NORTH TO ALASKA - PART 1

       Way up North (North to Alaska)
        North to Alaska, we go North, the rush is on

        Mike turned to Sam with his throttle in his hand
        Said, Sam, you're lookin' at a fast travelin’ man

        Where the river is windin', fun roads they're findin'
        North to Alaska, go north, the rush is on

            My apologies to Johnny Horton

Earlier in the year my frequent motorcycling partner, Sam, invited me on a trip up to Hyder, Alaska, and a tour of part of British Columbia. A tradition among motorcyclists I know is to get “Hyderized” by traveling to the tiny town of Hyder, AK, and getting a drink in the lone bar there. Of course, the trip is mainly about touring beautiful British Columbia. Their license plate says “Beautiful British Columbia” and it is true.

We departed before 6:00 am, Saturday, August 6^th aiming to beat the heat as much as we could. As it turned out “as much as we could” wasn’t too much. It began to get very hot pretty quickly. I tend to tolerate heat a little better than Sam and he was suffering early on.

The Cowboy Church

Of course, a trip with me involves at least a little motocaching and one notable geocache we got was “The Cowboy Church” located just east of the town of Creston, Washington. This was a tiny one room log church built in 1999 by a professional rodeo cowboy who won world champioships in 1955 and 1956 and was named Inland Empire Athlete of the year in 1955.

Inside the church

I believe it was about 102 degrees when we got to the border at the tiny crossing south of Chopaka. It was blazing hot and no shade except the overhang at the crossing office. The guard would let only one of us under the overhang while the other (me) had to wait in the sun. After about a 10 minute wait he allowed me to come to the overhang and then went inside with our passports. He must have kept us waiting 20 or 30 minutes. Sam thought he was just jerking us around.

From there we took Hwy 3 up to Princeton. We got into Princeton mid afternoon but our room wasn’t ready. It was 103 degrees so we went downtown to get some refreshment and ended up at the Dairy Queen after first trying the A&W. It was so crowded that we went across the street to the DQ, which wasn’t much better. Our room was ready when we returned but the a/c hadn’t been turned on and the room was hot. We went down town for dinner but it must not have been too outstanding because I can’t even remember it. I do remember that a previous flood in the year had degraded the water system and bottled water was all that was available and forget about ice. This was a 358 mile day.

We got our usual early start Sunday out of Princeton up Hwy 5A to Merritt. This was a good road but nothing to write home about as far as scenery and fun riding. At Merritt we took Hwy 8 northwest toward the Kloklowuk Indian Reserve 7. A bit of poor judgment on our part here. We both noticed a “Road Closed Ahead” sign but figured maybe we could make it through on our bikes. It was a fun road, both scenic and challenging to ride. However, after about 30 miles of enjoyable riding with a few broken gravel sections the road really was closed with a barricade. A man there related to us the tremendous floods they’d had recently accounting for the closure and gravel sections. Well anyway, we got to travel the enjoyable section again in the reverse direction. After returning to Merritt we took Hwy 97 up to Cache Creek where it turns in a little more northerly direction up to Prince George. The highway mostly followed the Fraser River and passed by Canim and Williams Lakes. At Prince George we turned west on Hwy 16 over to Vanderhoof where we stayed at the North Country Inn. It was a nice motel but the most memorial feature was the extremely soft water. It felt like it was impossible to wash off the soap after a shower. They were in the process of seal coating the part of the parking lot in front of our room so we had a little hike with luggage to get to the room – not bad though. Due to our unscheduled side trip, this was our longest day having traveled 515 miles. We had pizza down town but the dining room was crowded and hot so we moved outside to the sidewalk. In doing so I left my Death Valley hat on a chair at the table inside and didn’t discover it until a ways down the road the next day. (I got it back a couple days later when traveling back through.) To be continued.  M//W