Arctic Adventure, Part 1

*2019 Intro: Our 2005 Arctic Circle adventure started with one of the biggest adventures of all – The Big Hitchin’! This is a picture-heavy affair, so for the most part I will forgo my standard long-winded narrations and stick to the original photo-plus-caption arrangement. (You’re welcome.) It’s hard to believe that, way back in the day, we used to compress pictures on purpose so websites wouldn’t take 9,000 hours to load on the ol’ dial-up connection. I dug up the High Res on some of these, but… you know. A girl’s gotta have a life outside blog maintenance and picture procurement. Right? <crickets>

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*2019: The last 14 years haven’t all been roses and unicorns, but I will say one thing: I have stayed true to myself and the promise I made that day. This was, in fact, the very last time I’ve worn a dress. As opposed to my promise not to be verbose in the post, which I backpedaled on literally in the third content block. Hey, at least I follow through on the really important stuff.

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*2019 Pro Tip: Pick an awesome wedding date. You only get married once, but your anniversary is every year. When you pick a date that has special personal meaning for you as a couple, it makes it easier for you to remember. In our case, we picked 7-11 because Mike likes hotdogs and slushies. Not only have neither of us ever forgotten The Big Date, but pretty much everyone else remembers our anniversary too. Bonus: It just so happened that 7-11 fell on a Tuesday. We could invite 794 people so that no one felt slighted, but only like 50 could make it because Tuesday. Toss in a blessedly brief ceremony and a double dose of BBQ, and that’s how you have the perfect hitchin’. Oh, and cake. Gotta have cake. And motorcycles. Anyways, now it’s time for that honeymoon I promised you!

Mike shows off his slightly scuffed elbow and slightly scuffed bike. We figured one of us would crash at some point, but on the first day? What an over-achiever! (We got stuck in a complete freeway shutdown in Central California after someone lost a boat off a trailer. We were pealing off gear as we languished in triple-digit heat on the blacktop, but after we drank all our water we were just getting cooked. We tried to lane split, which is legal, but angry cagers were deliberately blocking our path. We ended up going down the shoulder, still dodging cars trying to cut us off, and made it to the next freeway exit. As we were turning off the freeway offramp and into a gas station, the heat got the better of Mike and he just tipped over at low speeds. We got his bike up, packed ourselves with ice, and spent some time recovering while actively stink-eyeing every single cage that we saw.)

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This evil repugnant goopy spawn of Satan somehow managed to slurp it’s disgusting way into our zipped-shut tent while we slept, and I woke up just as it was preparing to attack by oozing onto my pillow and towards my face. For some reason, Mike didn’t seem to think this brush with death constituted a legitimate reason to wake him up at 6am. Sure, he says that now, but he’d be singing a different tune if this undulating glop ball had gotten to him…

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We were having fun on the Hell’s Gate air tram, air sickness aside. (Or would that be tram sickness?) but then disaster stuck. Seriously, I think the guy taking these pictures pulled a muscle while laughing.

Here’s the real tram. Those Philistines wouldn’t let us stage the “Falling Out Of The Air Tram” picture on this one.  The nerve of them, to quash our creative freedoms. Well, that’s Canada for you, amirite?

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There are dozens of amazing waterfalls along Highway 37A outside of Hyder. The area around Hyder is the world’s largest temperate rain forest. Just look at these pictures – it’s like Hawaii with snow! It rained the whole time, but the lush landscape made it worth it.

Wha..?!? Is that an abandoned ice cream truck?!? In Hyder, Alaska? Why, they only get an average of 48 feet of snow each season (which lasts from September to May). Boy, who ever could have predicted that that little venture would have failed? You just never can tell in business…

Yes, you’re reading that right. We stayed at the Border Bandit Discount Store/Bed & Breakfast. And by “discount store”, they mean “Purveyor of Cigarettes, Ammo, and Radical Right-Wing Bumper Stickers.” It was well worth it, just to say we did.

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No, we weren’t lucky enough to see the Northern Lights. We had 24 hours of daylight, which was helpful because it allowed us to see in much greater detail the massive swarms of mosquitoes when they tried to attack us at 3am.

A beautiful mountain lake off Highway 37, immediately before the road disintegrated into a couple hundred miles of poorly grated dirt “roads” and  long sections of decades-old construction sites. It is a ton of fun, as long as you’re prepared for it. And not riding an overloaded sport-touring bike.

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This picture, and all of the following pictures, are of Boya Lake, British  Columbia. It is a glacial lake, and was absolutely stunningly beautiful. We had never seen water so clear. You could see all the way to the bottom of the lake, and see fish swimming 50 feet from the shore.  

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This mountain lake is just breathtaking, although the water had to be just above freezing. I swear we saw ice cubes bobbing in the distance. I thought I was going to lose fingers when I rinsed my hands off in the lake, yet kids were swimming in it well after midnight! I guess if you’re from Canada, you take summer where you can get it… We asked if it was cold, but we couldn’t understand them over the chattering of teeth. I imagine it’s hard to convince your kids to call it a day when it never gets dark.

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The water was so perfectly still, it was like looking at a gradually changing painting. What an incredible place to stop for the night! Our campsite was right on the water. Imagine how hard it was to focus on setting up camp!! Even our much-savored evening meal was punctuated with frequent picture breaks. You can see why!

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And with an incredibly fiery sunset (at about midnight), we wrapped up our photo session and hit the hay. I don’t think it ever got dark; every time I woke up, it was still light out. (That light was comforting when the bear went through our camp and brushed up against the tent in the middle of the night.)

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We had a lot of fun in Dawson City. We spent several enjoyable days here  (some not of our own free will, but more on that later). If you ever make it, have the fish and chips at Sourdough Joes. It was some of the best eats on our whole trip – the fried salmon was yummy, but the fresh local cod was to die for!

Main Street, Dawson City, Almost midnight. We were just leaving Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall and Burlesque Show. It would have been a lot more entertaining if we were the 70-year-old men the shows were geared towards, but it was fun none the less. The hall itself, as with a lot of the town, has been preserved from the gold rush days.

*2019: This seems like a good spot to wrap up for the week. I’m not going to cram a month-long adventure into one post, after all. Start working on your shale-riding skills and pack some DEET, because next week we’ll be heading up the Dempster Highway. We’ll hit the Arctic Circle, but that’s only be part way to our ultimate destination. See you next week!