Uraling in Alaska - Day 49: Haines Junction, YT to Haines, AK

Shortly before 10:00 AM, Valencia and I motored away from Haines Junction.  Deb and Gary would not be far behind me.

A couple of  pictures of  Haines Junction from last evening.

Mount Martha Black, today.

Mount Martha Black back on April 21

I didn't make much fast progress away from town, the scenery starts almost immediately and demands that one stop and take pictures.

 Looking back towards Haines Junction

 Note the swirl patterns made by the snow that remains unmelted

I made a brief stop at Lake Kathleen, nice spot for picnics, one is surrounded by mountain peaks and the lake itself is quite nice.

 Near Lake Kathleen on the Haines Highway

Lake Kathleen

Following are shots of mountain views taken while still cruising through the Yukon Territory portion of the Haines Highway,  I remember thinking how nice and pretty things were....that it couldn't get much better....how wrong I was.

The scenery got even more awesome as I crossed into British Columbia.  The road though, which had been mostly smooth as glass from Haines, turned into standard bumpy Canadian/Alaskan chip seal road.

 Things also got more snow-covered as Valencia and I approached the 

Haines Highway Summit

 My favorite mountains of today's ride.

 The mountain is located next to the Three Guardsmen Lake

Looking south at more mountains.

The mountain scenery kind of ended just before we reached the US/Canadian border.  Once we were through customs, the view was of forested highway and the Chilkat River.  I elected to stop at the Chilkat Eagle Preserve's first turnout parking lot to shed some layers.  Minutes later, Deb and Gary showed up as well and we made rendezvous.

The warm temperatures were something Bob and Deb were not used to,

being Anchorage residents and all. 

Break over, we headed in for the last 24 miles or so to Haines.  We arrived and after tanking up, cruised through town in search of a wifi spot.  We finally went to the town's visitor center and were pointed at the "Bamboo Room" as the only place probably open for meals with wifi.

The Bamboo Room turned out to have great burgers/food and fast wifi, which is what I am using to do this posting.  Deb and Gary went for a walk while I worked on this posting.

The ferry doesn't allow boarding until around 11:15 PM I think, so we have time to kill. We'll probably explore the vicinity of the Hammer Museum, and then just hang out at a nearby state park close to the Ferry Terminal.

Hope you liked the pictures, I'd stack up the mountain scenery along the Haines Highway against any other the scenery of any other highway I've ridden in my life.  It's definitely a road that should be on any motorcyclist's bucket list.

No wifi on the ferry so probably no postings from me for the next few days.  The ferry arrives in Bellingham, WA Friday morning of this week so that's when postings will resume I guess.  Y'all can still track me via the spotme/spotwall links located at the upper right corner of the blog of course.

Here's pictures of my tires, not much left.  I thought I'd be cutting it kind of close, but you can see I had plenty to get me to Haines, and once in the lower 48, to Everett where new tires await me.

 Front Tire (16,463 km and counting - 9877 miles)

 Sidecar Tire (18,159 km and counting - 10,895 miles)

The "new" pusher, with perhaps 2000 km on it, probably a bit less.

Valencia's gone over 14,100 kilometers (8640 miles) since we left Centennial

for Flagstaff, Arizona....seemingly a long time ago.