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!

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.

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!

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 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!

Starting down the Cassiar, it seemed like everything was breaking down. We felt tired (even though we'd just taken a couple of days off at Watson Lake) and didn't seem like we were making the distance we expected. And it seemed like it was raining and cold every day. We were starting to get worried that we were going to "blow out" and get too discouraged to continue, as we've all seen happen with big tours before.

And then approaching Dease Lake in a horrible dirt-road section I broke a spoke in my rear wheel. We spent a day cleaning up and repairing and resupplying, and then spent a couple more days resting in Telegraph Creek.

But the day we started out again on the Cassiar, I immediately broke ANOTHER spoke. This time, the spoke was one of the harder ones to replace and I had to use a special Hypercracker tool to try to get the cassette off the wheel. I broke the Hypercracker right away. We tried to use it several other ways, but completely failed. The Hypercracker was destroyed and my spoke was still broken. We started looking for alternatives, but found none. We asked everybody we met as I wobbled by on my bike whether they might know somebody with some bike tools. We failed until meeting Johann at Tatogga Lake, who told us he had what we needed at his house in Stewart 225 miles away (and on our planned route). So we kept going, figuring we'd hitchhike if it all blew up. But we made it to Stewart and got the wheel fixed and it seems like it will be OK!

So the bike is better and after the rests we had at Telegraph Creek and Stewart we feel all better and healthy and happy with what we're doing!

[Note that NEW PHOTOS are posted on the Photos page...]

I can not even remember how long it was since we started our ride south on the Cassiar Highway, since the bugs ate me alive at the Junction of 37 and the Alaskan Highway.

Was it a week ago we started, or was it two or three ago. I can not even remember what day today is. It is not that I have a memory problem or any more then usual. It is just days and nights run into each other and all the markers that keep track of the day are left behind when we travel each day to a new place.

There is a common thread that keeps it all together. Bugs, bugs and more bugs. There is now reason for this many bugs. I am currently trying to recover from a bite that got me a week ago in the eyelid, swelled it up so bad I look like I just got out of the boxing ring. The rain was something that dampened out spirit and has been a thread of commonality. Currently we are in Ketchikan, Alaska hiding out at Alltec Computer store updating our website which is really avoidance from going out and getting wetter then wet. It seems we really are wimps but we are working on getting ready for the West Coast ride down the USA through Oregon. Also another common thread is the amazing wonderful people we meet that share so much with us. Wow! People are really wonderful. Thank you all for your gifts of generosity.

The Cassiar Highway was great in most parts and really bad in others. Most of it is a grade A bike touring road and about 15 percent is really bad. (Pot holes holding water, mud, under construction) Randy broke a spoke so we had to try to get it fixed which we failed at so we hitchhiked past the worse part and limped to Stewart. We got rained on a lot but when the scenery cleared we had incredible vistas with snowcapped mountains, glaciated waterways and lakes, the widest range of vegetations we have seen so far. We saw a few bears, a wolverine, dear and lots of birds.

We recovered in Stewart with evening views of the Salmon at Fish creek and the occasional grizzly showing up to frolic in the water and splash around in the pools in an attempt to get his dinner. We borrowed a jeep from Tracy ( who treated us to wonderful homemade breads) and rode up to see the Salmon Glacier above Hyder, Alaska. A man called Keith lives up at the road summit overlooking the Glacier, in a tent under the sign announcing the Glacier. He is called the bear man and you can bye his stuff but what is amazing is he has been living in a tent in this area for 30 years selling his stuff. We also meet a helicopter driver who supports the crew which cuts the brush along the US and Canadian border. He had his Helicopter on the edge of the cliff at the summit. I could not believe he could do this, some people are nuts.

I like to be creative in travels so I found a way to get to Prince Rupert which would cut off a week of cycling. We hopped on the US mail plane that flies from Hyder, Alaska to Ketchikan, Alaska where we will take a ferry to Prince Rupert. It was an amazing sight to see two bikes, bike touring luggage and 4 passengers take off in this float plane called a Beaver. We flew over the Misty Fiords. The sights brought tears to my eyes. Pristine Fiords which we flew just 100’s of feet from the ridges tops in the misty August afternoon.. It is something I would recommend everyone to try.

It seems impossible, but we saw the Northern Lights! It seems like we hadn't even seen a real dark night yet, but it must have been creeping up on us as we ride south and the summer slips away.

One night we were camped right on the beach at the south end of Dease Lake, which is a long north-to-south lake. When we got up to pee in the night, lo and behold the stars were in the sky, but the whole north part of the sky was lit up with something else. It wasn't residual sunlight - it was all kinds of other colors and flavors. We couldn't believe it. Sorry - it wasn't bright enough for a photo!

Nancy got ambitious while we were in Stewart, BC... She wanted to find a different way out than riding back the way we came to the Cassiar Highway. So she went and talked to the people who run the US mail service just across the border in the ghost town of Hyder, Alaska. And before you knew it, we were loading our bikes into the back of a Beaver floatplane and jamming ourselves in and we ended up in Ketchikan, Alaska, which was never on our agenda! But next we'll go to Prince Rupert, BC (which was) and then to the Queen Charlotte Islands (which weren't until recently).