Departing Skagway on the Malispina ferry for Haines.

Arrived in Skagway, AK; got a ferry ticket for tomorrow's 7am sailling. More on the blog tonight.

Day 5 - Hyder to Watson Lake or Bear Bingo

This morning at 6am we headed out of Hyder for Watson Lake some 400 miles up the Cassiar Highway. Our game today was to play "Bear Bingo". The game works like this: The leader of the pack sees a bear and if it's confirmed by at least one other person, then the leader goes to the back of the pack and the next person comes to the front. And so on. We do this through 4 bears and Neil is leading and calls out on the CB, "Fox on the left!" with great excitement in his voice. The three of us don't see the fox, but we see 3 magnificant large blonde grizzly bears standing on their haunches looking at us. And Neil didn't even see them. And I was so excited to see them, I forgot to take a picture.

We rode on up the Cassiar and the scenery is simply breath taking and large. The following picture doesn't begin to do it justice.



We made a number of stops along the way and one of the best was at Jade City where we really enjoyed ourselves.



Welcome to the Yukon:



More proof 60th parallel:




We have made Watson Lake and found a great campground at Nugget City, enjoyed a sumptuous ribeye steak dinner at the restaurant at camp and then headed into Watson Lake to see the Signpost Forest and refuel for our morning 300 mile ride to Skagway to catch the ferry to Haines.

Dinner:



At the SignPost Forest:

With my Sidestandup.com shirt on:



Seattle sign:


Well, it's after 11 and helmet time is 6am, so I need to sign off for today. Hopefully, I can get an internet connection tomorrow.

Day 4 - Our Off Day

Today was our off day and we used it to go bear searching up on the Cassiar Highway. We scored some 6 bears.

At the awards presentation, Tom won a set of custom gloves and we had a good time chatting with folks at the dinner and time afterwards at the motel.

More later.

Day 3 - Arrival in Hyder

I've not had good internet connections for a few days, so this is just a placeholder for me to fill in the details later. Suffice it to say, the ride into Hyder was spectacular.

Here's a shot from Bear Glacier about 25 miles from Hyder.




We arrived in Stewart, BC around 2pm on Friday, checked into the Hotel, and met a bunch of people. Then we rode the 4 miles to HYDER, AK




We went out to the pier and took a group photo (at least a partial one).




We had a nice seafood dinner, met people from around the US & Canada (several of whom I had met electronically over the internet).

Then we went out to Fish Creek bear viewing area and tried to find a bear. SCORE!



Back to the motel (King Edward in Stewart, BC which is 4 miles from Hyder.

Then to bed.

End of Day 2 - Near Burns Lake

Day 2 ended with a great little campsite at the Beaver Point Resort which is 10 miles down a country road outside of Burns Lake, BC. We were looking for a campground with WIFI, a shower, and camping. A local pointed us down the road about 3 miles which turned out to be 10 miles. But it's a fabulous location with no road noise.

The day started with a departure from Cache Creek at 7:40am and we put on some 440 miles through a number of construction sites. We took lunch at a fish & chips place (Wee Chippees) in Quesnel. We all had the haddock special which was very good.

After lunch the ride for the rest of the day was very warm again with tempertures hitting about 84f. Outside of Prince George we saw our first MOOSE sign and stopped for a Kodak moment. About 60 or so miles from our final destination we stopped at Frazier Lake for a dinner at Subway. We met some Alberta riders who were heading for HYDERSEEK.

Tomorrow, we have only less than 300 miles. We are projecting a 6am departure so we have time for lot of picture taking.

Critter Spottings: One Eagle; total spottings so far this trip = 3

BTW, the sun is still up high in the sky at 8:20pm as I post this. And the 4 Geeks are all on their computers and WIFI fighting very thick mosquitos.

End of Day 1 - Cache Creek

We ended day 1 at the Brookside RV Park in Cache Creek with campsites, pool, WIFI, and showers - all for $17ea Canadian (Canadian money is almost par with US$). We elected to cook at the park and Neil had Dinty Moore Stew, Tim2 had a dried camping meal that he reconstituted with water, and Tom & Tim enjoyed Chicken ala King (another camping meal) which was actually quite good.

The ride up was incredibly scenic and BC99 is a motorcyclist's dream. It follows the fjord for a long while. Eventually we headed up and over a very scenic pass and along the way near Pemberton we encountered some very dense and dangerous tar snakes. One simply couldn't avoid them and the m/c tires really slipped on them.

Temperatures were consistently in the high 80's farenheit which is very hot for this part of the world. I believe the high was 92f. We were in our vented clothing and took numerous stops for fluids. Who would have thought it to be this warm this far north?

We saw one very ugly deer. It was black and brown mottled kinda like an Australian shepherd dog. 3/4 saw it. Fortunately it stayed on the shoulder of the road. Our critter sighting rules are that two Amigos have to see a critter and since Neil & Tim2 saw the squirrel (Neil just missed hitting it). So we have tally of 2 for day 1.

The SPOT tracking seems to be doing well. It will cut out in the mountains and we do make U-turns. So don't be alarmed if there's no signal for a while or we seem to be backtracking.

Our plan for tomorrow is to depart around 7am and go as far as New Hazelton and camp in that area.

Stay tuned.