Having arrived in Seattle, we settled in at our next house-sit, a beautiful three level Craftsman home built in the 1920s and restored in the 2000s. We had two super cool cats as roommates for the weekend.

As we began to unload the bike into the house, two neighbors walked up. They introduced themselves as Peter and Jack, and said they had just recently gotten into adventure touring , he on a Kawasaki KLR650 and she on a Yamaha XT250. I laughed and mentioned that my first round-the-world trip had been on the same model as her new bike. We talked for a while about bikes, gear, travel, etc, and I walked two doors down to their driveway to look at their bikes.

As we talked about her XT, I could see the light of recognition on her face. Suddenly she said, “I know you! I’ve read your blog, looking at modifications for my XT.” It was funny to have someone reading my blog, and then for us to randomly show up on their street.

Peter had reminded me that the US headquarters of Touratech is not only in Seattle, but literally a mile and a half from where we are staying, so we decided to drop by on Friday. We have a couple of their accessories on our 700: a one gallon fuel can and our locking GPS mount. While there I purchased a map of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route that runs from Oregon to the Canadian border. We may or may not do part of this route, depending on timing and weather.

I had two tours planned for Saturday in Seattle: first up was the Chihuly Gardens and Glass exhibit. Dale Chihuly is a local artisan but is known worldwide for his incredible blown glass art.

After visiting the Chihuly exhibition, which is next to the Seattle Space Needle in the World’s Fair park, we walked to Pike Place Market. This of course is one of Seattle’s biggest tourist attractions (something I usually try to avoid), and on this Saturday it was absolutely packed. We wandered the market and had lunch, then took off on our next walk.

Next was a visit to the Spheres. This horticultural phenomenon is actually three large spheres creating one huge space. Inside there are four levels of walkways, meeting areas, and general areas to relax and confer. There are over 400 species of cloud forest plants in the spheres, many from South America, but others from around the world. There is also a 50-foot tall ficus tree. This building is in the middle of Amazon’s downtown Seattle complex, and is only open to the public the first and third Saturdays of each month, by reservation.

That evening we took the light rail back into Chinatown/Japantown for dinner. I think we spent more money this day than in the past week or two of our trip, but it was all worth it. And our reduced lodging and food expenses over the past weeks helped make this possible.

Wherever and whenever we stop, even just for gas or to stretch, people approach us. It’s probably the amount of stuff we have on the bike. We’ve actually watched people slam on their brakes when they see us mounting up, just to watch Diana get on the back of the bike. I think they are convinced that there is no way someone could possibly fit in that space between me and all that stuff. Mostly though I think the large amount of gear and two “old” people on what appears to be some sort of large dirt bike seems to make people curious. It could be that they expect motorcyclists our age to be on a Harley, or a Gold Wing, or maybe an RV. And of course the Texas license plate attracts a lot of attention.

So here are the top two questions we get from random people:

1. By far, the top question is: “Did you ride that all the way here from Texas???”

Okay, it is around two thousand miles or so from home to the Seattle area, although we’ve done almost eight thousand miles to get here. And it is half way across the country. So for many people, I guess that’s a long way to travel on a motorcycle. On the other hand, having already ridden the equivalent of one and a half times around the equator on the last trip, through 34 countries and across four continents, our trip to the Pacific Northwest seems like a ride to get coffee. It’s hard to explain this to someone at a gas station that just happened to see the Texas license plate, so usually our answer is simply “Yep.” And often that’s the end of the conversation. Sometimes they look at Diana and say “You’re brave.” I’m not sure how to take that, personally, but I’ll give her credit for being brave enough to be stuck between a lot of luggage on the back of a smallish motorcycle, with no real control over her destiny.

2. The second most popular question so far is: “Is that your dog on the back?”

To be fair, if you just glance at it as you drive past, I could see how you could think that. Sometimes the straps make the outside corners stick up like little furry dog ears. But no, we do not have our dog bungee corded to the back of the bike. Nor did we stop and adopt a piece of road kill. We started the trip with a piece of sheepskin that we bought at IKEA to use as a seat cover, but Diana kept sliding forward on it, so after just a few days we took it off and strapped it onto the gear bag. And it’s ridden there for most of the trip, getting filthy in the process. I’m not really sure why we’re still carrying it. I’ve used it a couple of times as a seat cushion on a campground picnic table bench, but otherwise it has served no purpose. Other than a source of amusement to us and others.

