Cross Continent Superlatives

I've actually been off and on working on this for months, only never to finish. I figured that being snowed in is a good enough reason to complete my unfinished business.

These are the highlights and best of from my road trip to Alaska and back in July and August of 2009:

Best City:Madison, WI- University of Wisconsin, bike friendly, nice weather, scenic. Very nice people, good food, tasty beer. What's not to like?


Honorable Mention: Calgary, Saskatoon, Edmonton (below)


Best Town: Jasper, Alberta- near perfect town nestled in the splendor of the Canadian Rockies. Every turn is a postcard. You have glorious peaks, glaciers, sparkling rivers and picturesque lakes. Moose, bear, marmot, dall sheep and elk. Can't go wrong with Jasper, unless you don't like pretty stuff in nature.


Honorable Mention- Mineral Point, Wisconsin; Sitka, Alaska (below); Haines, Alaska


Best Campground (Public owned):Wasagaming - located in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba. Run by Parks Canada, it is large, but it has clean facilities, close to the town of Wasagaming and pretty Clear Lake.

Honorable Mention-
Gordon Howe Campground, Saskatoon is run by the city of Saskatoon and simple and nice. I stayed in overflow and was the nicest overflow camping that I have ever been pushed to. Plus, how can you not like a placed named after a Gordie Howe?

Juniper Campground, Teddy Roosevelt National Park (North Unit). Isolated, quiet on the banks of the Missouri River with the bison.

Best Campground (Private owned):Robert Service- close to Whitehorse, it is clean, efficient and full of fun people. I stayed there twice. Most vagabonds that venture through Yukon end up at Robert Service sometime.

Honorable Mention- Garden City Campground, Skagway- Okay, it really wasn't that nice, but the owner was accomodating and pleasant, the showers hot. Plus, Emily made some friends the morning we started riding who fed us donuts and coffee.

Favorite Hostel: HI Edmonton- Great location, awesome staff, nice people staying there.

Honorable Mention- Maligne Canyon Wilderness Hostel, Jasper - No running water or electricity. And where else would you get awaken by the proprietor shouting, "There's a bear outside, don't panic if you hear a lot of noise!" Then he goes outside and starts banging pots together.

Favorite Quote:
"Everything sounds better with 'Photograph' ". -Jim Rome.
I was listening to "Rome is Burning" on an Edmonton sports radio station and Rome was talking about how if you put Def Leppard's "Photograph" in the background, everything instantly sounds better. He proceded to do that with some of the show's worst call ins. It worked. See for yourself, play something terrible and put this in the back:



Honorble Mention:
"North Carolina! Did you get lost?" - Random motorcyclists looking at my tag at a gas station in the middle of nowhere on the Alaska Highway.
"You didn't come all this way to sit at a redlight" - Emily's friend, Glenn (below, with Emma), as he sped through a red light in Juneau. Glenn picked us up on our ferry layover to take us to lunch and for a quick tour of Alaska's capital city.


Best Beer: Alaskan Amber - Juneau's best export. I snuck two cases home. The Smoked Porter is delicious.

Honorable Mention:
6060 Stout by Jasper Brewing Company. Tasty, especially after a day of hiking and golf. Plus, the bartender kept offering free drinks to us sitting at the bar.
Amber Ale at Brewery Creek in Mineral Point, WI. They brew good drinks but also serves up good food there too.

Favorite Road:Haines Highway from Haines Junction, Yukon to Haines Alaska. It was the most scenic. You had Kluane National Park as your view. It wasn't bad.


Honorable Mention:
Stewart Highway from Stewart, BC to Yukon. Lonely and Isolated, which I deem perfect.

Canada HWY 16: one of the trans-Canada Highways. Between Winnipeg and Edmonton, it's tiny towns and seemingly never ending canola fields. Beyond the Rockies, it is isolated ranches and large expanses of space between scenic little towns.

Best Meal: Frosty Freeze, Haines Junction- I understand that leather would taste good after 101 miles on a bike, but the fries and shakes and Frosty Freeze were divine.

Honorable Mention:
33 Mile Restaurant, 33 miles out of Haines, Alaska- not really the best food, but a great meal because of circumstances (cold, wet, tired), company (Emma and Aaron) and timing.

Innisfree Cafe, Innisfree, Alberta- tried pyrogy for the first time and had great conversation with the owner, Grant (below).


