A review

Well.....we are home now. 

It's been a few days and I've gotten a chance to relearn what it's like when the sun goes down. I can sleep again and I'm back to work. 

I have had to recount the hole trip so many times now that I think it would have been easier to just film it and pass out DVDs. Thanks to those of you that have followed along it was neat to be able to share. I don't think that there are any other details that I missed in the daily posts.....but there a few things that I want to mention about the trip in general.

First I have to say that the intercoms were the most useful things purchased for the trip. It takes motorcycling to a whole new dimension. Gone were the hours of silence and then the recap at each stop. We were able to have conversations while on the run which might not seem like much to someone who doesn't ride motorcycles but just imagine riding in a car with no stereo no one to talk to and all the windows down.....and then do that for 16 days. They were also a great thing for safety.....we could point out hazards and wildlife without trying to figure out hand signals. 

The other thing I wanted to mention was the lack of night time......I had no idea how much that would mess with my head. It's weird to not get much sleep but not miss the sleep. I can't explain it....just go there and try it out.

Here are my three favorite pictures.....there are more.....o so many more. Between the two of us there are 21GB of pictures......but I only picked three

O yeah....this happened today...

Note the date......I'm cursed with bad weather now I guess.

To finish up we put together a list of random things we learned along the way. I will leave you with this. 

Subway doesn't have pepper jack in Canada

Canadian bills are extremely flammable and also transparent 

The Canadian coins are called looneys and twoneys

Moose kill more people than bears

The sun never goes down......ever

It always rains....always

"eh" isn't used nearly as often as Americans think

Crossing the border is not nearly as big of a deal as people tell you

Kilometers is long for km which is long for k.......but miles is not shortened to m..and that's unacceptable

Fuel in Canada is sold in liters and costs WAAAAY more than in the US.

The alaska highway is in much worse shape than the cassiar highway

Canadian birds are all suicidal and fly in front of anything that drives.

Tok is actually pronounced Toke...not Talk

road construction in Canada and Alaska means tearing up the asphalt and putting dirt in its place....or sometimes just putting dirt ON the asphalt

Seafood in alaska costs way more than it does back home....but it's fresh.

Motorcycles really can fly....on the alaska highway

Canada doesn't really have any police....you will never see them anyway.

Grizzly bears are a lot less common than people will tell you.....black bears are everywhere.

Alaska is NOT the frozen glacial wonderland you picture in your head.

The Scenery along the highway in Canada is much prettier than that of Alaska.

Alaskas interior is surprisingly flat.

There are gas stations, resturaunts, and stores everywhere you need them to be...you are not as far from civilization as you think.

The Canadian news talks more about American news than Canadian news.

No matter how many people tell you....you do not need "The Milepost"......it was a waste of money and I managed just fine with my gps.

North Pole is a terrible place.....just picture the sappy greedy Christmas "spirit" in every store around Christmas.......and then it's all year. 

Super sport bikes CAN go in the dirt!

The speed limits in Canada are a lot lower than in the us.

The first time you see a speed limit of 100 kph you will get way more excited than you should.

The signpost forest in Watson Lake is GIGANTIC and very hard to take a picture of.

You will see more motorhomes, campers, and trailers than you will cars and trucks.

People in Canada travel their country a lot!

People in Canada seem to be collectively more relaxed than people in the US

The food on the ferry is not very expensive.

It's pretty much impossible to take pictures of whales.....stop trying and just enjoy the sight for yourself.

You won't get as close to a glacier as you might have thought you could.

Alaskas wildlife all moved to Canada.

Singing "on the road again" after every single fuel stop NEVER gets old.

Washington is not just rain and forests......it also has flat plains....and rain.

Never ever ever forget to bring headphones on a ferry

Don't always trust the locals at the gas station on diner advice.....or any other advice for that matter.

 When you first get in to alaska you will meet Walter an official ambassador...and he will give you all kinds of information about alaska....and it will all be wrong.....and then he will ask you for two dollars.

It will always rain.....always

Day eighteen.....time to ride again

My goodness...I'm ready to get back on the motorcycle. The ferry has been fun and I'm glad that I've had the experience.....but I don't think I'll do it again unless I really need to.

We arrived in Bellingham at 9:00 am and guess what.......

Go on....just guess.....

It was raining.....again. Seriously the pattern of this whole trip has been to rain whenever we ride and then be sunny on our days off. 

We did a quick ride down to Seattle and visited our good friend from highschool, Charles. I wish we had more time but we got to mess around for a while and meet his little family. We had just enough time to recreate some old pictures.......

Then after that we just rode all day. We had planned to stop in Spokane for the night but once we got there we decided to just go for it and finish up tonight. This is the last picture taken on the road.....