I’m sure that as we continue, the list of questions will get longer, and I will update this post accordingly.

From Seattle we headed back to the San Juan Islands, this time to Friday Harbor and San Juan Island. We spent a night at Bay View State Park near Anacortes in order to set us up for an early ferry to Friday Harbor the next morning. It’s a small campground, and pretty much no-frills, but nice enough.

At the ferry terminal in Anacortes, we met a family from Spokane on motorcycles: Dad on a BMW GS, Mom on a Honda CB500X, and son on a Triumph Tiger. They were headed to the island for the day, and they gave us some good insight on places to go and see, both on San Juan Island as well as Washington state in general. We ended up running into them again at lunch at Roche Harbor, and we spoke a bit more. Connor (the son) had looked up our blog page, and it turns out Dad and I both raced at Willow Springs in Southern California about the same time.

The next morning we joined a whale watching tour. We were told that the resident Orcas hadn’t been seen for over 100 days (they look similar but eat differently than the transient Orcas; residents eat salmon, while transients eat seals and sea lions), so we prepared ourselves to enjoy an expensive boat ride. Instead we got lucky: the transients had been spotted by another vessel and we headed that way.

We ended up spending an hour watching these huge creatures surface and tail-slap the water. It was an incredible sight. Federal regulations require that the boats stay two hundred meters away from the whales, but even at that distance it’s good viewing. At one point one of the whales surfaced very close to the boat ahead of us. The captain shut the engines down, and the whale went under the boat and came up on the other side. Watching dozens of people run from one side of the boat to the other, we had visions of the boat just rolling over.

We spent a few days exploring San Juan Island, and stumbled on the San Juan Island Distillery and Wescott Bay Ciders, a small distillery on a back road. Being a cider fan, we stopped for a tasting, and ended up shipping a few bottles home.

Friday Harbor is a lot like Avalon, California. It’s a small harbor town that mostly attracts tourists. People catch the ferry over for the day to wander the town, and eat and shop. Others sail in. Roche Harbor is the more upscale side.

After a few days camped on the island, we headed back to the mainland and towards Tacoma for another house sit. It was time to do a little more bike maintenance, and wait to see if Canada would open to US tourists.

We arranged for a house sit in Tacoma for a few days, which allowed us to relax, get some things done, and hang out with some fun dogs and cats.

When you travel full time, it’s harder to schedule maintenance, especially since I prefer to do all of it myself. Another advantage to house-sitting is it gives us a place to ship stuff in advance, so we can either carry it with us or do the work there. In this case, we needed rear brake pads, and the only source turned out to be Amazon. But for one reason or another, Amazon wouldn’t ship them to one of their drop-box locations. So we asked the homeowner if we could ship to her house.

Once there, we met two fun dogs, and two young kittens. They were all great fun.

I was able to find a local dealer and purchase oil and an oil filter, and I purchased a three dollar plastic drain pan at a local Auto Zone. I changed the oil, took the waste oil back to Auto Zone, and gave the homeowner the drain pan (which, if nothing else, could make a handy litter box). In all, this saved me nearly sixty dollars over having a dealer change the oil. I also replaced the brake pads. We could have gone another thousand miles or so on the original pads, but this was a good time to change them out. I put the original pads in the pannier as back-ups in case we need them later in the middle of nowhere.

It was now time to leave the Seattle-Tacoma area and begin heading east. The traffic in the Seattle area, particularly I-5 and I-405 has been as bad as I’ve encountered in much of the US, and we’re glad to not be sitting in it any longer.

For the past month or so, we’ve been circulating in the Northwest, waiting for news about whether Canada would open their border to US tourists. The first announcement, on June 21st, said they would remain closed and they would re-assess the situation on July 21st. So we waited for that date, thinking that if they opened the border then, we might still have time to make it to Alaska and spend three to four weeks there before heading back before the weather turned cold there.

