After I had asked the noisy neighbour to shut off their generator (which was outside their big RV!), we had a peaceful night, without any bears. Even the wind had stopped and in the morning we had a great view over the Meziadin Lake.

The way to Stewart is only about 65 km and with the sun in our face, it was a pleasant ride. The scenery is very impressive, with huge glaciers hanging on to steep walls. The road itself climbed steep for a while, but leveled out in front of the famous Bear Glacier.

Not only well-known for being one of the most accessible glaciers (the road passes right in front of the lake), but also as a backdrop in the movie Insomnia (with Al Pacino & Robin Williams). Though even in the short period since, it has retreated visibly and for the first time the glacier is no longer touching the lake directly.

The strong headwind was pretty cold and soon we continued our way: downhill! Through beautiful scenery, we freewheeled all the way back to sealevel, the first time since we started at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a few months before..

Many people warned us that there was an aggressive bear on the loose in town. When we checked the campsite, we noticed that half of it was closed.

“Yeah, that bear is messing things up, so we rather have the campers all in one side, so we can keep an eye on them…’

That did not seem to promising, so we went hunting for a free camping spot in town. We noticed a colourful supermarket with a nice level field in the back. Inside was a woman working frantically. When we got a chance to ask her about the camping, she said it was a bad plan.

‘”This is where we keep the trash and the bear is going though trash everywhere.”

“Ok, thanks. Do you know any other place we can pitch our tent? Just a garden or a lawn would be good for us?”

“Hmm, let me think. Well, I wouldn’t mind if you stayed in our garden.” She motioned to a man standing in the shop. “George! Show these people our house!”.

George turned out to be Nedda’s husband. After mentioning that they had found some fresh bearscat in the yard last night, he took us to their place. We could leave our food and valuables safely in an old defunct car and went into town and ordered a huge pizza to celebrate our return to sea-level

Just when we came out of the restaurant 2 guys came up to us in the dark, cheering.

“You made it! Well done!”. We looked at eachother: who are these people? It turned out that Amor and his father in law Al had passed us when we were going uphill towards the glacier. We told them about our plans and Amor was so intrigued that he said he wanted to buy us a big breakfast the next morning.

We camped without being disturbed by any bear and got outside, just to see Amor running through our street, shouting our names!

“Ah, I thought you had forgotten, let’s go to have breakfast!” They had to leave soon, but we chatted over a wonderful breakfast. While they were packing, they also let us use their shower in the hotelroom, which was wonderful.

After we said goodbye, we bumped into a Dutch couple, Hans & Joan vander Puijl, who were touring through Canada. We showed them where to get the good breakfast and after we found out that they had the same plans as we did – to visit Hyder, the bear viewing platform and the Salmon glacier- we asked if we could join them.

We had a great day together, though we did not see any bears on the special viewing platform, apparently there had been very little salmon this year and most bears had left the area (to roam the trash in town instead!). They drove us all the way up to the impressive Salmon glacier, we were very happy we had not tried to do this on our bikes as the road was steep, long and gravel..

That night, we were invited by Nedda & George to use their kitchen for cooking, which was nice.

We cycled back into Hyder the next day and spend a full day at the bear viewing platform, but alas, no bear in sight. Coincidentally this was the first day that no fees were charged and also the first day that no bears were spotted… How much do the bears get paid to appear? And what do they do in their off-season?

The silly thing about Hyder is not the ghost town houses and shops, but that it is on Alaskan grounds, though the only way in is from Stewart Alaska and there is no other way out than returning the same way. Though you can enter without any problems, once you go back out, you are stopped by borderguards that need to see your passport. Where did they think we were coming from on our bikes, I do not know…

The 3rd and last night in Stewart, we were upgraded to Nedda & George spare room and had a wonderful meal together. It was nice to get to know them during these days and change from being strangers to dear friends as has happened before and will happen again during our long journey through the Americas…

‘Now you be careful and watch out for that bear! He’s is not afraid of no humans, look at these pictures!”

Mr Cook had a new knee, his wife just recovered from lung cancer.

‘We do not know if we make it through another winter, but we love the place’.

In winter they move South, to the lower 48.

Mr Cook gave us a big chunk of moose minced meat. ‘We are not going to finish it.’

David had been a pilot, flying small planes around Fairbanks. David and Karen had saved for a long time to go on their road trip.They had a normal sized campervan/RV, meaning all you need in a very compact model, half teh size of the usual 30ft buses we see on the road..

