Glennallen to Valdez to Cordova

We have spent the last 2 weeks staring at huge mountains and glaciers surrounding us. From Glennallen we took 4 days to get to Valdez. We had to climb our last pass of the trip over Thompson Pass, which was not too bad from the North Side. We spend a night at Worthington Glacier camping on the airplane runway (on accident), and had the most beautiful skies that have opened up for us to see the amazing scenery. In Valdez we watched all the fisherman come in with pounds of fish, met up with Max, the travelor from Belgium, and tried to get a shower, but it cost $10 a person. Frankly I would rather have a huge hamburger or fresh fish instead of taking a shower for $10 a person. We took a ferry from Valdez to Cordova that was 3 hours long. We got to see a little marine wildlife, but had blue skies the entire way. Cordova is known for the Million Dollar Bridge and Child's Glacier. There is one road in Cordova that leads from the town, 50 miles to the glacier. We heard that the road is closed at a bridge at mile 36, but we did not know what that meant. Maybe a bike could squeck by. When we arrived to Cordova, we rode 18 miles out into fog. We could not see 100 ft in front of us. The next day the sun came out and it was beautiful!! We made it to the bridge and it is missing 30 ft of the road! We hung out, enjoyed the scenery, and watched bald eagles and a seal in the water. This seal swam up from the ocean to eat all the salmon that were running up the river! On the way back to mile 27 where we were going to camp, we spotted a brown bear that was walking in the river. It was around 50 ft away, and walking over a stream towards us. We took many pictures of it and it was awesome!  We did not feel in any danger (don't worry Moms). We camped on an island and viewed the many mountains surrounding us. We have a few more days in Cordova, and then we will ferry over to Whittier and finish our trip in Anchorage. This trip has gone too fast!

Cantwell to Glennallen

We finished up our dirt road portion of the trip after crossing the 135 mile Denali highway and simultaniously crossed the 1000 mile It has been a record setting cold week with temps in the 30's every night and snow falling in the nearby mountains. "a girl needs to be pampered" has become mantra as of late, which means we stayed in a cabin and ate out 6 out of 8 meals, the most recent involving corn dogs, fried chicken, cheetoes, soda, juice and coffee. We calculated that we eat about 1000 calories less than we burn each day. Due to the weather we have not seen much more than a lot of clouds but we did see the Wrangels yesterday. A porcupine tried to get into our stuff one night as well as a rare cross-fox. The trip seems like its winding down as we bought our last batch of groceries for this final week of travel .

Denali to Cantwell

We partook in the unique luxuries of Denali Village, like watching 2 moose cross the highway from deck of the coffee shop (the next day, wildlife rangers shot and killed a garbage feeding bear point blank in front of a crowd of tourists in the behind the shop). We waited out a rare Alaskan thunderstorm and then set out riding toward at 6:30pm. This turned out to be a terrible choice because we got absolutely pounded by howling head winds and driving sheets of rain the entire 36 miles (through Windy Pass...imaging that) before we rolled into the Cantwell Lodge. The cold and wet ride was well worth the suffering because we met up with Cantwell Locals; Hunter Lou, Hatchet Shain and Big Jim, and shut the bar down at 5am playing ping-pong and telling stories. We woke to snow on the mountains and spent the day in the amazingly beautiful Cantwell hanging out with our friend Lou and talking about the difficulty of gardening-Alaska-relationships, all together and as separate entities. Seeing the Alaskan mountains is amazing but forming human relationships is most memorable. We are now off to ride the Denali Highway, which every local we have met has said is the most beautiful road in Alaska.

Denali National Park

We just exited Denali National Park after an 8-day adventure in The Park. All of our expectations were met as we rode the 180 miles of dirt road, over numerous passes, to Wonder Lake and back. This is the true North American safari; we spotted 16 grizzly bears, numerous caribou, too many dall sheep to count, porcupines and a lynx! Don't worry, all of the bears were seen at a distance. We were able to see Mt McKinley, aka Denali, on three separate occasions, which was a special treat. Of course, we also saw some of the most amazing mountain and tundra landscapes that exist in the world. We have met numerous wonderful people and even quite a few bike tourers along the way. We are pretty sure that all of the bus drivers are familiar with us as they see us every day as they complete their daily drive of the road. All is going well as we cross over the halfway mark of our trip.  Pasta is starting to get a little too familiar but the company at dinner (each other) is well worth the meal.

Fairbanks to Denali National Park

The last 4 days have felt more like a commute than the rest of the ride, so far, as we rode from Fairbanks to Anchorage with the clouds hanging low, making for less than scenic views. The first night we spun up big hills to "Skinny Dick's Halfway Inn." The name is only the tip of the obscenity in this place...the owner bought Jacob a shot and he took it out of a sheep's a** (blow-up) and then let us crash in his cabin. The next day, driving rains and blinding fogs forced us to stop in Nenana, where the river barges motor up the Yukon, bringing supplies to the Native villages. Yesterday we rode past the forest fire that is burning here, it isn't bad but it reminds us of the raging fires at home in Colorado. Now, we are in Denali National Park getting ready to head into the park, not into the wild, for the next 11 days. Jacob is pictured, above, with the bus from the film "Into the Wild." It was placed in nearby Healy, after a girl drowned trying to reach the actual bus. We met a young, disillusionment, man who just got denied from getting to the bus, after trying to swim the same swollen glacier river that trapped Chris McCandless in the wilderness...the lure of wild Alaska attracts us all.

Delta Junction to Fairbanks

We have had soo many wonderful people open their doors for us that we don't even feel like we are roughing it right now. We got to take a shower and sleep in guest beds twice in the past week. It is lake country from Delta to Fairbanks and getting quite warm. We spent an entire day at a lake swimming and not riding until 5pm because it was hot outside. We stopped by North Pole, AK and found this letter to Santa (above) from a kid. It was our favorite one. We went to the Solstice Festival yesterday in Fairbanks and are staying at a Hostel where 4 other German bike tourers are also staying. It is great to have some one to talk about biking and get to know. We are now at the Northern part of our trip and will be turning South to Denali. We are pumped!!

Glennallen to Delta

We are now 10 days and 350 miles into our Tour de Alaska and just having a ball! The weather and the views have been absolutely amazing! Since our last post, we left Glenn highway, that bordered the north side of the Chugach Mts, and entered into a landscape of rolling, permafrosted, black spruce forests with numerous lakes and meandering salmon-filled rivers. With the clear blue sky that we have been having we could see huge mountains in all directions in the distance: Chugach Mts to the south, Wrangell Mts to east, Alaskan Mts to the West and North. We past Paxon and climbed over Isabel pass in the Alaska range into Delta. The mountain views throughout the Richardson Highway of the mountains have been unbelievable: snow covered mountain peaks rising over 10,000 feet from where we stood, swollen rivers coming off of glaciers, salmon schooling in the rivers, lakes covered in ice and moose standing on the side of the road. This is the land of the midnight sun and it has led to some interesting phenomena: we are completely cooked on one side of our body because the sun goes around the horizon and not up and over, we stay up very late because the sun is still shining in our eyes at midnight, we have to put our tent in the shade because it heats up in the sunlight until sunset at 12:30, it is as bright as day ALL night so we have to cover our eyes and set an alarm to make sure we sleep in since the sun officially rises at 3:30. That said, we had our hardest day yesterday despite descending 1500 feet due to in-the-face head winds. We got out of the winds by eating lunch at a 5-star resort lodge.  Luckily, no guests were there at the time because they told us that we would not have been allowed to dine in our attire. Little did they know that we hadn't showered in 5 days and were wearing chamois that hadn't been washed in 10 days of riding!