But last week Canada announced that they would open the border on August 9th. This means that on that date either:

A. There will be a mad rush to Alaska, clogging the border crossings and booking all of the campgrounds. (Note: I’ve already checked; the campgrounds in British Columbia are already mostly booked solid, just with Canadian tourists.)

Or

B. People will decide that heading to Alaska during the second week of August doesn’t leave enough time to fully enjoy the state before having to return.

Or

C. All of the above.

Presently, we’re of the opinion that it may be too late to ride to Alaska just to turn around and ride back after only a couple of weeks there. But I still want to tour British Columbia and Alberta, because I’ve been there three or four times already on a bike, and (IMHO) the scenery and wildlife are hard to beat in North America, at least this close. So we’ve got another week or so to wander around this part of the country and decide whether we can make it to BC, via one of the smaller border crossings.

While we’ve been in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve received multiple emails from friends saying the same thing: “How are the fires there?” or “It looks like you’re surrounded by fires.” We actually were on the coast and away from the fires, so we hadn’t noticed them for the most part. Until now.

We left Tacoma late on a Sunday, and spent the night at Kanaskat-Palmer State Park, just east of the Seattle-Tacoma area. This is a nice park on the Green River, with nice swimming and kayaking areas. The next morning we packed up and left Kanaskat and took Highway 2 across Washington, stopping at Snoqualmie Falls as we left the campground.

As we continued east, we stopped for fuel in Leavenworth. This entire town is made to look like a Bavarian village, right down to the McDonalds and the signage on the Starbucks.

After Leavenworth, we continued east through Waterville (“Home of the Shockers” — still trying to figure that one out) to Sun Lakes State Park just outside of Coulee City, Washington. This place was, well, different, to say the least. This part of Washington is pretty much just desert, with some farmland thrown in. There’s a lake here, and the State Park is on the lake. The camping is considerably different from what we’ve become accustomed to; up until now, we’ve been camping in forests and lush areas. This park is all green grass with trees. None of which you are allowed to pitch a tent on. You must place your tent on the edge of the road, basically on a rough gravel/paved surface, which can be difficult to differentiate from the road itself. What looks at first glance to be the parking area for cars is actually the tent pitch. The picnic table is also in this parking area; heaven forbid you might want to sit on the grass.

We pitched our tent clear of the grass, fixed dinner and went to bed. About 5am, we awoke to hear the wind blowing the trees fairly strongly. It smelled like someone left their campfire burning (campfires are not allowed due to the severe wildfire danger). As I climbed out of the tent, it was clear that we were very close to what is now known as the Sunnyslope fire. The sky was dark and brown with smoke, and you could smell and feel it. We packed up quickly and left in the early dawn smoke.

From Sun Lakes State Park all the way across eastern Washington and the Idaho panhandle, the sky was smoke and haze. The temperatures also climbed back up into the upper 90s. Eventually as we made our way into Montana the smoke lessened (though never went away), and the temperatures came back down to the upper 80s and lower 90s. We rolled into Columbia Falls, Montana, near the entrance to Glacier National Park, and met our hosts for the next week.

We arranged another great house-sit, again with two of the coolest cats ever (Diana and I are still debating whether these cats or the Seattle cats are cooler. It’s a close call). We’ve been in a beautiful two-story log home near the entrance to Glacier National Park for nearly a week, while the owners are house-hunting in Seattle to be closer to their kids and grandkids.

Months ago, we had bought entry tickets to the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park. We were unsure of what dates we would be there, so we bought a few of them (at $2 each) for different dates. Each ticket is good for seven days beyond the date on the ticket, so that gave us basically three weeks worth of “window” for us to arrive and enter the Park. As luck (or our loose planning) would have it, we had a ticket that still had two days remaining on it. So, after a couple of days relaxing in the comforts of home, we packed sandwiches and made the 17 mile trip to Glacier.

We had intended to stop on the way back down the Going to the Sun Road to take more photos, but after the bears, Diana seemed satisfied and we just enjoyed the scenery.

Oh, and just fyi, we found out from the homeowners that if you enter the park before 6am or after 5pm, you don’t need a ticket. So we may go back and do a hike or two.

