Last night, before I left beautiful downtown Tok, I met up with the owner of this 1936 Indian Chief:
He is from San Francisco and assembled the bike from bits and pieces of three donor bikes. He has ridden it from San Francisco to Tok, Alaska over about a 3-week period of time with no problems. Pretty cool and pretty impressive. I guess it runs better than it looks.
Left Tok early this morning to get through the poorest sections of the Alaska Hiway as early in the day as I could. Tok is about 80 miles west of the US/Canadian border and the last 15 miles of that little journey are absolutely horrible. The road is under construction and it has rained steadily for the past two weeks. Up here, they evidently throw a little gravel down on top of the dirt and call it ready to be paved. I knew the road was bad from the trip going west last week, but I thought since it wasn’t raining today (did I mention that’s two days in a row that I haven’t been rained on constantly?), that the road would be a little better than it was last week. Wrong assumption…it was worse.
Anyway, I managed to make it through without sliding over the side of the mountain and stopped in Beaver Creek, Yukon, about 15 miles the other side of the border. I had spent the night here on the way up, and it’s the last food or gas for over 100 miles. I pulled into the only hamburger joint in town, and found this:
Five bicycles obviously on some kind of extended trip. I got to talking to them, and there was a couple from England and a couple from Spain who were together and had ridden to Fairbanks from the Seattle area and were headed back. The fifth rider, the one on the bike with the center stand, was from Maui and is cycling around the world. He said he lived like a pauper for years to save up enough for the trip which he figures will take him 5 years. He flew from Maui to Prudhoe Bay 3 weeks ago, rode down the Dalton Hiway to Fairbanks, picked up the Alaska Hiway and will be riding to Patagonia, at the far southern end of South America. From there he plans to take a ship to the southern tip of Africa, cycle up through Africa, across Gibraltar, through southern Europe, through Russia, through China, and end his journey in Singapore. (Uncle Charlie…did you get this?).
Anyway, continued along the Alaska Hiway toward Haines Junction, where I’m spending the night. Here are some shots of the beautiful scenery along the way:
The shot above was taken about 50 miles east of Tok on the Alaska Hiway.
This shot is of Kluane Lake, about 75 miles west of Haines Junction.
This shot is a view of the Kluane River Valley, upstream from Kluane Lake.
Got to Haines Junction about 5:00. Tomorrow it’s to Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon for the night. Miles today: 294. Total: 6,271.
