Right before the Canada border I was passed at Mach 5 by two Porsche 911s covered in blue masking tape and dust. They were held up at the border for a bit as I crossed, but driving side by side they passed me again in the Yukon. By the time I got the camera out, they were already a mile down the road. Radar detectors are not legal in the Yukon, but I have no doubt that these guys were decked out in every possible form of concealed warning or jamming system. If not for the wildlife on the road, this would be the best way to tour the north.
Once the hour or two of darkness fell, I was again struggling with my dim headlight. In the fading light it was hard to tell bear from bush and tree from moose beside the road. Fortunately I saw only one of the formers among many of the latters.
I didn't know where to camp once I was in Whitehorse so I went in search of wifi internet, but it was 3am. Everything was closed and my cell phone made for poor wardriving. I stopped into Tim Horton's and asked some past-curfew teenagers about wifi, and they suggested hanging out in front of Starbucks even if it was closed. They also gave me directions to Yukon Yamaha, and referenced Robert Services Campground as a waypoint. With this info, internet was no longer needed. I rolled my bike past the gate at Robert Services and laid down on the outdoor couch beside the idiotically named "Hippy Yuppy" coffee shop, "where the locals and the globals meet." Apparently it's a cool thing for rich young kids up here to camp all summer in this shitty campground. I was so tired I didn't take off any of my gear and instead just laid down with everything on and fell asleep until 6am when a surly old security guy woke me up.
The next morning I went to Yukon Yamaha for a tire. They had a WR250R collecting dust in the very back of the showroom, so I walked back to my bike, removed my pitiful hacked and worn chain slider, and brought it to the counter. Like a beggar pointing to his open sores I asked meekly if it wouldn't be too much to ask to have the chain slider off of their showroom bike. Even though the replacement part was on backorder from Japan for 3 weeks, they agreed! I bought a Kenda K270 which they static balanced for me once I mounted it. With the heavy side of the tire by the rimlock, it needed 20 grams at the rimlock to re-balance with 160g stuck to the other side from when I had my D606's balanced. His weights didn't stick to the soapy rim so I just removed 20 grams from the other side. I couldn't thank these guys enough. They really went out of their way to help me, even though they were busy.
A sour-faced elfish fellow from Brazil was there as well, looking for new tires, a tire change, and an oil change. He was agitated and insistent that they do the work for him, saying in terribly broken English that when they offered him the tire they had somehow promised also to mount it and do his oil change. Unfortunately their service department was all booked up, and so after much arguing he left with only the rear tire. He paid $350 for it, and outside he asked me if tire good one. I was totally unfamiliar with the brand so I looked at it severely and nodded, yes, very good, last long time. He hopped on his cruiser bike while his girlfriend slung the tire over her shoulder and slid in behind him. They made a comical sight as two of them rode away, mostly obscured by the tall backrest which had been transformed into an enormous Christmas tree of gear and decorated with an uncountable number of brightly colored bungee cords.
Lesson of the day is don't be an incompetent dick. You can be either and get away with it, but things go best if you're competent enough to do 90% yourself and polite enough that good people will do you a favor on the last 10%. It's getting hard to keep a positive karmic balance sheet with all this help I've been receiving.
My ferry was at 5AM the next morning and Skagway was just a short jaunt away so my only goal for the day was to get somewhere around there, eat food, and camp for the night.
On the way I stopped at the Carcross Desert, one of the few active dunes landscapes in North America. It was produced not by the dryness of the area but rather by the collection of fine debris from the terminus of several glaciers, under what was once a lake. With the lake now evaporated, the sand remains. People are allowed to ride over it, a novel thing for a Californian! I decided to try my hand at it, but had a terrible time with the Metzeler Enduro 1 front tire. It has no prominent tread and I wore myself out very quickly trying to keep it straight. I know the recipe is to gas it and stay loose on the bars, but I didn't want to know what would happen to my directional control at 30mph with an effectively bald tire guiding the way. With the little 250 there really isn't any reason not to run knobbies all the time, lest you be going down the highway and bam there's surprise dunes or singletrack to ride.
The landscape further on toward Skagway was spectacular glacier-scoured rock. I tried to ride out on some of the terrain here and made it off the bouldered road fringe, but as soon as I got there I saw that the rock was covered with fragile moss and scrub and my tire was tearing it up. I didn't want to be that shithead who scars everything up so I turned around and contented myself with experiencing the land from a distance.