Meanwhile, we’ve had some time to assess our British Columbia and Alaska plans, and have decided to at least make a run for the border. Or more likely, a slow crawl, as we get in line with all the others who have not been able to head north for over a year.

August 14, 2021
Yesterday it was 100F in Houston. Not unusual in August, eh? Except this was Houston, British Columbia, about 500 miles north of the Washington State-Canada border.

Yes, we are in Canada. And headed for Alaska. It was not the easy border crossing it used to be pre-Covid. In fact, overall it took us six days and a bunch of money to get across. But more on that later. Let’s back up and pick up where we left off, about ten days ago.

We left our Columbia Falls, Montana house sit, after picking up the homeowners from the airport. We spent six days in their beautiful home with two awesome cats, and we were sad to be leaving.

The Miracle of America Museum

Just outside Polson is this collection of “stuff”, for lack of a better description, that I had heard about and just had to see. Gil Mangels has been interested in “old stuff” his entire life, and has been collecting items for most of it. The collection has grown to over 40 separate buildings on the property. Just the main building has enough interesting items in it to spend a couple of hours looking through, including old motorcycles, a complete old soda fountain shop, tons of military paraphernalia, and so much history that words can’t do it justice. In fact, I struggle to try to describe the enormity of what is here. Some would say much of it is “junk”, but there is a ton of history in the oddball items Gil has saved. And then there are the items that he has created, under the name of Spoof Creations. Outside of the dozens of buildings, there are also a lot of vehicles, military vehicles, aircraft, boats, tractors, and more.

Gill even took the time to give us a bit of a personal tour of the motorcycle section, as it is truly one of his passions as well. He has some nice bikes, including an Indian 4-cylinder with a sidecar, a Henderson 4, a Harley VLD, and a lot of bikes that brought back memories for me. As I said, I can’t do this place justice, but perhaps this video helps.

To Alaska or Not to Alaska

After weighing our options and looking at available days, we decided to try to get into Canada, and head for Alaska. It will be a shorter time spent up there than we had originally hoped, but it is still possible to hit all of our highlights before the weather turns (we hope!).

The border was set to open to vaccinated Americans on Monday, August 9th, so we had a few days yet to wait. In the meantime, we were required to get a PCR Covid test within 72 hours of our border crossing.

First problem: we planned to cross from Bonners Ferry, Idaho into British Columbia at Rykerts. There were no places up there to get a Covid test. So we checked near Columbia Falls and Whitefish, Montana. There was a Walgreens in Kalispell that offered the test, but they were booked solid. The more we searched, the less we found. Finally we located a RiteAid pharmacy in Spokane Valley, Washington that had available appointments. So we made the appointments for Saturday morning (this was on Wednesday), and started heading back towards Spokane.

On Saturday morning, we got our tests. The woman at the pharmacy told us that we could expect the results typically in one to three days, but sometimes it took as much as seven days. This worried us a bit, but we decided to remain positive (our outlook, not our Covid status), so we left the RiteAid and headed north to Bonners Ferry to camp out until Monday morning. If our negative results arrived by Sunday, we would get in line at the border early Monday morning and be some of the first to cross (at this checkpoint anyway). We technically had until Tuesday afternoon to cross within our 72 hour time limit.

We had rented a small cabin outside of Moyie Springs, Idaho for two nights from AirBnB. We were sure we would have our results by Monday morning and would head for the border, which was about 30 miles away.

By Sunday night, we were starting to get nervous. By Monday at noon, we had to check out of our cabin, and still had no results, so we booked the couple’s other accomodation: a 35-foot fifth wheel trailer that had been converted to a tiny home, for Monday night. If we had no results by Tuesday, we would be outside the 72 hour window and would have to start over.

Tuesday morning we still had no results. I looked online again for a place to take another test. The nearest available appointment was in Polson, Montana, (yes, same Polson as the museum above…we were going in circles), over 150 miles away. And the more we thought about it, the more likely we would end up in the same predicament: Polson is a small town. We had no idea where the lab was located that our tests would go to from Polson. Getting the samples to the lab could take a day or two to be collected and delivered. If the lab was busy (they all seemed to be), we could once again blow our 72 hour window. The tests were free, but the hotels/AirBnBs/campgrounds were not, and it was beginning to add up.

