Day 32 June 30th : Tok AK to Haines Jct YT; 500 kms

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After 13 days in Alaska we are headed back to Canada.  I'm kind of sorry to leave.  When I started this trip I really wasn't all that interested in going to Alaska, but its beauty has won me over.  I will definitely return to the land of snow capped mountains & Subaru's.  Yes, Subaru's.  They are the car of choice up here, just as in Vermont.  Everywhere we went, there were Subaru's of all ages & descriptions.   At least 2 of every 10 cars or trucks were Subaru's.  Yes!  I could feel right at home here.

Last night we met a gentleman with an BMW R80GS the very first model of the famous GS series.  He told us he started riding at age 60.  The more he talked about where he had been, the more curious I got about the number of miles on his bike.  I went over & took a look at the odometer. It registered 355,000 miles.  "Not those idy, biddy kilometres," as he put it.  That is 500,000 kilometres. Wow!  It was difficult to estimate his age & he wouldn't divulge how many miles he did in a typical year, so we couldn't figure out how old he was.  Peter & I decided there was no way we could catch up to him no matter how we tried.

We started down the Alaska Hwy to Haines Jct.  It wasn't long before the pavement disappeared, then reappeared.  This continued for over 50kms. Patches of pavement for a 100 metre, then patches of deep gravel for 100 metres.   Then it got worse. Mud, rain, more gravel.  It took me a while to get my gravel legs back again.  It wasn't supposed to be like this.  We had ordered sunshine, paved roads and beautiful scenery.  Granted, the scenery was nice, mountains on both sides, a river on one side, but you had to concentrate on the road.   Had it been good weather, we could have seen Mt. Logan which is Canada's highest mountain.  We finally hit pavement which lasted the final 100 kms.  When the wind wasn't trying to knock us down we could actually enjoy the sun & scenery.  We arrived in Haines Jct. tired & late. Again the motel gods smiled on us & we got the last room in town.  The owner was nice to us & gave us the suite for the regular price.  It was similar to the B&B suite we stayed had in Girdwood; kitchen, bath, two bedrooms & living room with kitchen table.  A good reward for a difficult day.