Day 16

Another bright sunny day. High cumulus clouds pepper the sky. There are a few showers but they are avoided by speeding up or slowing down.

More dirt as we approach the border. It appears to be part of the Homeland Defense system. You can't drive into or out of Alaska without enduring several hours of bad road.

Nonetheless, it's beautiful ride scenery-wise. More of the same different mountains.

I notice a beautiful magenta flower that often borders both sides of the road in the Yukon. They tell me it is called a Crocus and is the first to bloom when winter is fading. That sounds like our Crocus but, this is a short shrub. More research is needed. I took a picture to try to track it down. Sometimes a carpet of dandelions is spotted with five or six “crocuses”. It's impressive. The dandelions are not like those in my lawn in that one plant will produce 6 or 7 flowers. The color is the same and it stikes me that they would make an excellent ground cover on the hill around my driveway, especilly if I could get some Yukon crocuses to throw in the mix. More research there too.

The road after customs is atrocious!! There are huge dips and bumps for the next two hours. Not nice easy ones but something similar to speed bumps and roller coaster dips. I had to ride thyem as if in a steeple chase – all in the stirrups. My legs are still pretty strong but it was a workout. Speaking of which, my left shoulder is getting stronger every day. I can wave to other bikers without stabbing pain. I can even reach back a little. However, a sudden change from warm to cold, as often happens riding the mountains in the spring, nearly paralyzes my entire left arm until it acclimates. Weird.

Of note today, we see four moose, four swans, and a geological puzzle.

The highlight of the moose was that two were a mother and a new baby. The calf could hardly stand and walk to keep up with mom. Mom became nervous when I stopped even though I must have been a 2000 yards away. She hustled junior into a bush patch on the “plain” and he either collapsed from exhaustion and on signal from mom. After a bit, she decided I was OK and followed him into the bush and laid down, too. The next car passed would never know that there was a mother moose with a baby there. I wondered how many hundreds, or thousands, of moose I have passed in this same way.

The interesting thing about the swans was that their necks were yellow. I believe there are three kinds, Mutes, Trumpeters, and another, but, I don't recall this feature. I think there was some black on their face, too. More research to do and I did not get a picture. I was in travel mindset and I missed it. Well, it's first a bike adventure, then a photo documentation. I'm going to miss some good ones and get some bad ones --- like today's “mountain of the day”. Or for that matter, the moose. Even with my 270mm lens all the way out, the picture is little more than evidence of the veracity of my observations.

The puzzle of the mountains was that, heading south, the mountains on the left side of the road were worn down domes while the ones on the right were tall, sharp, and pointy. Maybe the last glacier stopped at the road or maybe the pointy mountains grew after the last glacier receded. Whatever, it's a bit curious to be riding down the road with old beat up mountains on one side and sharp new ones on the other.

Tomorrow we head to Watson Lake and beyond to cruise Banff and then Glacier parks. We'll ride Rocky Mountain National Park to add crossing the highest pass to our checklist and then point ourselves east.

Note: On a past day we traveled through a poplar forest. Who knew they existed. But the entire area was nothing but poplar trees. Such uniformity was rather pretty. It was a warm day with now breeze and the air was filled with that sweet poplar smell. I was reminded of learning to make a wooden whistle from a poplar branch one spring when I was in grade school. I was so thrilled to learn the “secret”. On another day we passed through a white birch forest. On both sides of the road, as far as the eye could see, birches. Lovely. They are sweet smelling too when they warm up, only a little muskier that poplar.

The food all trip has been nothing but trucker food and not very good. So, I've stopped eating it. I had nothing yesterday and a sandwich today. I do like the shot of protein or fiber, or both, in the morning but most is too greased up and loaded with potato. It's not worth paying for. A bag a cheese curls would be as healthy and taste a lot better. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow if I can raise an appetite.