We decided we needed a different approach. Diana located an operation in Seattle that was guaranteeing lab results next day (or same day) for a fee. While we hated to spend a lot more money, each day we spent waiting was adding up. So we left Idaho and headed back — one more time — to Seattle. It was painful to be spending all of this time going back and forth on the Interstate, wearing tires, adding miles, costing fuel.

By Wednesday morning we had paid for our same-day results, gotten tested, and headed north to Lynden, Washington, just fifteen miles south of the Abbotsford, BC crossing, and set up camp while waiting for our results. (By the way, my negative result from the RiteAid test had arrived Tuesday afternoon, but Diana’s didn’t show up until early Wednesday morning, making them moot anyway.) Our Seattle test results arrived Wednesday evening, and we filled out the information in the ArriveCAN app. It looked like we had everything in place for a Thursday morning crossing.

We arrived at the border at 8:30am, and were surprised to see just one motorhome and two cars ahead of us in the “Alaska Only” line.

We sat in line for about twenty minutes before a border guard came out and told us that if we had all of our documentation we could move to the other open line, as it would be faster. So two of us (out of the four) moved over there. And sat there and watched the other line start moving much faster. It was just like the bank or the grocery store!

Finally it was our turn. I pulled up to the window and handed over our passports. Then came the questions:

“Why are you going to Alaska?”

I wasn’t prepared for that one. “Um, because we can?” Probably a bad answer, so I added “And we’ve never been?” (Not entirely true, but close enough).

“Are you carrying any firearms, ammunition, knives, bear spray, brass knuckles, or other weapons?”

“Uh, no?” Probably shouldn’t have answered it as a question. He looked at me a little doubtful. “I mean, No.”

“Any cannabis?”

Again, wasn’t prepared for that one. “Excuse me?”

“Any cannabis? Marijuana?”

“Oh. Um, no.”

“Are you sure? Because you kind of hesitated.”

“I didn’t know you could even do that up here.”

“Oh yeah. It’s legal.”

I didn’t know if it was or not, but the way he said it sounded like bait, and I wasn’t taking it. “Still no. Nothing.”

“Okay”, he said. “Everything is in order. I just need to see your negative test results.”

I pulled up the letter on my phone and handed it to him. He looked at it closely. “This is dated yesterday. You took the test yesterday, and you got the results yesterday?”

“Yes, and it wasn’t cheap”, I said.

He looked surprised. “What do you mean? I thought all Americans can take the test for free?”

“Yes, that’s true, but you might not get the results within 72 hours. So we paid for these.”

That apparently was the wrong explanation. In hindsight, it sounded like we paid for negative results. He handed my phone back to me, and reached behind him. He set two boxes on the window ledge. “Take these two test kits to the tents ahead of you, and they will administer the tests. If for some reason they are closed, you have 24 hours to perform the tests and submit them to the lab.”

Ugh. Our third set of PCR tests in five days.

Sure enough, the testing area was closed. We rode a few miles into Abbotsford and found a McDonalds and sat down and read the kit information. We would have to make an appointment with an online test official, perform the test by video link, then deliver them to a lab, all within 24 hours. Then we would wait up to three days for results. All the while we were to keep a list of anyone and everyone we came into contact with, and have a quarantine plan in case our results came back positive.

We actually made the video appointments for the tests right there in McDonalds, and within an hour we had performed our tests and sealed the swabs in the packaging. I located a lab about a mile away where we could drop the kits. Although it was a hassle, it could have been worse. But it did feel a little like being back in Bolivia, where Americans were, well, less than welcome.

By noon we were headed north. It was close to 100 degrees, and the smoke from the wildfires was terrible. In many places visibility was less than a quarter mile. It seemed like all of Canada, or at least the southern half of British Columbia, was on fire.

We rode in fairly dense smoke for most of the day. When we stopped for fuel in Merritt, ash was raining down on us and the sky was glowing orange. It was a long day, but we ended up in Quesnel, BC at Roberts Roost, an RV park with a nice large grassy tent area and some trees. The smoke was mostly gone, and it felt good to have the border behind us.

