Tam's Journal, July 24-27

July 24: In the morning, we wake up in the bus, eat more than our fill of chocolate chip pancakes, do laundry, and clean up as best as we can.  Afterwards we both spend time talking to Jay and his wife, Debbie, along with their friend Bob, who lives down the road.

They're a wonderful resource of entertaining stories and advice.  It's 3:15 when we finally set off.  We wind up and down over gradual hills with lakes, clear streams, and rounded green mountains that break up the spruce-birch forest.  Around Tok the road flattens out, and it's like a runway. The good road, an amazing tailwind, and pancake fuel make the ride go by quickly.  When we arrive in Tok, I can't believe we've gone 60 miles.

July 25: We wake up and bike 1.8 miles back the way we came, to Sourdough Campground.  We can't pass up all-you-can-eat pancakes for $10!  Together we consume a total of 45 good ol' sourdough pancakes.  The lady working there also makes us veggie sausage and hot chocolate.  While we're eating, we meet three guys from New Zealand: Sam, Sam, and Cam.  They've been driving around having adventures in an old green van with a lego man as mascot on the front.

We share stories over breakfast and talk a bit of politics with the pancake chef.  All of this amounts to a true, sourdough, Alaskan roadhouse breakfast, the perfect way to say goodbye to this fascinating state.  Afterwards we go food shopping and fly out of town propelled by yet another tailwind.  About 57 miles up the road, we stop at a free campground in the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge.  The campsite is beautiful, and just when we thought our night couldn't get any better, we have the pleasure to meet some other travelers down by the lake.  Two are cyclists on a round-the-world trip, and two are from Switzerland exploring Canada and Alaska in a van.  As we talk, we are entertained by a mother duck and her twenty adorable ducklings out on the lake.

July 26: At 8:40 or so, we meet our new biking friends Billy and Nolwenn for breakfast by the lake.  We share with them the last of our pancakes, and they share Japanese Green Tea and oatmeal with fresh raspberries.  It's a delicious way to start the day.  It's already 10:30 or so when we begin to ride.  Our road takes us through more spruce forest and lots of hills.  The clouds are hanging low, so there's not much to see besides the occasional lake.  Our first bit of civilization is the Tetlin NWR Visitor Center.  We find it thoughtfully designed, just like the campsites and displays also associated with the park.  We fill up water and eat lunch. Just seven miles up the road, we reach the Alaska-Canada border.  Only U.S. Customs is here.  They have a huge building with a yard for the dogs, and the road passing through is watched by large, gray cameras from every angle.  There's no Canadian Customs here.  It's 20 miles down the road, just outside the town of Beaver Creek.  Those 20 miles are on bumpy chipseal, but the road flattens out quite a bit, and the sun finally comes out through the clouds.  On the way, we see multiple cool birds and meet two cyclists on a tandem bike.  They have plans to travel up to Deadhorse, where we started.
At the Canadian border crossing is a large, red maple leaf and a small, brown building.  I'm sure there are cameras, but they aren't large enough for me to notice them.  A nice guy checks out our passports and asks a few questions.  In a couple minutes, we're through.

Once in Beaver Creek, we make a couple of stops.  #1 to purchase and eat an amazing peanut butter cookie, #2 to purchase a grapefruit, and #3 to get a map and information on the road from the visitor's center. We decide to head to the first campground, 10 miles out of town.  At this point, we've been warned multiple times about the construction on this road, and we're not sure to expect.  What we find is a combination of gravel, mud, and rocks, but for the most part it's not too bad, and we make fairly good time.  At the end of the day, we're both happy to find a cute campsite with a big picnic table and a view of the lake.

July 27: When we emerge from our tent, the sky is cloudy but there's no rain. Yay!  We ride for a bit on bumpy gravel then get to a section where we must ride in a pilot car for 3 km or so.  After this, there's only a bit more gravel, then we hit chipseal.  Never have I been so happy to ride on chipseal.  We ride through more forests and lakes.  In one of these lakes, we see two regal trumpeter swans and three of their gray, fuzzy cygnets.  It's a treat to see them so close.  Cruising along, we notice two cyclists coming up behind us.  It's Chris and Berel, both studying medicine in Germany and biking around Alaska and Canada on their holiday.  They're friendly guys, and talking with them makes the miles fly by.  When they stop at an RV campground to get coffee, we keep riding.  For lunch, we stop at a "rest area," really a pullout with a bathroom and a small deck over a lake with some info boards on it.  The boards explain how this valley is, and has been for years, an important migration corridor for birds and other wildlife.  Even ancient tribes in the region used this corridor between the mountains to travel.  Now we are too!  After lunch, we start talking to a young couple from France who have been driving around Alaska.  They share water and cookies with us!  Back on the road, their red van passes us and stops.  We think they might be waiting to say something to us, but then we realize that there's a mama black bear and her two adorable cubs on the other side of the road.  I'm apprehensive about being so close, but the mama bear ignores us as we bike slowly past.  On a road with very little traffic, suddenly there are several cars and multiple RVs all stopped to take pictures.  Down the road, the construction we thought was over, isn't.  I'm convinced we are riding Canada's version of the Dalton Highway.  Even though the road isn't great, we make good time due to a generous tailwind (we've been so lucky with these recently!) When it gets late, we set up camp in an open yard next to a ramshackle auto shop.  Its owner looks like he's lived here for 50 years and hasn't showered once, but says that it's fine for us to stay here for the night.

