Alaska 2017

Packing for our next crazy migration was a daunting task: an over 10,000 miles trip that would take us to the top of Alaska and then all the way down the west coast to the bottom of Mexican Baja, with a pit stop in Vancouver for a family wedding, plus we were planning on camping for most of the time. How the hell do you pack for such a tour?!

Alaska bound!

We decided to incorporate visiting all Kyle's relatives, who live scattered all over Canada, so our first stop was at Nana and the family in Toronto.

Our Alaskan trip pales in comparison to what Nana did in the 1940s, during WWII. As one of the first women to live in the Arctic, she did meteorology work with her husband, Kyle's grandfather Tom, who was working for the military. Nana, the kind 96-year-old family matriarch is an inspiration for our journeys - she may have not done it on motorcycles, but she lived with the Inuit!

We rode 6 hours northwest of Toronto to visit more family at Basswood Lake, and destroyed a wheel bearing along the way.

In honor of Canada Day, the Canadian-born Kyle had to jump into the freezing cold lake (wearing the norewhale horn that Nana brought from the Arctic many years ago was optional ).

The next morning we returned to the US and started crossing the upper peninsula of Michigan. Just as we were miserably deciding whether to camp in the rain or pay for a cottage, we were invited to stay with Gary who was renting a cottage for a family reunion and who happened to see us and took pity on us. All he asked for was for is to pay it forward - we promised we would!

Then we rode west through Wisconsin (Hello, Wisconsin! :D ) and into Minnesota. We had to stop in Mineapolis for two reasons: to visit our Iranian/artist/chef friend Pedram, and to see Prince's residence.

Pedram was lovely as always, putting up with our chaotic overtaking of his home in the evening, eating the delicious traditional meal he cooked for us, and then leaving early the next day.

As for the home of the Prince of music, there were definitely some downsides (the price for the basic 70-min tour was $57, they rushed us through the tour, and there were absolutely no photos allowed), but we were definitely blown away by the experience (and Stina got teary-eyed here and there).

On the outside, the place looks like a weird 1980s office/industrial building. It is even weirder on the inside: big empty spaces filled with whatever Prince envisioned for his "park": he placed his photos and giant murals, and purple items and his symbol everywhere, and his music was playing throughout the building; there were big cages with doves; there was his kitchen in which he was making coffee and watched basketball games only a year ago; the three studios where he recorded his genius music (they played 30-sec snippets of his unreleased jam sessions, and it was perfection); there was his NPG night club in which he would often show up and jam for little groups of people until 5am. Two rooms truly stood out: the "living room" which had glass ceilings and clouds painted on the walls, where they mounted a glass balcony upon which Prince's ashes have been placed (the urn is shaped as Paisley Park); and the "purple room" where we could see the famous Purple Rain items all together: the blouse, the motorcycle and the Oscar (while Purple Rain was playing on a giant screen).

If you like Prince's music and there is an opportunity, we say go take the tour. And if you are a fan, you will absolutely love it and leave a little heartbroken.

We rode west, through North Dakota, i.e. miles and miles (and miles) of totally flat blooming meadows, with lots of tiny lakes in between - and in some of those lakes, believe it or not, there were pelicans! Literally in the middle of nowhere is its capital, Bismarck, a midsized town with nothing to see (though we enjoyed staring at grandpas and young guys wearing cowboy outfits, and they were staring at us, too).

There is nothing to do, and there is nobody there, so there is no reason to stay or ever return, but it's a pretty and quiet and an endless state - a nice pause for the mind and a special kind of beautiful.

Then we turned south and entered the enormous Standing Rock Indian Reservation, where it got insanely hot (100°F/40°C) and even more deserted, and the flats turned into the dry prairie. We stopped at one of the small Sioux settlements, Standing Rock (you know, the one famous for the pipeline controversy), and were sorry to see how rundown it was and how broken people looked. We visited the grave of the famous 19th-century Lakota chief Sitting Bull, who was a wise leader and who beat General Custard at Little Big Horn. It was bizzare and sad to be there on the 4th of July, the day on which the whole nation, not just parts of it, is supposed to celebrate its greatness.

Then we rode for hours, riding along the leading edge of a huge storm, accompanied by strong hot winds, prairie dogs, and thousands of tumble weeds blowing across our front tires. The roads in both Dakotas are really well-maintained, but is was a tough ride because it was so hot, with no shade (not a tree, not even a building) all day.

Exhausted and overheated we made it to the town of Wall, South Dakota, famous for their 1931 drug store Wall Drug; their road signs begin after Chicago and entertain you all the way to Wall, where their coffee still costs 5 cents.

If the day before was way too hot, then this day was just insanely hot, so of course we went through shadeless Badlands National Park at high noon. The landscape was surreal, moonlike, dry and hot (which doesn’t seem to disturb the prairie dogs), full of hills, melted by the eons of erosion.

We stopped at the tiny town of Scenic where we got gas with real Indians and then chatted with real cowboys (chewing-tobacco and greasy hats included), and stood in a forgotten 18th-century wild west jail. Stina was thrilled, this is the stuff from childhood comic books and cowboy movies!

We rode up into the Black Hills to Mount Rushmore, which was a less pleasant surprise: a touristy and overpriced one (they wanted $20 for the parking of two motorcycles). The monument is a really cool sight, but all you have to do is see it from the road for five minutes - so that is exactly what we did. Either way, it was finally less hot and there were trees, and some great twisty roads through the hills to make us smile, and we were happy to set up our wild camp under the spruce trees.

