Alaska: Day 16 (20 June 09)
Another wet day spent making tracks south and east. 451 miles. We both thought it was more when we stopped in Smithers. Wanted to get farther, but we needed to dry out. I've scrapped the plan to head down through upper Washington State and we're going to retrace our route through Jasper and Banff.
We darted back into Alaska briefly to visit Hyder. Not much to see. There's not even a U.S. border crossing -- guess Uncle Sam doesn't care if you slip into Hyder undetected. It's not like there's anywhere you can go, I guess. We rode in, looked around for 2 minutes, and turned around and rode out -- didn't feel the need to get "Hyderized" or anything. Crossing back into Canada (3 minutes after we'd left), the customs agent examined my passport and asked all the usual questions about accepting packages from someone else, firearms, merchandise that I intended to sell in Canada, etc. I said, "Dude, I never even got off the bike ... just rode down to the end of the street there and turned around and came back." He acted like that was pretty common.
Hyder, Alaska. You can just about see the entire town in this photo.
Bear Glacier again.
Finally got a photo of a fox. This was about the fourth one I had seen, but all the others had run into the woods before I could take thier picture. This little fellow was adorable and in no hurry to vacate the premises. I was pretty pleased with this shot.
He did eventually take his leave, though. I also never got a photo of a moose -- saw plenty, but they were far too timid. Only one we ever got close to, Danny kinda chased it into the woods with his motorcycle. And I never got a pic of a porkypine* even though I saw 3 or 4 of them. There was one porkypine who scurried over to a culvert when Danny zoomed past him (without seeing him). I stopped. "You're going to run into that culvert as soon as I pull out my camera, aren't you?" "Oh, no, " he said, "you go ahead and get out your camera, I'll just sit right here for you." So I got out the camera. The porkypine smiled, "You want me to say 'cheese' or what?" I turned on the camera and removed the lens cap. Raised the camera. Pointed it at him. He immediately darted into the culvert. Bastard.
We darted back into Alaska briefly to visit Hyder. Not much to see. There's not even a U.S. border crossing -- guess Uncle Sam doesn't care if you slip into Hyder undetected. It's not like there's anywhere you can go, I guess. We rode in, looked around for 2 minutes, and turned around and rode out -- didn't feel the need to get "Hyderized" or anything. Crossing back into Canada (3 minutes after we'd left), the customs agent examined my passport and asked all the usual questions about accepting packages from someone else, firearms, merchandise that I intended to sell in Canada, etc. I said, "Dude, I never even got off the bike ... just rode down to the end of the street there and turned around and came back." He acted like that was pretty common.
Hyder, Alaska. You can just about see the entire town in this photo.
Bear Glacier again.
Finally got a photo of a fox. This was about the fourth one I had seen, but all the others had run into the woods before I could take thier picture. This little fellow was adorable and in no hurry to vacate the premises. I was pretty pleased with this shot.
He did eventually take his leave, though. I also never got a photo of a moose -- saw plenty, but they were far too timid. Only one we ever got close to, Danny kinda chased it into the woods with his motorcycle. And I never got a pic of a porkypine* even though I saw 3 or 4 of them. There was one porkypine who scurried over to a culvert when Danny zoomed past him (without seeing him). I stopped. "You're going to run into that culvert as soon as I pull out my camera, aren't you?" "Oh, no, " he said, "you go ahead and get out your camera, I'll just sit right here for you." So I got out the camera. The porkypine smiled, "You want me to say 'cheese' or what?" I turned on the camera and removed the lens cap. Raised the camera. Pointed it at him. He immediately darted into the culvert. Bastard.*Yes, I know the correct spelling is porcupine. I like my spelling better.
Labels: Alaska, motorcycles
posted by Brian A. Hopkins at 9:43 PM
1 Comments:
Man,the rain kind of puts a damper on the trip, but still sounds pretty cool. Keep the reports coming!
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home