Favorite Cafe: Sticky Buns- near Carcross, Yukon. This alone is almost reason enough to come to Yukon.


Honorable Mention: Highliner Coffee, Sitka. Good coffee, the staff was nice and they had wireless for me.

Favorite Hike: Skyline Trail, Jasper National Park - 44 km (about 27 miles), most of it above treeline. Experience alpine meadows, glacier fed lakes and spectacular views of the Canadian Rockies. Hang out with marmot and goats. Get your ass kicked climbing up to the "Notch" (below).


Honorable Mention:
Verstovia, Sitka- lots of climbing to gorgeous views of Baranof Island and Mt. Edgecumbe. Plus, I had nice company on the walk.


Favorite Structure: Trestle at Lethbridge, Alberta:


Honorable Mention:
High Bridge, Edmonton


Spillway and Dam, Fort Peck Lake, Montana


Provenchar Pedestrian Bridge, Winnipeg


Favorite Church: Christ Church, Whitehorse- nice sermon and the priest remembered my name after the service.

Honorable Mention- City Church, Edmonton

Things I miss: CBC- like Canadian NPR, the canola fields of central Canada, the freedom of being on the road.

Would I drive 4,000 miles to Alaska/Yukon through desolate roads and isolated communities again: In a heartbeat.

High in Sitka

I was in Sitka six days. On three straight days I got to summit some of the mountains around the town. Climbed Gavan Hill solo one day, Starrigavan with Emma the next and we were joined by Ben on Verstovia the third.

Here's what I saw (click to enlarge):

Gavan Hill (Elevation ~2500 ft)





Starrigavan (Elevation 2875)





Verstovia (Elevation 3350)

The Golden Circle

Skagway and Haines, Alaska are only about 17 miles apart. By air. Or water.

Driving is another story. The scenic route known as the "Golden Circle" starts and ends in Alaska and in between is 360 miles of mostly road that takes you through 1 Canadian province (British Columbia), 1 Canadian territory (Yukon), 3 nifty towns (Carcross, Whitehorse and Haines Junction), thousands of feet of elevation gain and loss and a dozens of lakes, rivers and springs and dozens more mountain peaks.

Emily and I did it on bikes.

Here's the recap:

Day 1: Wednesday, Aug 5 - 65.9 total miles, 12.0 avg speed, 5:29 riding time (not including breaks)
Day 2: Thursday, Aug 6 - 43.4 miles, 15.7 avg, 2:45 riding time
Day 3: Friday, Aug 7 - 101.3 total miles, 12.8 avg, 7:54 riding time
Day 4: Saturday, Aug 8 - 65.5 miles (does not include the approx 8 miles we rode in the back of a truck through construction), 11.4 avg, 5:42 ride time
Day 5: Sunday, Aug 9 - 79.6 miles, 15.9 avg, 5:00 ride time.

The good:
- Sweet riding partner. We're close to the same ability. I'm probably faster, though Emma was always stronger at the end of the day than I was. Besides being a great riding partner, Emily was great company too. Not one moment did I think, "Man, I gotta get away for a while." I don't know of many people I can spend 5 straight days with and not tire of.
- White Pass. 3200 feet of climbing. Took us 2.5 hours to do 14 miles. But we finished and it turned out that all this dreading that I was doing for months was for nothing.
- Scenery. White Pass to Fraser is awesome. Haines Junction to Haines is spectacular.
- Emma's homemade powerbars. Secret ingredients that put em over: agave nectar and coffee.
- Met Koko. He's been biking around the world for the last three years. On his way to Argentina. I think Emily and I were both envious. Also, not 20 minutes earlier, Emma was just saying she would like to see some other cyclist since she we hadn't seen any yet. Wish granted.
- Weather. Day 5 was cold and rainy, but we had great riding weather. 4 out of 5 days of perfect weather is not bad. Plus, with the fires in the Yukon, the area needed the rain much more than we needed it to not rain.
- Mile 33 Restaurant. The food was okay. The service was very slow. But for two drenched riders on the verge of hypothermia, the first public place in nearly 90 miles was a welcome godsend. Best restaurant: Frosty Freeze in Haines Junction. Runner-up: Sticky Buns, near Carcross.
- Safety. I worried about cars. And falling off bikes and mountains. My biggest concern was not the ride, it was that one of us would get hurt. I am thankful for safety. A little soreness and tiredness, but no injuries. And we had no mechanic issues with the bikes. Pump, tubes, patch kit, spare tire went unused.