Going north, we first stopped in the old mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota. It's well preserved, proud of its rowdy past (saloons, gambling, gun fighters, etc), so it felt like something out of a western movie scene.

Then we rode along a pretty stream on Spearfish Scenic Highway, out of the Black Hills and into Wyoming.

It was weird to see snowcapped mountain tops while riding on the highway with open jackets. Riding into the Big Horn Mountains National Forest, we crossed over the Medicin Wheel scenic pass, however the temperature dropped big time, and it was a cold and exhausting two-hour ride - but it was breathtakingly beautiful and like entering another world, full of snowcapped peaks and mountain meadows. Then we dropped out of the mountains for 14 mi/20km that offered incredibly beautiful views, and landed at the gorgeous and cheap ($7) Five Springs Falls Campground at the base of the national forest.

Next on the menu was the Bear Tooth Pass day: We left the Big Horn Mountains and went across the hot Wyoming valley towards Cody; the road leading to the pass in Wyoming and taking us into Montana is bordering Yellowstone, which of course means it’s amazing.

Endless hills, mountain chains, snowcapped mountains, scattered cattle and horses galloping the gigantic prairies…

...but the pass itself takes the cake: countless switchbacks take you first to tall spruce-covered hills and lakes, and then to a turquoise river under the bear tooth shaped mountain peak; then you pick all kinds of flowers under hot bright blue skies, and then you go up, and up, and up, reaching the snow, ice lakes and mountain tops; and at the very top, you are awarded with 360 degrees of spectacular views of lakes, valleys, mountains, and canyons.

We ended the day happily camping in the wild again, this time already in Montana.

Driving through Montana toward Canada (Bozeman to Calgary, to visit with Kyle’s cousin and his wife) was a 476mi/761km–long and crazy day, with lots of beautiful views, some sculpture in the middle of nowhere and signs that don't make any sense to a European :)

We had to stop at the tiny town of East Helena, MT because Stina’s grandfather was born there (which turned out to be pretty much one street, frozen somewhere in the middle of the 20th century). After his parents made enough money to start a business in the early 1920’s, they moved him back to Slovenia when he was still just a boy. So Stina wanted to take a picture as a badass with a comment “the Goršič family is back in town!” - but then Kyle decided to ask around at the hardware store… and in that store sat Denny Gorsich, and our great grandfathers were brothers! And the local little cemetery is full of Gorsichs too. Unbelievable, right?! Guess Kyle was not the only one doing a family-reunion tour on this trip ;)

As for riding through Montana, no wonder it’s called “Big Sky Country”: hundreds and hundreds of miles of rivers, mountains, wide open spaces, with horses everywhere but almost empty of civilization. So remote, and really beautiful!

We made it to Calgary, Canada, and stayed with Kyle's family for a few days...and then we were trying to leave, but that took a few more days: first, we got some information from back home and thought that we might have to turn around; after that was solved and we left, Kyle’s bike started to act up, so we went back to his cousin’s house and worked on it all day (turns out the gas cap was the culprit, creating vapor lock and not allowing the tank to vent); as soon as the bike was ready again, heavy rains came, and stayed a while... Good thing we like our family and they like us, we definitely managed to catch up!

Then, finally, it was time for the long ride from Calgary to Alaskan border (2500mi/ 4000km):

Surprisingly, the first part is an industrial landscape - you ride through dirt and smog, along practical, ugly oil rig towns.

But the first night already felt a bit Alaskan, tons of mosquitos, a long bright evening, and cold and foggy morning.

The halfway point (around Dawson Creek) marks the beginning of the famous Alaskan Highway (1422mi/ 2300km). Soon after, the nasty road turns into something closer to Northern Exposure scenery: vast, glorious nature with plenty of goats, black bears, and buffalo hanging along the highway, and the only signs of civilization are an occasional gas station/store/motel which is usually run by the members of indigenous First Nation peoples.

On day three we entered Yukon Territory; apart from the posing in front of the sign marking that we entered the toasty province of Yukon (59°F/16°C), the only other thing we briefly stopped for was Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, where people have been attaching city signs, license plates and any other type of sign for decades.

It was hard to tell what day it was any more, and even what time of day, since time zones kept changing and it never really got dark.

The next few days were exhausting. Everything around us was absolutely wild and beautiful, but way colder and wetter than it should be this time of year, and there was hardly any rest for us because we wild-camped which took a lot of work (lodging is beyond our means, rooms cost over $100). On the other hand, there were many moments of joy, we felt free and adventurous, riding the miles and waving at bears. We were determined to make it: even though most riders we met had much better gear, bikes and sleeping options, we learned to be tough as nails, plus we saw plenty of lonely bicyclists who had it way harder, and if they can do it, so can we!

We left the Alaskan Highway due to the incessant cold rain - we headed north, instead of west to Anchorage. Of course we still ended our day in a storm, but the afternoon was sunny (and so was the midnight, by the way), we saw an otter, we were alone in the wild, and we even found a free camp with a shelter and wood. It seems that Yukon might be wilder than Alaska: nature is still the master here, that boreal forest (taiga) seems endless, and the few people living here are slow, tough and simple.

Dawson City, a town on Yukon river, was a cool little stop. It was a base during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush and several of the frontier buildings are preserved (in which there were lots of parties, women and shows - those miners had gold to spend!).

Next, we went into the mountains to cross the border to Alaska via Top Of The World highway. It's not the best ride ever (and it took 3 hours to do 66 miles, it's all gravel), but it's a fun alternative way to enter Alaska, and you go through the northernmost USA land border crossing.

