recent riots in the UK we have been reflecting on how things might evolve here in the future. Canada, and Canadians, have been about natural resources - mining, gas, oil, timber and agriculture. Immigration is envisaged as supporting a service economy. Will immigrants fuel the service economy and what will happen to those who work in traditional fields of the economy when the world turns its back on carbon? How will Canadians deal with this in the future? It's probably a long time away, so not something we will be around to see...

BUT, hold that page! We're going on a bear hunt!

We're going to see a BIG one.

What a beautiful day. We're not scared.

Long grass, long wavy grass with wild flowers. We can't ride through it, we can't ride over it, we can't ride under it. We will ride at the side of it. Swishy swoshy, swishy swoshy the long grass is moving. Eek! A dark brown shape. EEK!

Eek, another dark brown shape with eyes that are staring at us now through the long swishy swoshy wavy grass.

The dark brown shapes are moving.

Quick, let's get out of here. Vroom, vroom... We can't ride through them. We can't ride over them. We can't ride under them. We will ride past them. We're not scared.

Thanks to Francoise for her plagiarisation of Michael Rosen's famous work...

The road that day led us to Stewart, a town of just over 500 people. The interesting thing about Stewart is that it touches the southernmost part of Alaska and there is a border crossing there. So it might not be the part of Alaska we planned on reaching, there is still time, but we have now set foot in Hyder, Alaska a town of about 50 permanent residents of a certain political leaning. However there are other residents too - bears. And a grizzly came out to eat a salmon supper before going to bed. Three bears in a day. English can be a difficult language. The German couple we met in Stewart, Tim und Sabine, struggled with the 'ea' sound in English; 'ear', 'heart' and 'bear' for example. And they didn't think much about our three beers in a day...

The salmon story is hard. The Pacific version uses all its energy to fight against the current going upstream to spawn and then dies, both females and males. So rivers can have lots of rotting carcasses feeding nutrients back into the local ecosystem. The bears, or beers, prefer however to play with live varieties.

Salmon being the order of the day, (but not in either of the two restaurants in Stewart - pizza or mexican: Come on, how far do we have to get from the. Mexican border to avoid Mexican restaurants?)  - the local Glacier is called Salmon Glacier and quite impressive it is too. Nor a sign that things are likely to warm up soon though. Not so long ago that we were moaning about the heat and lack of rain...

71.0 what5words

Having been away for a while we wondered whether the 3mx3m address system, what3words, had been further refined when we planned our first day in Canada. Getting to Lethbridge hadn't been the most interesting of rides. We avoided the rain but had about 100km of wheat fields in a totally flat landscape on straight-as-a-die roads. The ''great' in 'The Great Plains' is simply about size we think. We are in holiday season in Canada and we had been forced out of our way to Lethbridge simply to find somewhere to sleep for the night. But every decision leads to a new opportunity and, bin Lethbridge, we were able to see the tallest railway viaduct of its type in Canada. One for the tourist handbooks...

And then... 

Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump turned out to be a museum and not an address in a new five word format. Or maybe it is the address in a new format for the museum? But these weren't five random words. Although, quite clearly, one was being used in error, this was where the Blackfoot hunted bison. The technology was simple. They herded the bison, they gave them a scare and then stampeded them over a 20m high cliff, all this without horses. Apparently bison need some help from Specsavers. The museum is built into the cliff where the bison became previous incarnations of burgers and sausages. However the museum wasn't just about bison pretending to be lemmings; it covered far more than that and provided excellent insights into the life of the Blackfoot and how they were impacted by European settlers. The bison were soon on the brink of extinction, but now herds total hundreds of thousands.

A couple of years ago we hosted a Canadian biker couple, Elle and Jeremy, who had ridden down from Canada to Patagonia and got stuck in Uruguay during Covid. It seems that we have, more or less,  been doing their route in reverse but taking twice as long to do it. Elle and Jeremy very kindly offered to host us in Canmore, just outside Banff. Thanks to them we were able to see some of Canmore, Banff and Lake Louise. Otherwise we would probably have skipped the area. The fact that the area is one of the most visited places in Canada, coupled with it currently being the height of the holiday season means that there are not that many 'economic' accommodation options available. None in fact. 

Françoise has been known to say that Mr Garmin, our GPS, has prolonged, if not saved, our marriage. Her map reading skills have never been the best. The best we can say about declining eyesight is that it has not made things any better. So one of her worse nightmares came to pass. We have been without Mr Garmin for a week now as one of the power connectors in the cradle broke. When we are outside of major towns or cities it is relatively easy to find our destination. However stress levels rise proportionally to urban density. We decided to replace the wiring and connectors which meant us riding into the city of Calgary to find a Garmin shop. Armed with Google Maps on her telephone and shouting over the road and engine noise she proudly managed to direct us from the North West of Calgary to the South East and then to the North East on our quest. So efficient were we that we managed an afternoon sightseeing in downtown Calgary. We now have a functioning Mr Garmin again. All is well.

Jasper was also in our outline plan but fires have destroyed a significant part of the town and the road North there has been closed. Perhaps we might come back that way.