This has been a pretty amazing trip and there is so much more that can be said than I could ever put down in a blog.......I will have a recap tomorrow sometime but words will never be able to describe this adventure in its entirety........we went......we saw.......we clapped! 

4265.6 miles 17 days

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Day seventeen......people suck

Well it's pretty much same old same old here. Except that now the ferry has a bunch of stoner losers that are going to Washington. Their hobby is to stand around where all the families are and have loud conversations containing all their favorite swear words. Then they will go around and try to have the same conversations with strangers. Last night one of them decided that everyone needed to wake up at 3am so he went to the bathroom and slammed the metal stall doors for a few minutes. Then he got mad when the staff asked him to shut up. 

Other than that....the ferry is a nice change of pace after riding for two weeks. I'm not taking pictures anymore unless something amazing happens....it's just water and mountains......all the pictures look the same.

Day sixteen.......I'm on a booooat

Woke up this morning to fog so thick I couldn't see the deck outside. It got so foggy in the night that we had to drop anchor and wait it out. We were stopped from 3:00am to 7:00am.

Once the fog burned off a bit we got moving through the "narrows". That was interesting! I tried to get some pictures showing just how tight it was but it doesn't translate to pictures very well.

Here's some other pictures from today.......not much going on. We can't get off in wrangell either cause we are behind schedule. Looks like we will be in Ketchikan late tonight so probably won't get off there either..........more pictures!

Then I saw another eagle......those guys love having their picture taken.

Day fifteen.....ferries are pretty cool actually

The first thing I've noticed about the ferry is that the food is not nearly as expensive as people said it would be. It's actually the cheapest food that didn't come from a gas station I've eaten on the whole trip. And it's really good too! There isn't as much to do as on a cruise ship but there is a theater and a bar/resturaunt as well as the cafeteria.

Mostly the day is going to be spent walking around taking pictures. Just this morning I've seen an orcha and whole bunch of humpback whales. And last night I saw two dolphins. Of course I haven't gotten any pictures......it happens so fast there isn't enough time to zoom in and set up a picture. O well.

So this just happened

Me: what's the difference between a river and a crik?

Enrique: if you listen closely to a crik you can hear it whispering.....hey yall

That one made for a good laugh. Now we are getting off in Sitka for a few hours. 

Turns out we're not getting off in Sitka for a few hours. Another ferry took way too long in the port and we had to sit there circling while we waited....for two hours. So it took up all the time we would have had to spend in Sitka.......o well maybe next time. This is as far as we were able to go.....

Also we saw this in the parking lot.......

How old was this person? I'm surprised it doesn't say no doggy poopies

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and watching the occasional whale. 

There was a whole tree full of these.....appearantly the coast gaurd thought it would be funny. It was hilarious watching all the giant-camera-carrying old guys run outside as the captain announced that this strange flock of flamingos had migrated here for some strange reason.....while they were out snapping pictures with their $2000 cameras they missed the captain say....just kidding. Then when they all came back in they were showing off their great shots they took......and slowly realizing that they were plastic birds.......I loved it. I didn't even get out of my chair and took the picture through the window.....I'm not putting any more effort in to taking wildlife pictures.

And lastly.......I wanted to see if I could zoom in on the moon.....

No zoom

Yes....yes I can take a picture of the moon.

Day fourteen.....waiting....and waiting

Today was probably the most boring day of the whole trip. We had to wait around until 6:00pm before we could check in to the ferry.

We hung around our hotel until the very last second before we HAD to check out....so that got us to noon. Then we went to Main Street to walk around. Had some lunch and bought some fudge at a gift shop. Then we realized that "Main Street" was only one block long and we needed to come up with something else to do. 

Someone told us about Chilkoot Lake and that it was near the ferry terminal. We went out there and spent as much time as we could but eventually the mosquitos were too much. That was a beautiful place though! It was just a few miles up the valley that is the bay the ferry comes in. And the lake empties into the bay. Here are some pictures

We made one last trip back to town and fueled up and decided to head to the ferry.....it was only 5:00 but we didn't know what else to do. We got there and checked in and were surprisingly not the first people there. But we did get to go to the front of the line cause bikes go on first. So there we sat...and waited some more. 

BUT! While we waited a bald eagle landed on a lamp post near us and just sat there for almost an hour and posed for me.....so I took a ton of pictures. 

And lastly....just cause I want to show off what my camera can do......here is the view of the where the eagle was only zoomed in 4x...

Then our ferry showed up! Yaaaay!

So it turns out that motorcycles dot NOT get on the ferry first.......and also it takes a very long time to load a ferry.....it was 7:30 before we finally loaded. O well.....were here now. We strapped our bikes down and headed up to claim a spot. Then I went outside and snapped these.....