Alaska!!! ...well, funny, the first two places we visited there were silly tourist traps. Chicken (population 7) is a former mining place, and now people stop here due to the name (white settlers couldn't pronounce the real name - which is an indigenous name for a local bird, so they called it Chicken instead).

We spent the night in Eagle Claw Motorcycle Camp in Tok - a cool cheap little camp with free wood, water, sauna, and a garage with tools, and you can sleep in a 1970s ambulance van or a school bus (or a tent). There we met a young Swiss guy (and later a guy from South America whose bike is even smaller than ours!) who was riding across the world all alone, how cool is that?

We woke up into a hot summer day (!) and rode to another weird place - the town of North Pole, named in 1940s in the hope to attract toy manufacturers. That didn't happen, but they now make money with celebrating Christmas all year (Santa takes kids' wishes, there are raindeer and Christmas trees and ornaments, streets are called St. Claus Lane etc). It was bizzare: we were celebrating Christmas in July while we were hot in Alaska.

So far, all we saw was a tame Alaska; but now, we were getting ready for another epic and hard ride, this time into the Arctic Circle: the Dalton Highway.

TOP EXPERIENCE: DALTON HIGHWAY

We rode the notorious and glorious Dalton Highway - the 414mi/663km-long industrial messed-up road were big trucks are king; it is the northernmost road in America, and it takes you north into the Arctic Circle, and on through the tundra, all the way to the Arctic Ocean.

Its an epic road, and a true adventure. The nature is stunning, vast, there are forests and lakes and mountain chains, and then treeless tundra with caribou, musk ox and ducks. On the other hand, the notorious pipeline runs along the road, and endless row of fast semi trucks throw dust and rocks at you as they fly by, and ugly industrial buildings that you see every once in a while give you an idea of what the utopian sci-fi ugly work settlement of Prudhoe Bay at the top will look like.

Add to this drama the challenging road (some was nice and there was gravel and dirt...but then slippery mud, and ankle deep loose gravel in the 50mi of construction area) and crazy weather (warm, cold, windy, then rainy, it changes extremely all the time), and the fact that after the camp of Coldfoot there is no gas, or food, or shelter for 250 miles until Prudhoe Bay (where we didn't stay because rooms cost over $200 and there is absolutely nothing to do or see), and you got yourself a perfect adventure.

We left Fairbanks in the late afternoon on day one (but that doesn't matter because it never gets dark) because Kyle was changing four tires and did other bike maintainence, and spent the night wild camping in Coldfoot. The next day we wanted to go all the way to Prudhoe Bay and back, but we became too tired to manage that due to the road conditions (one hundred miles of construction).

Prudhoe Bay, by the way, is not really a town, but a huge work camp, there are no houses or gardens or bars (it's a dry town because the workers used to drink and make trouble all the time), a container city with a few simple restaurants and stores and an expensive container-hotel... You also cannot wild camp, it is a cold grey place with lots of polar bears visiting at night, and we never saw the ocean either - you actually have to take an expensive tour in a van for that, and we decided that that was lame. We were still elated to have made it there, but after taking a few excited pictures at the end of the road (officially that happens at the Dead Horse general store) we quickly looked around, found coffee, and got gas (which was incredibly expensive, especially considering that this is an oil rig) and started heading back south.

After a 14-hour day to the top and back we were still in the tundra and it started to rain, so we stopped at a bush airport and stayed on the covered front porch - it was great, we had a view of the caribou playing in the field and didn't have to camp in the cold, wet, windy, mosquito-infested outdoors. But that meant that day three would be long, and long it was: it rained for about 250 out of 350 miles, which turned the road into a dangerous mud track. At the end we were fried, and landed in a campground in Fairbanks exhausted but happy, and had some well deserved beer!

And lastly, we enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow adventure riders. Both bikers and cyclists were all smiles greeting each other on the road, people were checking on other people's well-being and offering help. And since there is only one way, we kept seeing the same riders and it was fun to share stories of travels.

If you want a massive adventure, this is it, we loved it!!!

We got clean and rested in Fairbanks, a former gold-rush town. It's really just a crossroads but it does have two local breweries, a really good museum (University of Alaska Museum of the North, were you learn about the Alaskan history, culture, geology, and see all kinds of animals, indigenous masks etc), plus, there were two events going on while we were there.

Golden Days is commemorating the town's golden past with sourdough pancakes, parade and rubber-ducky races ("sourdough" is an important word in Alaska. Experienced gold prospectors carried a pouch of sourdough bread around their necks - it was a starter for making bread, and this was crucial for surviving the harsh winters. Before long, sourdough became a symbol of an experienced Alaskan who knows how to live in the wilderness).

The other is event is the four days of the World Eskimo/Indian Races, in which athletes from the Far North compete in sports such as Ear Pulling (mimicking frostbite) and Alaska High Kick; there's also dancing and performances. (On the side: it was good to see how much better the natives are doing up here than they do in Canada or the US; they seem happily westernized but confident and proud of their heritage. And it was also good to see the many racially mixed families).

Then we visited the famous Denali National Park, were you have to take the bus and go on tour one hundred miles down the road into the park (were you can hike) and back. The scenery is beautiful and we saw Dall sheep, grizzly and caribou, plus Mt Denali (former Mt McKinley) - North America's highest peak. But the tight regulations and tourist crowds were hard for us right at that point - the never-ending sunlight, open roads, and vast wild nature had us believe that we were free and unlimited. We spent the evening with some fellow riders from Lithuania and Switzerland at a local rider's back yard, where we shared beer, stories, and the host's salmon.