One of many pretty waterfalls.
Skagway is a big cruise ship destination, so it's crawling with people and the food and drink isn't too bad. I had a good burger, some smoked salmon, a beer, and for $5 got some Flor de Cana rum on the rocks, but to fill the order the bartender had to bottom out two bottles for me and there was only room for one icecube at the end. Woe. One drink per axle is a saying I favor, but I'd need duallies out back to match my last drink so I hung around the library for a bit before heading off to find camp.
The fellow at the ferry terminal told me there were two campsites down Dyea Rd. I inspected one, found it satisfactory, and went to explore the road and find the other. At the end of the road I caught this glimpse of an overhanging glacier.
Seeing no other way forward I went to find the other campsite. It turned out to be near the site of the old Gold Rush town of Dyea, and permit-only. Dyea was on a tidal flat, a mile in from the deep water. Ships would come in and men would trudge out over the mud and back with the supplies. The town died almost as soon as it was founded, as the Klondike Trail worked its way further north in pursuit of gold.
As I was riding around I saw my first grizzly bear walk onto the road a few hundred feet away. I continued to roll forward and began honking to chase him away. After a moment he went loping into the bush, and I rode back to the camping area to inform the campers. A passing driver told me they'd shot at the bear with rubber bullets the day before, but he was back hanging around a creek. I was very excited and started to ride around the various roads winding through the area to make some noise when I realized that I couldn't see 5 feet off the road and decided it would be better to just leave. As I was riding back, I passed a clearing and there he was, maybe two football field's length away.
I think I really wanted to scare him off because like a stupid chimpanzee running around waving branches I decided that making a lot of noise and riding some distance toward the bear would be the right thing to do. I had a fresh tire and figured I could whip a turn and hook up pretty good if he decided to hold his ground. I got a third of the way there when he looked up and started to stand up. He wasn't even looking at me, I think a dog off to the right had caught his attention. In any case, I immediately came to my senses and realized I was doing something very very stupid around a very large bear, turned broadside, took a couple shaky pictures, and raced back onto the road as fast as I could looking into the side mirror to make sure I didn't have an angry grizzly running to chomp on my ass.
I returned to the other campsite and while settling in I discovered that a whole bottle of Dr Bronner's peppermint castile soap had emptied itself into my Giant Loop. Fortunately it had been in with other liquids and toiletries, but I wanted to clean everything up to get rid of the very strong odor. I spent an hour washing everything in the cold glacial creek running by the campsite.
I also noticed that my rear tire was a little flat. It turned out that the inner tube on the Tubliss had low pressure. When I wiggled the valve stem soapy water bubbled out, so I am guessing the some of it got stuck inside and when I initially inflated to 110psi the tube was pressing up against a water or air cavity. With that cavity drained, it read only 40PSI and wasn't holding the seal on the tire well. I reinflated the inner tube and all seems well. My electric air compressor didn't work when I went to top off the tire itself, which was disappointing. It has been sitting snug against the bike under my Giant Loop bag so perhaps the wet and heat and vibration got to it. At least my hand pump works, and my arm got a good workout.
I had only slept a couple of hours at Martin Service campground in Whitehorse the night before so being tired and lazy I put my sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the picnic table, and tried to fall asleep. The wind was howling down the valley, stirring the forest, and sleep was not coming to me. I thought setting up my tent and getting in would help, so I willed myself to do that, but that didn't work either. Finally I started packing everything up, got my gear on, and thought maybe I could just sleep with everything on again. I plugged my heated vest in for a few minutes to get warm, then laid down. My helmet worked surprisingly well as a pillow, but with the wind and night chill I was cold again very soon. I had run out of options so I decided to ride back to Skagway. I pulled into the ferry parking lot and without noticing the 'no camping' sign I inflated my sleeping bag, pulled out my sleeping bag, and crawled next to an electrical transformer box that shaded me a little from the bright sodium lights' glare. I fell fast asleep, missed all my alarms, and woke up just as the cars began to line up for the ferry. I looked over and saw the driver of this camper van watching me. I thought to myself, how can this be?
I rubbed my eyes, decided this wasn't a particularly intense hallucination induced by lack of sleep, and got packed up to catch the ferry. This RV was also driven by a dog.
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