I think it was just after our ride up the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park that Diana spoke the following line over our helmet intercoms:

“Yeah, um, I think I’m kinda over the whole mountains and trees thing.”

I cringed. We intended to spend the next six weeks or so riding to Alaska and back. Around six thousand miles of mountains and trees.

So yesterday was a welcome change, when she said, “These mountains are way different. They’re sharp. And they’re so BIG!”

We had left our campsite outside Houston (BC, not TX) and headed towards Meziadin Lake, but just on a whim, instead of turning right at the intersection, I decided to turn left and ride about 35 miles west to the town of Stewart. I’m not sure what made me do that, especially since it’s basically a dead-end, and we would have to ride the 35 miles back to the intersection again in the morning.

But it was worth it. What a payoff in scenery.

It turns out that Stewart is about three miles from the border with Alaska. The road crosses to Hyder, Alaska, and then back into Canada to the Salmon Glacier, then ends. You can’t go anywhere else in the rest of Alaska from there by road. And as much as we would have loved to see the glacier, our recent experience with crossing the border into Canada told me I didn’t want to try it again in such a remote place.

It started raining last night, and the temperature dropped. This morning it was still raining, and 48 degrees when we left Stewart. We rode north on the Cassiar Highway in nearly continuous rain. Like the Alaskan Highway, the Cassiar sees a lot of damage over the winter, and work crews spend each summer repairing sections. So we rode through long stretches of dirt (mud) and gravel, and dodged enough potholes to make me feel like I was back in Mexico, all while the temperature continued to drop into the lower 40s.

By mid-afternoon, we were cold and ready for a break. We found a campground on Dease Lake that had a tiny cabin for rent (nothing like the cabin in Moyie Springs, Idaho!). It’s supposed to be similar weather tomorrow, but possibly less rain. We’ll head for Watson Lake tomorrow, and if we aren’t as cold by then, perhaps further.

On the way into Stewart yesterday, we had a couple of black bears cross the road in front of us. Today, Diana counted another eight black bears that were either crossing the road, or standing on the side of the road as we went by. Her new comment: “Okay, I’m over bears. I want to see a moose!”

One moose, coming up…

August 16, 2021

It seems that Sunday somehow was a perfect storm of bad weather and road conditions. We rode all day in rain with temperatures around 42F, and the road from Meziadin Lake to Dease Lake was full of potholes and under construction, with sections of dirt and gravel. We stopped at Dease Lake when we grew tired of the beating we were taking from the weather and the road.

Yesterday was like a light switch had been flipped. We left our cabin under sunny skies and temps in the low 60s, and from the moment we pulled back out onto the Cassiar Highway until we pulled off the Alaska Highway in Whitehorse, Yukon, some 400 miles later, there was not a single section of gravel, dirt, or construction, and practically no potholes as well. In fact, one 25 mile section from Boya Lake to just south of the Alaska Highway junction was racetrack smooth and downright fun. AND Diana got to see her first moose.

At the end of the Cassiar Highway where it meets the Alaska Highway, we detoured fifteen miles east on Highway 1 in order to get gas in Watson Lake and visit the famous Signpost Forest.

We had originally planned to take Tuesday off, but since we lost four days trying to get into Canada, we decided to push on to Whitehorse. We are now less than 300 miles from the Alaska border, and less than 600 from Fairbanks.

August 18, 2021

Over the past six days of riding approximately 2100 miles through Canada and Alaska, we have seen around 50 fully loaded motorcycles heading south. The total number of motorcycles heading north, including us: One. Not a single other motorcycle going towards Alaska besides us. This says a lot about either:

A. How late in the season we are.
B. How dumb we are.
C. All of the above.

Diana quickly surmised (and probably accurately) that now is the right time for people riding the “Gringo Trail” to begin their trek south (the usual route from Alaska to South America via the west coast of the US and the Inter-American/Pan-American Highway). This might well explain a lot of the southbound two wheeled traffic we’ve seen.

As for an explanation of the single motorcycle heading north, you can look at weather.com for Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and get a pretty good indication.