By the way, close to where we were is 49th State Brewery, which has a copy of Magic Bus standing in the yard. The original bus that was used in Sean Penn's movie Into The Wild is slowly falling apart 30 miles into the wild from there.

Talkeetna is supposed to be a funky little town with funky characters upon which the famous (and awesome!) series Northern Exposure was based. To us, it seemed more like a hipster tourist village; but it did have some prewar wooden houses with moose antlers above the doors, lots of bars (and a pot shop), AND their mayor is a cat named Stubbs!

Anchorage may not be a big city with a skyline, but it has one half of the state's population (300,000) and most of the state's moose living in it. Plus, you don't even have to leave town to catch salmon, and we had great hosts again.

Coming into western Kenai Peninsula, the landscape became full of beautiful lakes, hills, and little towns (some of them Russian)....but we failed to see most of it because of the heavy rains and thick fog for most of the day. But visiting the pictoresque little harbour towns on our way to Homer was a fun 15-minute stop every time:

Hope is a tiny and slow, but authentic pioneering rural town, and people from Anchorage love spending their weekends there;

Ninilchik had been settled by the Russians in the 1820s, and they stayed after USA bought Alaska (It's funny to see Orthodox churches up here. And, it's not just the Russians: many native people, who were violently converted, are still Orthodox Christians today - like the Aleutians on the Aleutian islands, even though they were famously decimated and enslaved by the Russians.);

Nikolaevsk is one of the several Russian Old Believer villages on Kenai Peninsula; we went to Samovar Cafe and bought some really good borscht from Nina, a bossy and greedy babushka. (Old Believers are members of a sect that split from Russian Orthodoxy in 1650s; they have been outcasts ever since, and landed in Alaska in the 20th century. They speak mainly Russian, marry in their teens and have lots of children and lead a simple life. You recognize them because men are forbidden to trim their beards, and women must wear long skirts and cover their hair.)

Homer is supposed to be hippie and pretty, but we didn't really find it interesting: there is no main street or downtown, just houses bunched together. But the panorama of the moutains above the town is awesome, especially when viewed from the famous (and tourism-infested) Homer Spit - a skinny 5-mile tongue of sand that goes into the Katchemak Bay.

The eastern side of the Kenai Peninsula is all about beautiful rides and views (when it doesn't rain, which it often does): the Kenai mountains, massive ice fields from which countless glaciers pour down to shape the coast into fjords, and icy waters.

To see this impenetrable wilderness, you have to take tours, and they are not cheap. We decided to do the boat ride (even though the fog was thick) into the Kenai Fjord National Park (so Lorey, this is what your present helped pay for, thank you!), and it was awesome! Driving through the fjords and out to the open ocean, we saw many humpbag whales, sea otters, seals and sea lions, all kinds of birds (Puffins! Bald eagles!) - and of course the glacier. It is massive (which is now rare) and it is making the whole fjord very cold, and the colors and sounds are simply incredible. This is an experience we will always cherish: as you float along the icebergs in front of the glacier and stare at the deep blue shades of the ice, and at the seals who are having a nap on the ice sheats in front of it, the dead silence gets broken by rumbling and cracking louder than thunder, as the glacier ice is crumbling down into the see.

In the afternoon, the fog lifted, and we were able to see the mountains and other glaciers, and it was so much fun to wild camp on the river bed right under those views (instead of paying $20 for a packed camp in town).

We felt we needed to do at least one hike on our trip, and our guide book recommeded the Lost Lake Trail close to the Kenai Fjord park ("a 7-mile trail to an alpine lake, with the last two miles above the treeline, and one of the most scenic hikes on Kenai"); so we did that, and were glad we trusted the book. Mountain chains on both sides, glaciers, lakes, and meadows with abundance of wild flowers (this trully is a rain forest, it's very wet and the plants are big and tall and lush), and then alpine tundra and views of the fjord. It wasn't bush flying, but it felt very similar to that (except for the fact that our legs hurt after five hours of walking).

We got supplies in Anchorage and briefly hung out with our friends from home, who were riding the opposite way, and then moved on to Glenallen and Valdez.

We thought we were done being impressed with panoramic views, but of course we were wrong. Riding along the glacier rivers (and sometimes glaciers themselves), resting your eyes on the neverending beautiful valleys, endless green forests and jagged peaks...it's just mindblowing. Alaska is magnificent, and so precious! (An older traveler from Montana put it well when he said to us the other night that he used to think they had it all, but Alaska puts everything, even the Grand Tetons, in fact the whole continental USA, to shame).

The 115 miles to Valdez is yet another one of Alaska's best drives: steep mountains with snowy summits jutting right down to the fjords, panoramic passes above the treeline, canyons, waterfalls and glaciers... It's lucky that we realized the brutal winter would start coming to Alaska in a month - because we never wanted to leave.

Wrangell-St.Elias is the second largest national park in the world (after NW Greenland); it's wild, several of its mountain peaks have never been climbed, and you can get lost in it forever. Two roads lead into it, McCarthy and Nabesna Road.

The McCarthy Rd goes 60 miles into the southern side of the park, and takes you into the mine town of Kennecott and its nearby party town, McCarthy. It's a bumpy gravel/dirt road (built in the 1970s to replace the abandoned railroad which had been used to transport copper from the mines), and the views were, as usual, spectacular: the Chugach mountains with their peaks higher than 7000ft/2000km; the majestic Copper River full of salmon; the Kuskulana River bridge, built in 1910 and 240ft/80m tall, crossing the steep narrow canyon.

