The tops of hills and mountains are snow covered and it's getting quite chilly. Most mornings it is single figure Celsius when we are riding. This wasn't our initial plan. We now want accommodation with heating, as opposed to aircon. The motorcycle is also ill and making groaning noises. Alaska, and more specifically, Anchorage was our end-destination and we reached it and now the bike clearly wants to go home. But we can't go home from Alaska, at least with the bike.
We have now left Alaska and were welcomed back into Canada by a roadside grizzly more interested in digging up roots than us - but we were ready with the hymns, just in case... The Border crossing was very straightforward but must have been very infuriating for those behind us, as the Officer insisted on telling us all about her grandmother who lives in Hounslow. What we find is that either the bike itself, or us being on the bike, attracts an enormous amount of attention and people are always wanting to stop and chat. And not just a couple of sentences.
Whittier was a dead-end, as far as the road was concerned, so we are now retracing our steps; not 100%, but a large part nonetheless. In order to try and aid the bike we stopped at the Harley dealer in Anchorage. Let's say, remaining as polite as we can, that we were not that impressed, that they were not that much help and that we decided to take a risk with the noises the bike is making. We are obviously hoping that the noises won't lead to the bike letting us down in the middle of nowhere because we do not have a plan B. It's 2,500 km to the next dealer...
Our return took us to the same B&B in the small village of Glennallen. The hosts asked us whether we would like to join them for Bible Study in the morning and we thought, why not? Bible Study was at 0800 at the Mexican Restaurant next to the petrol station. Men and women sat apart. The men listened to a commentary on a passage from Genesis and then discussed it. T-shirts, hoodies and baseball caps in favour of the Donald were much in evidence. The women, sat at another table, discussed other things. A different start to the day's ride!
So having retraced our steps out of Alaska and into the Yukon, we have decided to brave a little detour back into another part of Alaska. One of the interesting things that we found out about Alaska is that its capital, Juneau, is only accessible by air and sea. So we won't be going there! We did, at one stage, consider catching a three night/four day ferry from Skagway in the little bit of Alaska we are now in, down to Seattle. But it was more than our budget could take and anyway, having rechecked recently because of the bike's woes, it is now fully booked. Presumably because everywhere in Alaska can't be linked by road, the ferry system is called a highway, the Alaska Marine Highway. We decided that if we could not take the three night trip, then the budget would at least stretch to a one hour trip.
So we find ourselves in Haines bracing ourselves for a one hour ferry to Skagway on the Alaska Marine Highway. Our trip to Haines was damp with minimal, 20m, visibility. Although only at about 1,000m altitude, we were in the clouds. We are staying in another historic ex-military establishment. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the US government bought a plot of land from the Presbyterian Mission near Haines. They constructed a US Army Fort named Fort Seward, after the man who had brokered the deal of buying Alaska off the Russians. The Fort, which was a parade ground with a number of buildings around it, as opposed to any fortifications, was decommissioned after WWII. It was then bought by some veterans and we are currently staying in a hotel that was fashioned out of the Captain's and Commanding Officer's Quarters - with a cast iron roll top bath that is far too scary for us. And it isn't that warm here, the cast iron will never warm up!
The ferry took us to Skagway. Whilst waiting, in the rain, for the ferry from Haines and on the look out for bears, we were joined by an Australian couple, Janine and Peter, who had clearly taken an even bigger wrong turn somewhere along the line than us. Luckily the weather cleared up on the ferry and we checked into the same hotel later on. Just as in Dawson City, the hotel closes in a week's time for winter.
Skagway was where the gold miners arrived by boat from San Francisco having heard about the gold to be found in Dawson City. From Skagway they had to pass over the mountains, in winter, carrying a minimum of one tonne of supplies as imposed by the Canadian authorities. They then had to catch the boat up the Yukon to Dawson. The two towns, Skagway and Dawson, thrive off a common history and also display a similar architecture, though we did think that Dawson's was more original. Dawson is a long way from anything whereas Skagway had three cruise ships moored whilst we were there. On the same day. The main street is lined with jewellery shops as presumably, jewellery packs very easily. The tourist office told us that there were 1,000 permanent inhabitants in Skagway and that dwindled down to 600 in the winter. Yet they receive over 1 million cruise ship visitors in their short tourist season. US$28 for two coffees and two muffins says a lot about the place...
We spent part of our last day in Alaska on a short hike through a forest. The trees are so close together that they grow very straight and make perfect poles and props. We didn't have any bear spray with us but we had practiced a few verses of 'Onward christian soldiers' as a bear deterrent, just in case. With so many trees in close proximity the forest floor is in damp shade. We are in September now, and, just as in Europe, it's mushroom season. Anyone for roulette?
We have now left Alaska and were welcomed back into Canada by a roadside grizzly more interested in digging up roots than us - but we were ready with the hymns, just in case... The Border crossing was very straightforward but must have been very infuriating for those behind us, as the Officer insisted on telling us all about her grandmother who lives in Hounslow. What we find is that either the bike itself, or us being on the bike, attracts an enormous amount of attention and people are always wanting to stop and chat. And not just a couple of sentences.