They shared their campspot with us and even made us pancakes the next morning…

It was time to leave our friend named Alaska and meet another partner for the next few months, named Canada. We had so many good times and many bad times. It is funny how even a fictional line on a map can define a relationship. We felt like we had to say goodbye to family…

We had stayed another day in Tok, it was just too perfect to camp for free, behind a 24/7 gasstation and next to the supermarket. We had to take care of our belongings as there was a group of drunk locals nearby. We have noticed this often lately: small groups of native Americans, who walk or sit around with paperbags or just with a bottle of scotch. It is a sad sight and a result of many bad political decisions in a long row.

We met a few other travelers who stayed the second night on the same camp; a young cyclist from Quebec, who was on his way home and a couple from Argentina (www.amunches.com) who were at the end of their 6 year journey. It was nice for Ivana to speak some Spanish and to drink some mate, but also interesting to see that they were clearly tired. Tired of travelling, tired of telling their story. The next morning they left early, but they had left Ivana some rainpants, though they were not really suitable for cycling as we would find out soon..

We left with dry weather, but quickly the hills and the rain started. Ivana’s pants ripped and one leg came off. We stayed at a very wet campground near a lake that probably was very pretty if you could see it. Only a few days later (fortunately) we read the report of fellow cyclists Tim & Cindie, who had seen a bear while camping here. We had been less ‘bearanoid’ as we had simply not seen any bears in Alaska outside Denali park, which in some ways is more like the Serengeti than the ‘real world’…

The next day we were completely soaked again and Ivana was ready to quit and fly home to sunny Argentina… Just in time we passed a visitor centre for the Tetlin National Wildlife refuge. Two ladies, who lived all their life in the native village of Northway and worked as volunteers, came to the rescue. They gave us tea, let us dry our clothes and even prepared a few delicious sandwiches with salmon. Just before we left, they even gave some chocolate. It is people like these that we will take with us in our heart when leaving Alaska..

We passed a small building where visitors have to check in when entering Alaska, but strangely enough the customs office for Canada was another 20 miles away. Or rather, 32km, as we were now back on metrical grounds as we had passed the official border. Somehow we had the unrealistic idea that we could leave the bad weather in Alaska, but alas, the clouds passed the invisible line without needing a visa.

These 30 km in ‘Krakozia’ seemed endless as the rain came down, taking all view away. Moreover we met up with an old friend: the gravel road. Some parts were unpaved. It can be very annoying to see more than 5 signs announcing the gravel patch. Don’t announce it, fix it!

The last 10 km were on a straight road, but we could not see much of it. We were completely and fully soaked when we finally arrived at anothe rbuidling that looked like a toll-booth. There was a STOP sign and tired and wet Ivana did the one thing that Thimble had warned us about not to do: she ignored the STOP sign to park her bike a few meters ahead.

‘Where is she going?’ The lady in the window asked furiously. Great, I thought, now we are going to be sent back. At this point we did not care in which country we would get soaked, but the idea of having to cycle 30km back to Alaska made me desperate. So I put on a charming smile, asked how she was doing and that we were fine except for being cold, tired, miserable and wet.

‘Do you have any arms or weapons’?

‘No’. At least she did not ask about our bearspray. We knew that this was considered a weapon and that you were not supposed to carry it across the border, but we could plead European/South American ignorance in this matter. We needed it and wanted to keep it.

‘Do you have any mace, or pepperspray?’. Damn, she asked it. I do not like lies, so I casually said ‘just bearspray’, while looking innocently down on our passports as I had never seen those stamps and visa before.

She ignored me, which was good, as she did not ask for the spray to be handed in, stamped our passports and told us to continue. We were in Canada!

Beaver Creek was just 2km ahead on the same road, and we entered the first motel we saw. I would have paid for a room as we would need a dry place this night, in order to dry our stuff. When I asked the friendly lady if she knew where the school was (as cyclist Thierry had told us you could camp there), she said that if we really wanted to camp in this weather, there was a better place: the ice skating rink was not in use and had a large roof. We checked it out and it looked perfect.

I had a fight with our stove, when a completely drunk native girl passed by and almost out, but could fix it while mostly ignoring her; and while the rain pounded on the large metal roof we fell into a deep sleep, thinking about the many wonders of Alaska and the empty book of Canada that lay open ahead of us…

Kowalski, status report!

Just some smaller hills, but in total quite a bit of climbing. We passed quite a lot of roadwork and in one section we had to load our bike in the back of a truck, drove for about 2km and we had to get back out! The ride was nice, but we would have been faster just cycling the bit…