McCarthy began in early 1900s as an escape for the bored miners from the dry (alcohol-free) mining town of Kennecott five miles up the road. These days, it has 25 people living in it, riding around on their quads (ATVs). It's really just a muddy street with a bar, cafe, restaurant and a hotel; and its free-living, hard-drinking way of life seems endangered (a hipster girl from Austin worked at the local saloon, for example). Not that they mind the tourism - they milk it with all they've got, starting with the way you enter the town: you need to cross a foot bridge (luckily, a bike fits, we made it through) and then they charge you for parking and for taking you around. We were told things go back to normal after the summer; besides, we got to wild camp with the view of the 7000ft glacier coming down the mountain.

We were surprised how much we liked the mining town of Kennecott, built after the discovery of incredible amounts of copper in the mountains in 1900. A railroad through the wilderness followed, and a lot of money was made - until the copper ran out in 1938, and everybody left, leaving everything behind. Today, it is a historical national landmark, and it's an awesome (free) walk around the rustic decaying buildings, especially since there is a glacier, an apocaliptic-looking morraine, and mountains in the background.

The other, much less known 42-mile Nabesna road, leads into the park from the north, and it's also a nice ride with beautiful views.

Moto Migrants found a moose!

After leaving Alaska we were in a hurry to get to a family wedding in Vancouver on time.

We were running late, and still didn't really want to leave, but riding through western Yukon made the transition to civilization easier: it's wild and magnificent with its many mountain chains and crystal clear lakes.

British Columbia also started with pretty sights like Boya Lake, and then we took the Cassiar Highway (a two-lane jaw-dropping backroad through mountains, glaciers and rivers) towards a little town of Steward, which borders the southern part of Alaska.

We crossed the border into Hyder, Alaska, and it had one last awesome surprise in store for us: we got to see not only spawning and dying salmon in a stream (it's so incredible to observe the drama, the tough journey they make to get here, fertilize the eggs, only to die soon after) but we also got to watch black bears catching the salmon right out of the water, right in front of us - the ultimate vision of Alaska!

Then BC started to become civilized: small towns, horses on meadows, ranches (back into the wild west - Canada has it too, you know, it's just not as famous)...pretty, but at this point even seeing ranch fences and telephone lines hurt a little.

We entered the wildfire area and it was hard to get used to having no views (like, none, we knew there was a lake and a mountain next to the road, but we were unable to see it), the smoky smell, the red sinister-looking sun floating above us, and to seeing horses and farmers carrying on in this polluted air.

We first heard about the fires over a month ago in South Dakota; by this point, over 1000km2 of the forests have burned down, numerous towns have been evacuated and people were used to living with all that. As we stopped in Williams Lake, there were signs "Welcome home <3" everywhere, and we were told they had been evacuated and were just allowed to return.

It got ridiculously bad in Kamloops: creepy thick smoke outside which made your eyes and throat burn, and old stale smoke inside the buildings - yet people went on with their lives, shopping and playing sports by the river.

We were already on a detour but got stopped again because a fire had started on the hill above the road. As a pilot car was leading us through, it was an intense twenty minutes: the fire and helicopters were roaring above us as the houses close to the fire were watered by their own garden sprinklers.

The nature we were riding through, however, was beautiful and the windy roads were fun - but the millions of gigantic trees and the very dry soil made you worry about the further spread of the wild fires. (By the way, have we mentioned that we were really hot all the time on our way south from Alaska? Not a cloud in the sunny sky!)

Vancouver was a little smoky too, but it's a very nice city: it's big and modern with an impressive downtown, but also cute with its pockets of old districts like Gastown; the Asian influence is strong (and Ramen seems to be the official dish) and we already spotted some totems (did you know that totems are only native in the NW Pacific coast area?); on the other hand, if you enter a wrong street you might see hookers or people shooting up heroin right in front of you.

Our Alaskan and Canadian part of the trip ended up with a family wedding, and Kyle was happy that he managed to attend, plus complete the mission of visiting all of his Canadian family (and man, they're all over, in Toronto and north, and then west in Calgary and Vancouver!).

The next leg of our trip was up - we were heading south, following the west coast to the bottom of Mexican Baja; but we knew it was going to be hard to beat he experience so far, we will never forget Alaska. And while we're at it, we would again like to thank all the people in the north who gave us shelter and let us do our laundry; also, thank you to all the things that kept us warm and dry: heated jackets, awesome sleeping bags and tent, rain gear (also best defense against mosquitos) and as for Stina, she is grateful to her sleeping mask which made it possible to sleep in the far north.

Seattle was not what we expected (which was that it would be modern, rainy and grey, and tough) - it was a cool and a beautiful city with lots of people, and lots of old buildings and cute old districts such as Pioneer Square and Pike Public Market. Grunge doesn't come to mind but green, old, and hipster does. Plus, it didn't rain at all!

We figured it was nothing much but we still decided to go to Kurt Cobain's unofficial memorial park - and we're not sorry we went and paid our respects. It's really just two benches covered with letters and beer cans, standing in a tiny park next to Kurt's (hidden) house in a very posh area.

We really liked Seattle, and would love to stay another day, but we found no tent space and the city is quite expensive - so we left.

This is the Northern Exposure (Severna Obzorja) post, so if you don't know the reference to this famous tv series from the 90s you can skip this:

We were riding through the very green but dry state of Washington; even though we were south-bound we got exposed to the north one last time - we went to see the town of Roslyn, a.k.a. Cicely, Alaska.

