pedalpanam

We arrived early afternoon yesterday, Sunday, in Whitehorse after camping out on the marge of Lake Laberge (or Lake Lebarge if you need your poem to rhyme) the night before.  The weather has finally cooled down, but there is still a haze that makes me wonder if I am not in Mexico City right now.  I’m guessing it is from forest fires in the area, our tents had a fine layer of ash on them this morning.

Our first stop yesterday was at McDonalds, first time on the trip.  I got a double Big Mac (maybe they only exist in Canada?).  That is 4 slices of meat.  Pretty amazing, but it made me miss my favo(u)rite McDonalds, which can all be found in the 60625 and 60640 zip codes, but then again, a lot of my favorite things can be found in those zip codes, so this comes as no surprise.  In particular, the Dollar Menu is difficult to find elsewhere…

We bummed around town for a little, and I consumed way too much coffee at a great place called Baked.  The coffee here actually tastes like coffee!  Not wanting to pay $14 (!) for each of our tents at the city campground, we found a little spot in the forest across the Yukon river from town.  After about four hours of trying to fall asleep (so much caffeine), a few late night partiers could be heard nearby in the forest.  They made their entrance to Hey Jude on a boombox, but it was rather dark and didn’t seem to notice us, and probably wouldn’t have cared much either that we had set up camp in their hang out spot.

Today, after getting some stuff at the bike store (which shares space with a coffee roaster, heaven!), I’m back at Baked, and have switched to decaf as my toes are twitching.   I’m working on a few things on the internet, and have a to-do list of things to add to the blog.

My last (and first) post that went into great detail about my travels related the first few days of the trip.  I spent about 5 hours working on this in Fairbanks, and realized that it to took way too much time, especially given the limited internet access on the trip.  From now on it seems that the best approach is shorter vignettes of life on the road.  There is no way I’ll keep an account of each day with pictures as some people do.  Some days bring more interesting stories, I’ll try to focus on those.

Expect the following sometime in the near future:

• A comprehensive review of each and every cinnamon bun so far (sneak preview: bigger is not always better)
• For those interested in bikes and long distance touring, a look at some of the stuff I brought with me (sneak preview: yes, I have a cast iron skillet)
• A little bit about Baptiste, my biking buddy (sneak preview: his biggest struggle in life is Nutella falling through the darned holes in bagels; recently he discovered English muffins)
• all this and so much more!

Thanks all for the comments, it is good to hear from you.  Please let me know if there is anything you’d like to hear about more.

When we were deciding whether to take the more traditional route from Alaska into Canada or the detour through Dawson City and the Klondike Hwy, I came across this in the guide book:

yum

That pretty much settled it!  There is even an airstrip named in honor of these gargantuan cinnamon buns.  Should be there in a few days, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into one of these things…

[UPDATE BELOW]:

Kind of a let down… too much bland bread and not enough gooey cinnamon.

We talked to a guy in Alaska that said the first freeze should happen around the 3rd week in August, that added some sort of urgency to the need to continue southward.

Now it is 90 °F at 9pm.  The heat these past two days has taken the enjoyment out of everything.  The weather the next three days is supposed to be the same, highs above 90.   I’m thinking of this as preparation for Central America.

The worst part of this story is that I was given a pound (yes, a pound) of butter in Dawson City and was looking forward to eating it in many delicious ways.  But now it is sitting in an almost liquid, disfigured blob in my pannier.  I may not get to eat the whole pound before it is too late…

We made it to the Canada-US border yesterday and camped somewhere on the Top of The World highway, and finished the last 40 miles today.  Dawson City is a quirky little town, right now I’m really happy to get some coffee and a real meal.  More later.

Legend goes that the people that named the place wanted to call it Ptarmigan but didn’t know how to spell it so they settled on Chicken.

I’m in Beautiful Downtown Chicken, which consists of three storefronts.  We stopped for burgers and now I’m enjoying a great cinnamon roll.

We’d like to make it another 20-30 miles today, and get to the Canada border sometime tomorrow.  These folks describe their trip from Tok to Dawson City, with a graph of their elevation on the way.  We’re at mile 80 right now, and as you can see, we’ve got a ton of climbing to do.

Got the bike all fixed up and made it from Delta Junction to Tok in two days.  Fairly tame terrain, not much climbing.

We’re trying to leave Tok “early” (before 10am), and will try to take a big bite out of the Taylor Hwy.  Instead of continuing on the Alaska Hwy into Canada, we’re going to Chicken, AK and then to Dawson City, Yukon.  That should take us 4 or 5 days.  (Once again, you won’t have very good luck finding these highways on Google maps, an atlas might be better.)

Yesterday marked 1,000 miles on the road.  I celebrated with Made in Alaska Buffalo Sticks from the Delta Junction Meat and Sausage Company.

buffalo sausage

(Love the helmet hair!)