Day 24 Fairmont Hot Springs, BC to Seeley, MT - 293 miles

Back in the lower 48. It rained hard during the night so we put the tent away wet again. It turned out to be a nice day though. The valley down into the border crossing is very nice, lots of lakes and the Kootenay River, as well as Columbia Lake which is the head waters of the Columbia River that Grand Coulee Dam is on.

The border crossing into the US took some time, they really ask a lot of questions about who we are and how long I have known Ron etc. There were about 6 cars in front of us.

Day 23, Jasper to Fairmont Hot Springs, 245 miles

The weather was good with partly cloudy skies.  Not many miles today because speed limits were lower and we stopped a lot for pictures.  We traveled through Jasper and Banff National Parks today.    This seems to be a ritzy area for those from Calgary and other points east.  The traffic heading east was very heavy.  We set up camp at the Spruce Grove Resort RV Park and got a soak in the Fairmont Hot Springs.

Day 21 & 22, Hyder to Jasper, 684 miles

Nice weather both days with the temperature in the 60's-70's.  No rain.  We did see a couple of bears on the Cassiar but they were shy.  We spend the first night in the city park at Vanderhoof.  We had the opportunity to get free camping by answering 10 trivia questions correcty.  We didn't do well, but the guy gave us a break because we were on motorcycles and we  got camping and  two showers for $10.

The second night we made it to Jasper National Park.  Got in free because it was Parks Day.  Spectaclular scenery once we got in the park.

Day 20, July 15, in Hyder

Spent more time looking for bears.  All the locals told us of both black and grizzly bears that hang around the area.  They shoot them with rubber bullets when they get a little too curious.  It is very rare for there to be a bad bear that they have to put down.  We walked out to the dump and down to the river, we could not find a bear.

In the evening Paul arrived on a old DR650.  He's from Toronto and was on this way to Vancover after a two week canoe trip down the Yukon River.  We all went to the Bus for dinner.  The Bus is literally a bus that has been converted in to a kitchen.  The seats were taken out  and set outside around tables for the patrons.   Unfortunatley the owner took the night off and we did not get to have the famous halibut fish and chips there.
Never did see a bear in Hyder.

Days 19 and 20

Tuesday evening after we posted a guy from the Czech Republic living in Vancouver rode in on a Ural with side car and camped next to us. He had come up the Cassiar that day and had seen 8 bears on the way up. The Ural looked kind of fun but he said it gets poor gas mileage and the side car makes for a rough ride. It did have two wheel drive which came in handy when he got stuck in a construction area.

On Wednesday (I think, the days are running together) we rode from near Watson Lake down the Cassiar to Hyder Alaska, 399 miles. I only saw two bears which ran off the road when they saw me so Ron did not get to see them. We did see a truck on its top. We can not figure how it ended up where it did.

There is a place on Fish Creek where the Forest Service has build a viewing area for when the Salmon are running and the bears feed on the fish to put on weight for the winter. It begins sometime in July and ends in September. We happen to be early. There is a report that four fish made it upstream and a bear made short work of them but that has been all.

We rode up to the Salmon Glacier and Ron changed his oil while I looked at my air filter. We will eat dinner at The Bus, which is a bus turned into a fish place, and get some Halibut fish-n-chips.

We are camped behind the bar/campground and put our food in the laundry room at night so the bears will not come around, hopefully. We are armed though, rocks, a hatchet and a machete make up our arsenal. We will head over to the town dump to look for bears later.

Day 18

We rode from 20 miles south of Haines Junction to 22 km before Watson Lake. This is where the Junction with Highway 37, the Cassiar Highway begins. 339 miles today. It was much warmer today in the mid 70's with only slight clouds. Things are finally dry. Not much to report and no new photos so I am attaching a photo of the sign forest at Watson Lake we took when we were through town on the way up. People bring signs from their home towns from all over the world. On down the Cassiar to Hyder to see the bears tomorrow.

Day 15 - 17

Day 15 was spent back in Delta Junction getting ready to begin the trip back towards
home. The first thing we had to do was wash the bikes. They were really a mess from the Dalton highway with Calcium Chloride and mud.
It was partly cloudy all day Saturday. We took the bikes to the gravel pits with a couple of buckets and brooms. We got a lot of the thicker mud off so the car wash would bot be so expensive. The car wash cost us $4 a piece and did not
really get them that clean but the calcium chloride should not be a problem now.

We got a shower at an RV Park and some
groceries and said goodbye to Dan the
next morning.



Day 16, Delta Junction to Tok, 110 miles.

Leaving Delta we were getting gas and we started talking to a guy riding a 650 V-Strom
(Wee-strom) and he told us about being forced of the Dalton Highway about 100 miles from Prudhoe. He went down an embankment and was brought to a halt by a creek bed. He had a banged up nose and the bike had bent forks, bent front rim, broken windshield and a damaged radiator. He found a guy to take him and his broken bike to Fairbanks where he ordered all new parts from the Suzuki dealer and after a week and $2800 he was continuing his trip. Turns out, as those of you who have been paying attention know, we had heard about this guy in Cold Foot on our way up to Prudhoe on July 5th.

That was about the time the rain started. How wet was it? It was so wet that in that short ride we were soaked and not really enjoying the days ride. We decided to stay in Tok at the Thompson Eagle Claw Motorcycle Park. We got one of the little cabins to dry out in. Another young couple from Denmark came in on DRZ400s. They bought them in Minnesota two years ago. This was their second summer in the US touring on the bikes and they had ridden a total of
20,000 miles on them. They were soaked too. The owner of the campground
let us convert the sauna to a drying room. By morning everything was dry.

After getting our wet stuff hung in the makeshift sauna, we went in search of CJ who we had met in Gunnison last summer when he replaced the output bearing in his R100GSPD transmission in the parking lot. He was on his way to Patagonia where he spent 5 months touring South America (Yes, he is single). The lady at the info center knew who he was and said look for the house with the most junk cars in the yard. We found CJ building a 24 foot boat to run up the Yukon River with his 5 sled dogs to Fort Yukon in the fall to teach shop in a Native school. He invited us back later for dinner which consisted of Copper River Sockeye Salmon.

Day 17, Tok to Haines Junction, 309 miles
The plan was to take the Taylor Highway and then ride the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City. The rain that we rode in the day before brought up the river and took out a bridge between Chicken and Dawson City so it was closed. We ended up coming back on the route we went up on. We're staying in Otter Falls Cutoff campground for the second time.