The Magic Bus

We found our own magic bus.  After 60 or so uneventful miles, we wound up in Slana, a mile or so in on the Nabesna Road, one of two roads that leads into Wrangell-St. Elias (the McCarthy Road is the other).  There wasn't much there, and on our way back out to the main road, a man in an approaching car waved for us to stop.  "Y'all have somewhere to stay tonight?"  Hesitating, as this is not a question we hear every day, we responded that no, we didn't really know, but right now we were headed to the market just up the road.  "I own that place," he said, "and we have a little place for cyclists to stay.  Come on over; I'll be back in a minute."  He drove off.  As I mentioned yesterday, we must be the luckiest people in the world.  Right before he drove up, I had been kicking myself for not looking up on the interwebs where the store was in Slana; maybe we could have saved ourselves a couple of miles.  Of course, then we wouldn't have met Jay.  Those extra few miles are always worth it.

Jay Capps is a true Alaskan.  He hunts, smokes, fishes, does everything himself, and has a nice streak a mile long.  We haven't met his wife Debbie yet, but he says she's even meaner than he is.  After we walked in, Jay showed us to the bus.

I was expecting a leaky contraption with a rough floor, but this was no ordinary bus.  Four beds, a microwave, a toaster, a coffeemaker, pots and pans, a propane stove, a wood stove with hatchet and maul, a table with a booth, and various food items and whatnot that past residents have left.  Jay has even covered the sides with thick metal and replaced the door with a bearproof one.  "Do these work?" I asked Jay, pointing to the lights.  He looked insulted.  "This is Midway [the name of the store]," he said proudly.  "Everything works."  And indeed it does.  

Residents of the bus are encouraged to write something.  The numerous notes and drawings on the walls and ceiling add an incredible amount of character and warmth to what might otherwise just be a bus.  Many of the notes are from cyclists who were/are in the midst of their own Alaska-Argentina trip.  Tam added some artwork to the wall above the "kitchen" table:

Check out these pages from other cyclists who have stayed here:

http://worldonabike.com/1000-americans/1000-americans-jay-and-debbie-midway-services/

http://worldonabike.com/trip-reports/north-america/alaska/day-32-34-august-12-14-2008-tok-cutoff-to-tok-about-sun-mountains-lost-pants-life-in-a-bus/

http://downtheroad.org/Alaska-Canada-USA/pictures/1Alaska_Yukon_Canada/3Glennallen_Alaska_Beaver_Creek_Canada.htm

http://coleccionandoatardeceres.blogspot.com/2013_06_01_archive.html?m=0

(the last one's in Spanish but has some pics of the bus)

Jay also gave us free reign of the inside bathroom, shower, and expansive store, "Just write down what items you take, and we'll figure out money tomorrow."  He also pointed out that, because he was leaving the back door open for us, we could rob him blind, but that doesn't seem to bother him.  "We go off the honor system," he says.  

Tam and I took showers then cooked up a delicious amalgamation of pasta, garlic, and the remaining veggies we had from Kennecott.  Mmm!  Then we made some chocolate chip pancakes.  Having a kitchen is great!

Back to the Mountains, July 13-14, 2014

July 13
It rains all night and we sleep with the fly off under the pavilion.  What a luxury!  Unfortunately, it's still raining in the morning when we set off.  Our ride takes us up and down steep hills and through lush forest.  In the pouring rain we make slow progress.  After almost four hours and only twenty miles, the weather gradually begins to improve.  We have a long, beautiful descent into the Matanuska river valley, and a shoulder reappears on the road.  Hooray!  We stop at an overlook and eat lunch at a wonderful picnic table with a spectacular view of the Matanuska glacier.  The glacier looks rather out of place glowing in the sunshine in the middle of a lush, green valley.  After lunch, the afternoon gets better and better.  We have sunny weather, no bugs, and a tailwind that gets stronger as the day goes on and literally pushes us up the hills.  