Roslyn itself is just a cute little mountain town; but then we saw the famous cafe mural, and it made us giggle with joy! There are relics from the tv show all over the town. There is not much left of the sets inside the buildings, but the outside is still as it was on the show and in real life (still authentic: the Roslyn Cafe mural, The Brick pub, the radio station, and Joel's doctor's office sign). We talked to some residents and they told us the town was happy that the show was filmed there (not at first, they had several town meetings) and the crew worked well and mingled with the community (lots of them hung out with the actors). Roslyn could abuse their fame because there is a constant flow of fans, but they don't and the town remains the same as it was.

We were also exposed to the northern family one last time, ran into Kyle's cousin and her friend at a random highway rest stop!

Riding down the coastal Oregon, we made to Portland. It's a cool town, bigger and different than we thought: no real sights, not a hipster town of the Portlandia show, Kyle was even reminded of Pittsburgh because even though there is nothing to really see downtown (and no skyline), there are lots of blue collar neighborhoods with a cool vibe (tons of coffee shops, bars, gardens, and book stores - most notably the famous giant Powell's bookstore where you can find almost everything, even Stina's favorite German comic books).

Oh, and then there is traffic. It's as if a big chunk of L.A. traffic moved to Portland and took over the poor little town; it's just always rush hour in Portland! And don't get us started with the traffic regulations - we got a parking ticket even though we did pay to park, and then we had to get up early to fight it in court, and won of course, but still had to pay for processing!

Our host Joe was really nice (thanks for that, Ox!), and we spent the evening discussing Portland and how it can't cope with its own popularity.

Then we rode west over the Cascade mountains to get onto the famous highway 101 - the scenic road where the majestic foaming Pacific was waving on our throttle side all day. The coastline is beautiful: sandy beaches, filled with large rock formations and wid-beaten trees, and enjoyed by an occasional seal colony such as the one near Coos Bay. The winds are strong and it's really cold on Oregon coast, just like Nova Scotia or New Foundland (and colder than Alaska!); the cool sunny skies get covered with grey, thick, cold fog that rolls in from the ocean, and then an hour later, it is all gone and the skies are sunny again. But if you go just a mile inland, you are back in the hot summer. We ended our day on top of a mountain at a horse camp (where riders park their horses and put up a tent).

The towns are small and touristy, and there is not much seafood (smoked oysters and fish & chips here and there), and at the time we went through, the traffic was getting annoying due to the upcoming eclipse (we'd heard that Oregon expected millions of people to come and witness the event); but the trees that had been just incredibly big all along the west coast were now turning into redwoods (sequoia's taller and thinner cousins), so we were really enjoying our coastal ride!

The ride along the Californian coast took us from Redwoods in the north to L.A. in the south:

Big trees are awesome, and redwoods are enormous trees. They're not as fat and furry as sequoias, but are even taller, and just like sequoias, it is humbling and soothing, and it feels like something out of the Lord Of The Rings to walk in their forrest.

After that, the 101 becomes a fast boring highway; but when you look at the map, you see that at after an hour, it narrows down to two lanes for 20 miles, and then becomes a highway again. It turns out that redwoods grow right by the road, so they adjusted its width (it's great to slow down and take a quiet break, staring at the gentle giants while cooling off after the dirty hot fast highway ride).

Entering California, things suddenly got tougher: gas station toilets were locked, rules were written out loud and clear on McDonald's doors, traffic was ruder and faster, and police cars were back (and we even saw an arrest on the highway).

It got incredibly cold when we got to San Francisco (we were then told that Mark Twain said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco", and he was right!), but it was awesome to see it and to ride on the Golden Gate Bridge again! Unfortunately, we had no time to hang around this time, but we do recommend you go see this expensive and beautiful city: the downtown and the bridge and the steep streets with cute houses are all beautiful, and then there is the famous gay district of Castro, the giant old Chinatown, the beatnik and hippie bookstores, the Alcatraz, and the seal colony... We had done all this before and besides, we had other plans: we wanted to see our two good friends that moved there, Dan and Daniel, and ended up partying for two nights, had one of the best dinners of our life (Hong Kong-style Chinese), paddle boarded for the first time, and watched the partial eclipse.

Riding south, you enter Steinbeck's country (John Steinbeck was one of the greatest American writers and the winner of Pulitzer and Nobel prizes; his novels were dealing with the economic problems, especially of rural labor in central California - you know, East Of Eden, Grapes Of Wrath, etc.), where workers (now probably Mexicans) are still farming the giant veggie and berry fields. In Salinas, where his house still stands, we were told that Steinbeck, as awesome as he was, obviously wasn't very popular with the local farmers, not because he wrote about social injustice but because he pointed out the bad conditions and abuse of the farm workers.

Approaching L.A., we stopped in the small and pretty Santa Barbara - turns out it's not just a famous soap opera but also a real place! ;)

Riding into Los Angeles, we visited the beaches of Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice.

Malibu is a nice long beach/ row of villas/ town that runs along the Pacific ocean coast. There is no real downtown and the highway, which runs parallel to the beach, is always really close by, but the views and the expensive-looking villas are very California.

Santa Monica is a much more urban beach: it's packed with people and stuff for sale, there is nowhere to stop (let alone park), it's got a city behind its boardwalk, and there is a whole amusement park on the pier.

