Cycling Across Eastern Alaska World Bicycle Touring Episode 48

Weird. We are back on the highway headed out of Denali. We've got about 30 miles on this before we head off on a side road. We are arriving in the tiny town of Cantwell. I'm going to stop at the gas station here and hopefully get some snacks for the next five days or so. We've got another long food carry as we ride the Denali highway. How's your headwind day chili cheese corn dog? It's like the best thing I've ever eaten. Next services aren't even at that packs in place in 135 miles. We've got to go much further than that. It's like telling you 135 miles to a ghost town. Alaska is pretty wild. We managed to get a haul of junk food from the gas station in Cantwell. Just a bunch of snickers and pop tarts and other junk. We've now turned off of the parks highway onto the old Denali highway. We're gonna head towards Canada this way. I think it's be about five days before we have the chance to get more food. So kind of the the norm for Alaska it seems like. Long food carries. We're having a really nice evening. It's like 10 o'clock and we've gotten passed by like a handful of cars. Just really loving on Alaska. This is awesome. We had a really nice view of the mountains at this campsite last night but now it's all clouds and rain. Hopefully the rain stops soon. Riding in rain pants is not fun. But hey at least the mosquitoes are not too bad right now. They're actually kind of bad. Jenny what's that? What's that? Yeah they are. Yeah I guess they are kind of fun. Watching me fumble my...oh it's so hard to do it this direction. It's kind of been drizzling for most of the day but there's a nice BLM picnic area for us. It does add protection for mosquitoes though. Well for the third day in a row we've avoided cooking our own food. We've had lasagna at the well. We came in at about nine and the kitchen had closed at seven but they still made us some food so that's awesome. It was very good lasagna. Much better than the pasta sides we would have had instead. So I'm very grateful. Last night we lived off corn dogs and hot dogs and the night before we lived off gas station burritos. So three nights of not cooking. It's almost like we're in Japan again. It's past 10 o'clock and we've done over 50 miles today. The all day sunlight really makes it easy to pedal pretty late into the day. We found ourselves having like a 1 p.m till 10 p.m cycling time but the kind of pseudo sunset lighting that you get around this time is is very pleasant. Oh and it's raining again. Middle of nowhere Alaska and a 20 million dollar fighter jet goes right over your head. it's the McLaren river lodge and a nice break in the wilderness for some food. Last day on the Denali highway getting ready to leave camp. Packing up all our food. Doing some bike maintenance for the first time in Alaska. How's it going Jenny? It's going pretty good. Chains were pretty dusty. We haven't cleaned them in a long time but all's well other than that. 20,000 plus miles and the bikes are still holding up. We're now off of the Denali highway headed down towards the toke cutoff. We are descending into the flattest area we've seen in a very long time. Very spruce forested lakes kind of situation. Looks like it's going to be very buggy. It's a big deal in Alaska when you change roads. We're now headed to the toke. 120 miles until we can get groceries then on to Canada. Well it's about 10 30 at night. We've gone 74 miles. We just ran into an Italian cyclist heading in the opposite direction. Also looking for a place to camp. It seems like or maybe I don't know. We couldn't really tell what was going on with him. Also like slightly deranged by riding for a very long time in the Alaskan wilderness I think. Yeah there's like posted no trespassing signs everywhere for the past many miles. It's kind of strange. We didn't expect it in Alaska again. All of the places we look to wild camp have very prominent no trespassing signs so I'm just going to keep riding until we fall over. Right Jenny? Yeah keep riding. Until we fall over. We're on the toke cutoff now. It's kind of a green tunnel but then occasionally you get these incredible views of I think it's Mount Wrangell. It's so massive and prominent that it almost looks like kind of a matte painting on the background. We're really lucky to have completely clear skies too. I guess this is what functions as an airport in rural Alaska. We kind of freaked out to land there but probably perfectly safe. This swarm of flies is literally just circling me like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. They don't even land on me they just fly all around my head. It's really bizarre and very annoying. We were camping in the woods behind the helicopter there and they started ferrying firefighters in somewhere so the helicopter was just coming and landing in the parking lot over and over again. We didn't quite know what was going on. We guessed it was a helicopter but it's an interesting thing to wake up to. Okay so Jenny and I were rolling into the town of toke and we saw something advertised as costing only $49 for a night. It was a wood stove cabin and we thought it meant it was like a wood cabin with a stove but no it's it's literally like a cabin made out of a wood stove or like a big steel container that we're gonna like sleep in. It's kind of strange. It's like that submersible that just exploded imploded. Weird. Oops. Headed out of toke on a cold and windy day. Luckily the wind is straight behind us. We had a nice stay in our weird uh stove thing last night and now we are headed to Canada. Should be there probably tomorrow. Going past Fast Eddie's, the only restaurant in town. Packed as usual. Toke is uh kind of just a collection of campgrounds and cabins and motels, one grocery store, a couple gas stations. It's very spread out and takes a long time to walk anywhere but uh there is a very nice bike path so yeah I don't know. It's a strange little place. I thought I was gonna hate it but I actually kind of liked it. What is the capital of Canada? Jenny? Jenny doesn't know the capital of Canada. It's Ottawa. Maybe? I don't know. We are leaving the free campground we stayed at last night. It was a really nice little spot on a lake. It was super rainy this morning so we're getting a very late start but we're still going to try to make it across the Canadian border. I think we'll have to go through some pretty heavy construction we've been hearing about so we might have to ride in a pilot car again. So we will see how that goes and then hopefully be in Canada by tonight. We're riding the last few miles in Alaska. The border station is just ahead. It's a very wet, foggy, kind of cold day. Kind of a sad uh end to our Alaska ride but it was spectacular and we're very excited to see Canada for the first time in Jenny's case. We're in Canada! Well we've officially crossed over into Canada. About 1,500 miles or so of riding before we get back into the United States. Yeah hopefully we can see some cool stuff in Canada.