We have had some really nice road and some excellent motorists. In fact, we'll look back on the Cassiar and Klondike and Dempster highways with fondness because the traffic was light and the riding good.

But there are a few motorists whose Mama just didn't train them right.

I'm sure *your* Mama taught you that when passing a cyclist or a pedestrian on a dirt road or in the rain that you should slow down so you don't slop all over them. And didn't your Mama teach you to give a cyclist a wide berth when passing... and if you can't pass safely right now, then slow down and wait until you can.

Most of them are great, some some can use some more training!

Watson Lake was a major construction staging area for the Alaska Highway back in 1942 and a lonely GI put up one sign pointing the way to his home town. Now there are more than 40,000 of them. Nancy got lost looking around at them and I didn't find her for hours.

Nancy put our "hobobiker" card and sticker in a ziplock and duct-taped it to the back of a metal sign. It's not much in this incredible forest, but it's lightweight and minimalist for bike tourists :-)

We've just ridden about 450 miles on the Alaska Highway and are about to turn south on the Cassiar Highway toward Dease Lake. Here's the map so you can all see where we're headed. We go on the left side of this down to Dease Lake (with a probable side trip to Telegraph Creek) and to Stewart and Hyde to see the bears eating salmon at Fish Creek..

We're leaving Whitehorse in the morning and will spend 5-7 days on the Alaska Highway getting to Watson Lake, where we'll resupply and then backtrack a few kilometers and head south on the Cassiar Highway. The Cassiar is a beautiful, little-travelled alternative to the Alaska Highway that runs south to near Prince Rupert. It's about 80% paved and about 500 miles long. Probably not much internet access :-) Many people report seeing lots of bears on this route (no trouble with them). And there's a famous trail at Stewart where you can watch the bears catching salmon - we might get to see that.

We'll check in with you down the road!

Here's Nancy pulling up the hill bravely to get to Juneau. See the tense muscles?

Well, there's no way to get to Juneau on a bike except to get on the ferry. Aw, shucks. It was hard, bad weather and everything.

It was a glorious day, blue skies, amazing mountains. And a welcome rest.

Our friend Rob Ungless flew in from Vancouver to join us for the Skagway-Juneau-Haines Alaska loop. We met Rob two years ago in the San Juan Islands (on a cycling trip) and we've kept in touch - he took us up on our offer to all of you to join us for any part of the trip. You're all welcome! You can ask Rob whether it's safe or not.

Here we are in front of a Whitehorse landmark, the Klondike steamer. It's much larger than the one we saw in Dawson, and it ran the river from here to Dawson.

In Dawson, just downstream of the campground, there's an overgrown path to the old graveyard for the many, many steamboats that died on this river.

This picture is taken near midnight, just for perspective - maybe after midnight. This is our friend Oliver in the cabin of one of the old steamers.

From Dawson to Whitehorse to Skagway we've been in the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush country, hearing and breathing the story of the great stampede of 1898.

What's amazing to me is that sternwheeler steamboats plied the Yukon until 1956! That's after I was born. It was really the only way to get to Dawson until the highway was built in 1953. Dawson is an isolated place.

And the next step of amazing is that the steamboats served the entire Yukon: 2000 miles from Whitehorse to the Bering Sea. Every time we pass the Yukon or a tributary (like the Eagle, which we crossed on the Dempster) I want to get in a canoe and float to the sea. It would take a long time!