Mid-afternoon we stop at the Grand View Lodge to share an amazing veggie burger and blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream.  Here we meet a motorcyclist who is very impressed with our journey and tells us, "I love adventure, the more the better. Five minutes on the edge is better than a lifetime of boredom."  Just down the road, we summit Eureka Pass, the highest point on the highway, and are rewarded with a spectacular view of the Wrangell Mountains, enormous and snowy.  We camp in a large gravel area filled with trails and firepits that appears to be a playpark for ATVs.  Our grassy spot is perfect.

July 14
We start our day with a wonderful downhill.  The morning air is a bit chilly, but not uncomfortably so because the sun is out!  In the perfect weather, we bike through a gentle valley with rolling hills of spruce forest.  The trees on either side are occasionally broken up by a small, murky pond or blue lake.  It's perfect habitat for moose and mosquitoes.  Unfortunately, only the mosquitoes come to greet us.  The few lodges or houses along the road are either for sale or look abandoned.  We eat lunch on a dirt hill on a side of the road, 30 miles in.  Nothing special.  What's nice is that after lunch, the ride is mostly downhill, a runway straight to the enormous mountains in front of us.  In Glennallen, a small town right outside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, we stop at the IGA to buy some extra provisions.  Eating an enormous bag of tortilla chips with salsa outside, we meet Toby and Ann, two touring cyclists from Switzerland.  They are traveling from Anchorage to Skagway over the span of about four weeks.  We share stories and end up camping with them in a small park just out of town.

   Our new friends: Toby and Ann

Fun fact: Wrangell Mountain, which we're right next to, is the largest active volcano in Alaska at over 14,000 feet!  It can be seen smoking on clear days.

Adios, Anchorage. July 8-12, 2014

Anchorage was great, but we were itching to get on the road again. Here are some highlights, good and bad, from our time there:

- We stayed with some wonderful people: our new friends Jeff and Sarah, who generously shared their lives with us, and Tam's friend from college, also named Sarah.  Sarah and her roommates were incredibly accommodating, and we can't thank them enough for opening their doors to us.

- Tam got sick.  She had some kind of bug or was maybe just really exhausted.  Whatever it was, we stayed an extra day for her to recuperate.

- We made pancakes.  Twice.  There's not really much more to this, but they were soooo good!  Having access to a kitchen was a rare treat.

    Blueberry and chocolate chip awesome-ness, almost ready to be flipped

- Adventures!  We explored the Chugach Mountains on a two hour run with Sarah and her friend Julie, who are both training for a 50-mile race.  Our early morning run took us through a spectacular valley bordered by snow-dappled peaks, and gave us beautiful views of downtown Anchorage on the edge of a misty ocean.  The joy and beauty of the run was long outlasted by the full body soreness endured afterwards. Running and biking do not use the same muscles.  

We also went canoeing with Sarah and her friend Diana on the glacial-fed Eagle River.  Fortunately we capsized before the Class III section and swam safely to shore, then we hiked back to the road, leaving the canoe to rescue the next day.  Exciting!

With a useless, tiny boat we had, before we all piled into the canoe

- We were able to finish a bunch of errands and projects, including things like my buying new rain pants (my old ones grew legs and walked away when we were in Fairbanks) and Tam sewing a new zipper onto one of her bags.

    Tam's handiwork

The road out of Anchorage was more pleasant than we had anticipated, for the city is rife with bike paths.  We made it to Eagle River yesterday, incidentally to the campground where we would have taken our canoes out had we made it there.  On the way to the campground, we saw Manu and Katrien, the couple from Belgium who had helped Tam fix her bike weeks ago!  They were coming into the city after spending a bunch of time in Fairbanks and Denali, and it was great to see them and hear about their adventures.

Today, we headed north on the Glenn Highway then branched east to Palmer.  The shoulder's a bit thin at times, which makes for some sketchy riding, but overall it's not too bad.

    Tam at a pullout on the Glenn Highway

The area we're in now, the Matanuska Valley, is known for its moderate weather and fertile soil.  We couldn't have asked for better weather today: mid 70s, partly cloudy... it's hard to believe we're still in Alaska!  Tonight we're camped at a campground right next to the large, silty Matanuska River.  We scored a covered pavilion all to ourselves.  I hope it rains while we're here, just so we can sit at the picnic table, dry and warm, and listen to it patter on the plexiglass roof.