The could have been better:
- My trailer broke. It was still usable, but just sketchy. And it didn't belong to me.
- Baby powder. Should have packed it. I started chafing a little. Not going into details.
- Calories. Lesson learned is that no matter how much we ate, it was never enough. We were always famished at the end of the day. You should have seen us devour rice and beans after Day 1. If you are going to ride this far, you constantly have to eat.

The Hole in Homeland Security

Over the course of nearly three days, I made my way from Jasper, Alberta to Whitehorse, Yukon. I took the long road-- the Cassiar Highway. Off HWY 37 is a spur, 37a, that takes you the small town of Stewart, British Columbia. Keep driving through Stewart and less than a mile later, right past the wharf, you cross into the Unites States and the smaller Alaskan town of Hyder.

This is where I take issue? Where are the Minutemen, Homeland Security or Immigration and Customs? I mean, I just drove into the United States from Canada with no hassle. Of course, I had to go through Canadian Immigration on the way back into Canada where once again I was subject to silly questions and procedure (I was in Hyder all of 20 minutes). I asked Canadian Customs where US Customs was and her reply was, "They always say they're coming, but we'll see."





I mean, anyone can easily drive into our country from Canada and threaten us. Never mind that Hyder only has a population of 97 (2000 Census) and the road ends less than a mile into town. There is no airstrip in Hyder. US Mail comes twice a week from Ketchikan, Alaska (though I haven't figured out if it lands in Stewart or if it is a float plane). You would have to boat down the Portland Inlet and around the southern tip of Akaska to get to the nearest American town, never mind Seattle. Where's the uproar? This town is a threat to our National Security!!

- Stewart and Hyder are small and not much going on there. At the height of the silver boom in the early 20th century, 10,000 people lived at the end of the Portland Canal. Toady, the two towns combine for about 600. The road in is spectacular however. It drops to sea level from over 2200 feet. In this narrow valley is Bear Glacier and over two dozen sublimely beautiful waterfalls cascading from the ridges high above.


- The Cassiar Highway I describe as lonely. 70-90 miles between gas stations. The towns (Iskut and Dease Lake) are tiny and remote. Logging is huge. Signs along the road indicate when an area was logged and when it was replanted. The road is pretty well maintained, but you can tell that winter (and logging trucks) takes its toll on the asphalt. The views are nice. Not Icefields Parkway spectacular, but serene and humbling in the knowledge that you are so far from society.



- Alaska Highway also remote. Also lonely. But more (and larger) towns and more cars. Whitehorse is unremarkable. Nice clean town with good history, but nothing stands out that's good or bad. The guy in the bike shop in Skagway did tell me that Whitehorse has the best mountain biking in the region.

- Envy: Lot's of motorcycles. I've seen more BMWs in Yukon/Alaska/British Columbia than I have in the last two years. For good reason. They are good all purpose bikes that can take a beating. I met one guy who lives in Asheville and was riding the Haul Road (even more remote than the Cassiar) all the way to Prudhoe Bay. I want to go!

- Skagway. Four cruise ships were docked on Monday. The town was overrun with people. It's small to begin with and then each ship has twice the number of people of the entire town, so I was frustrated and annoyed by the tourists. There was no quiet place to eat, read or relax, which is what I wanted to do while I waited for my afternoon ferry for Sitka.

- I tried to get an oil change in Skagway. There was no mechanic, just a guy named Chet "on call". I called him and he said he could do it in two or three days because he has to order the oil filter from Juneau. The idea that it would not be in stock never occurred to me since I have three auto parts stores within a three mile radius of my house (plus two quick lubes and who knows how many mechanics).

- In case you are wondering: since leaving Hendersonville, about 4,800 miles put on my chariot, whom I've since named Pomp or Pompey, after William Clark's nickname for Sacajawea's baby, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, who in the first two years of his life journeyed across the continent and back on his mother's back with the Corps of Discovery.

Non-Road trip Shout Outs:
My good friend who lives, works and trains in Colorado Springs, Ryan Kirkpatrick, home for his Grandpa Kirk's 90th birthday ran, won and set a new course record in the Bele Chere 5K on Saturday.

Bele Chere has record 5K

Another good friend, Jason Joyce, has been promoted to Athletic Director at North Henderson. Which means his golf game will continue to suffer and I will continue to dominate.

North hires Joyce as new AD