Venice Beach is practically L.A. already, and we liked it a lot! The big sandy beach is clean (even if the water is still pretty cold), there is great public art, skilled young skaters, other street entertainers, and seemingly endless boardwalk, full of food, kitsch and everything in-between. It's also a great place to people-watch, and everybody knows it, and an average or even hipster look doesn't fly here - we saw a lot of well-groomed people, with very white teeth and lots of make up, and fashionable-yet-sexy outfits. Still, we liked it, the scene felt like the real deal: local and urban, and much less cute and touristy than its neighbor Santa Monica (plus, there is the Muscle Beach, an area where ripped guys work out in front of everybody!)

L.A. is big. Unfortunately, we only had two short days to see as much as we could, so all we can share are our shallow impressions.

The big city energy is intense; there is no room for anything, NOTHING is free and most things are expensive; american-style decadence, looking good and outdoing others seems to be everything here (in other words: the Kardashian phenomenon makes much more sense to us now); people are rude and so overstimulated that they're hard to impress, and then there are lots of crazy looking and homeless people in this tough no-mercy city.

As for the famous L.A. traffic, we didn't find it so terrible (maybe we were just lucky), but were surprised to discover that they are not very good drivers, moving slowly and with no big city skills. The traffic did get bad around the Holywood sites, and parking costs $20 per bike per hour, so we decided to sightsee (boil) on our bikes all day.

First we went to Rodeo Drive. It's a part of Beverly Hills which is a pretty, quiet, green (read: wealthy) district full of expensive-looking villas. Rodeo Drive itself is a really posh shopping street, where obviously rich families walk around with fancy purses, entering Dior or Chanel or Versace and coming back out with pretty bags.

When you drive through the Holywood neighborhood and onto the Sunset Strip with its Directors' Guild building, famous Chinese Theater, the Walk Of Fame stars on the sidewalks, and the Holywood sign and giant villas on the hills above (it's so bizarre to see these places for real!), you realize just how huge and important the movie industry is here, and then you are tempted to take one of those awesome expensive production studio tours (Warner Brothers, Universal etc.) - but they take all day, so we had to skip them.

In the selfish spirit of the city, none of the local members of Tent Space replied to us, so we camped in the wild again. Surprisingly, a pretty national forest is right above the smoggy city (30 minutes from the Holywood sign), and so we camped, for free (as opposed to paying $100 for a tent space in Malibu), with crickets, looking at the stars and the mountains, and the city lights below.

The next day we had fun exploring the real city: the Arts District is an awesome area full of industrial buildings, cafes and art, and the old downtown is alive, pretty and colorful.

Between these two areas, however, is the famous homeless "district" of Skid Row. We decided to check it out (we tend to not just believe we shouldn't do stuff anymore; we aproach carefully, but we do approach if we can, because we try to see the good as well as the real whenever possible). Well, it's a street covered with stinky tents and homeless people who have all kinds of physical, mental and drug issues. It's weird how they are just allowed to be there in a city where no square foot is unused (whereas if you sit down for five minutes anywhere else between L.A. and San Diego, a police officer will come and tell you to move on - and yes, this happened to us), visible to everybody driving by; maybe there are just too many of them to be chased away, and they don't ever move because it's always warm in southern California.

After checking out Sheperd Fairey's "Subliminal Projects" studio and having the famous local fast food In And Out Burger, we had to leave. We'd love to stay and explore this interesting, expensive and exhausting city further, but were now out of time.

We left L.A. and rode through traffic and smog to San Diego. It's a nice town, and you will find that famous WW2 Kissing Statue there, but of course much less interesting than L.A., plus it got incredibly cold and grey even though it was August, and we were very tired...in short, we went through quickly, and ended our day at a camp close to the border, getting ready to explore our final destination, the Mexican Baja California.

Initially we wanted to earn the right to brag by going from Alaska down the west coast all the way to the bottom of Baja. So, even though we were starting to run out of time (we had to be back in Pittsburgh by a certain date) and merely had a week to spare on the big peninsula, we still decided to go for it and achieve our goal.

We entered through the movie-famous Tijuana, so our first impression was that Baja is a dirty mess (which was totally different than the image in Stina's head, she thought Baja was all hot and sandy and wild, with beaches and taco stands everywhere).

Also, riding down along the dirty Pacific beaches we were unpleasantly surprised about just how cold it was, also because we were hoping for some restful beach time. Still, it was good to be back in Mexico and remembering it all again: military check points, endless speed bumps, OXXO coffee, etc.

Three hours after the border, when we stopped at a grocery store, Kyle realized that he left his ATM card in the bank machine at customs. He was really worried and mad at himself, such a stupid mistake - but it was too far to ride back, so we just called, found out it was all good, cancelled the card and kept riding south.

We rode down the cold and dirty Pacific side, and found a really nice cheap campground ($5) at the end of the day - and it was chilly at night, we needed a fire and jackets!

We started to get into the heart of Baja, finding points and restaurants along the famous Baja 1000 offroad race (1000 miles from top to bottom every year), and once we went into the desert, the temperatures started to soar, and then in the Southern Baja (Baja California Sur) it got just mind-meltingly hot. But the landscape was beautiful, big cactus, mountain chains and endless views all around. ...So yes, Baja is definitely big, and really hot.

After three long days we reached the town of La Paz, tired and ready for some deserved beach vacation, and we also wanted to see the Manta Ray Beach. We went to that famous beach and it was cool to see only the locals having beach fun on a Sunday afternoon, but there were no manta rays to be found and it was way too hot, and when there is no shade on beaches and the water is really warm, it's just not much fun. We did like La Paz though, because it's an authentic (we didn't see any tourists at all), modern town where well-dressed and confident locals fill the streets each evening and into the night. Plus, the shrimp tacos were awesome!

