Our road later in the day.

Let's start the day with a self-portrait from Rancheria, Yukon. Whaddya say?

Woke up in the rain in Rancheria.  We thought we’d be in for a long ride, but it cleared up as we exited the Alaskan Highway for the last time and started making our way south on the Cassier Highway, Hwy 37.  Wow.  What can I say?  The riding was spectacular once again, and the last 20 miles before Hyder, Alaska, might have been the best riding of the trip.  Seriously.  It was spectacular.  We’d heard it would be great, but we were not prepared.

A 1968ish BSA and a 1936 Indian. Sweet.

The entire Cassier was carless and remote without a straight stretch on it.  We’ve almost become numb to breathtaking scenery and incredible riding.  But the last twenty miles were beyond description.  I’d like to try and describe it, but I’d just be wasting both of our time.  The craggly rocks made way for lush, almost jungle-like, green coverage before falling off into a bluegreen lake or river.  And the glacier was spectacular.  When I was here 15 years ago, the entire width of the glacier was entering the water.  Much higher now…

Our road approaching Hyder.

We're almost to Hyder! I can almost taste the grain alcohol!

The scale of these views is awesome.

The green was sort of shocking at this latitude.

Glaciers are cool - especially in the setting almost Alaska summer sun.

What did I just say about glaciers? Rad.

Shots always look better with a bike in them.

Even better with TWO bikes!

"Can you believe this?"

Taken from a bridge close to Hyder.

Liked the view so much, I put it in twice.

Welcome to Hyder! And welcome back to Alaska. End of the road.

We saw about 15 bears, porcupine, a fox, eagles, etc, etc, etc.  No matter how many bears I see, I still get a charge when slowing down and idling 20 feet away from a black bear.  So incredible.

Pulling into Hyder from Canada, and the pavement ends yielding to dirt roads throughout the “town.”  The town has a bunch of homes, two hotels, two bars (that we could find), and that’s about it.  A couple other stores a scattered here and there.  Most of the traffic is for bear watching and fishing.

Not glamorous this travel we're on. But it's clean, and cheap.

After checking into our glamorous “sleeping rooms” (which were actually perfect – stay at the Analaska when in Hyder! AsK for Chantal), we had to jump back into Canada for a quick dinner before heading back into Hyder for what we were planning to be a mild night.  That didn’t exactly pan out…

Our hotel and bar for the night.

First step – get Hyderized.  Yes, this is a tradition in Hyder.  That would be a shot of grain alcohol. Delicious.  When your after dinner drink is a shot of 100% grain alcohol, you know you might be in for an interesting night.

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds.  It really has no taste, so it’s  just a bit of a burning sensation as it goes down.  I won’t say that it’s pleasant, but it’s also not too bad.  And then the dregs of the glass are lit on fire.  Not too pleasant to think you’ve just drunk something so flammable.   Check us out:

Vance, Eric, Brad, Kate. Post Hyderization. Pre-hootenanny.

As we filmed our Hyderization, we met Vance and Kate when Kate so kindly volunteered to become our camera woman.  Be warned – it is apparently VERY dangerous to meet two roadtrippers from Atlanta when you’re getting Hyderized in Alaska.  I’m not sure who was at fault here (surely not us), but we stayed at the Analaska bar for way longer than planned and then managed to find something to do till 3am.  We even talked Vance and Kate into getting Hyderized – Kate may still be swearing at us, but I think we have as much to blame them for.

Check out the hootenanny. I can sel-portrait anywhere. It's a skill you're born with or not.

Yea!

All is right in this remote corner of the universe.

All smiles, laughs, and song.

After Chantal kicked us out of the Analaska, we decided it would be good to walk out into the middle of the dirt intersection and play music.  Well, Vance played the guitar and Kate played the fiddle while Brad and I made the wise decision to open another bottle of wine.  It was a spectacular moment.  The clear sky was full of stars  and was scarred by trails from shooting stars while we enjoyed the full-on hootenanny.  This pitch black corner of the universe was one of our many trip highlights.  Thanks guys.

Thanks Chantal!

Side note on the Analaska.  Chantal was great to us.  She kept the bar open (way later than we needed) and told stories about life in Alaska and her husband’s job as a driller in the remote corners of the north.  It’s a totally different kind of life up here.  When she makes her husband’s meals in metal containers that he can put next to the drill to heat up, it’s cheaper for her to jump on a plane and deliver them than any other way to get them there.  Awesome.

Tomorrow is going to be rough…

We made it to “S” today: