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...