And then we arrived to Cabo San Lucas, a party town at the bottom of the Baja peninsula - which means we did it, we rode from top of Alaska to the bottom of Baja, woot woot! Mind you, we hated the place and were ready to leave in 15 minutes:

Cabo San Lucas is a big and buzzing tourist trap of a town where everything costs ten times more than elsewhere in Baja and where all of the sudden everybody can speak English; there are cruise ships and designated turist zones, fast-food chains and touristy bars like Cabo Wabo (owned by Van Halen's Sammy Hager), plus, all the pretty beaches are getting fenced in by monstrous resorts (it's eerie to ride along the coast: miles and miles of big hotels and resorts are being built, closing off the beautiful wild windy Pacific beaches.... Not that you can swim in that turquoise water with perfect temperature, you can't - the waves will kill you.

And then we were done with Baja, and started returning back north, stopping briefly in Todos Santos (a small town where there is a red building - the famous Hotel California the Eagles sing about; and it definitely has plenty of room, and you can find it here any time of year).

We liked Baja, though it definitely wasn't smart to explore it on bikes in the summer - but apart from crazy heat and trash, it is mostly still wild, with nice beaches, awesome semi-desert mountain ranges, and nice people. But while we were done with Baja, Baja wasn't done with us:

Riding north, it all went terribly wrong in one very long, hot afternoon. Kyle's rear tire was no longer able to endure the incredibly hot asphalt and decided to just have the tread melt away, and literally blew up at the speed of 50mph. It took a while, but through the knowledge of some locals we found an old rear tire to put on his bike. Then we looked at Stina's rear tire and it was ready to enter the grave too, so we spent another few hours looking for a tire, and we found a worn-out knobby dirtbike tire which we put on, no other choice. After six or so hours, we were finally back on the road.

Then we came around the corner, and there was a young cow by the side of the road, and it was not like the other cows: it froze and made a crazy/scared eye contact with Kyle (who was riding in front of Stina, as usual), but then it started running towards Stina - and the more Stina tried to move to the side to avoid it, the more object-fixated the cow seemed to be, until it slammed into the side of Stina's bike. Next thing we knew, Stina was going off into the sand at about 40mph, and then she crashed into the ground, head first. It was like a slow motion frame-by-frame event for both of us. Scared, Kyle dropped his bike and ran over; Stina was a bit bloody from cutting her mouth open and in slight shock, but otherwise ok (it was lucky she landed in sand, it could have been rocks or cactus or whatever!). The cow however was not ok, it lay in the middle of the lane, with two broken legs...

Next, people started gathering; and while Kyle was running around, trying to pick Stina's bike up and gather all her exploded luggage, Stina was spitting blood and desperately trying to yell over the crowd, crying and begging the cow owner to stop kicking the poor injured cow in the head!

It seemed like a whole village gathered even though we thought we were in total wilderness without a house around. And they decided that the eldest member should take Stina (with her bike loaded in his pickup) to the nearest hospital. The drive took forever, not only because the hospital was far but because the grandpa (who was chain smoking and never said a word) was driving at walking speed, and with every passing minute Stina's chin grew bigger and bluer and more painful...

We finally arrived, and even found the hospital after a good while (we were in a small town, but the man didn't know where it was, and nobody else seemed to either, and all his consulting with people was incredibly laid back and slow). The emergency room had no chairs, water, or toilet, and prices for services were posted on the wall. Then a young handsome Cuban-trained doctor showed up, excited to be able to treat a gringa and speak English, and he took good care of Stina: she got a pain killer and three stitches, her slightly broken little finger checked, and he even called in some sort of a neurospecialist (who was deeply disappointed he wasn't needed, the spine was fine) - and the whole thing cost only $53! He told Stina that if she hadn't had a helmet on, she would have broken her jaw - and then he rode away on his motorcycle without a helmet on! All in all, both bike and Stina were shocked and bruised, and we were reminded of how breakable and mortal we are, but were able to go on.

We rode back north, along Baja's east coast (and Stina had to wear a bandanna around her chin in public because it looked really bad), and after Stina got a rear flat, which was another mess (Kyle had to patch four holes!), we just started skipping everything and headed for the border, but enjoying the last wild views of Baja, the desert landscape on one side and the beaches on the other...

We stopped in Phoenix to visit a friend and get new tires, and then we rode for three crazy long days, covering most of the country so we made it home on time for an appointment (826mi/1330km is what we did on the last day! We may have slow bikes, but we have caffeine and insanity on our side. :D )

This trip was so much better than we expected: it was colorful and fun to ride down the west coast, with lots of beautiful nature in between - but the nature in Yukon and especially Alaska, and the sheer vastness of it in that area, is simply spectacular...

Unlike other cool trips like Africa or Central America, Alaska is totally doable, it's pure adventure, without any nasty problems like five-hour border crossings, trash, etc., not expensive if you're willing to camp, and good stores and restaurants are available in every decent-sized town. You do need good gear if you are on a motorcycle (especially a waterproof tent and a heated jacket), but if you go exploring it in a camper van, it's just pure comfort and joy, because you definitely see it best simply by driving around.

Humans are great at spoiling everything in the name of greed, and it doesn't look good (climate change, oil drilling etc.), but we really hope this stops and Alaska stays wild and epic, because it's really precious. Alaska is, to this day, one of our favorite destinations!