Day 10...We're coming to America.....Hello Tok, Alaska!

Day 10…Whitehorse, YT to Tok, Alaska…We are back in AMERICA!!

Home sweet home, the land of the red, white, and blue, WE ARE BACK IN THE UNITE STATES OF AMERICA!  Once again, I am writing from beside a campfire, now in Tok, Alaska.

This photo was taken by Dan.  It's myself, Rick, and our new friend Sergio.  Sergio has been riding this Yamaha 125cc....YES, REALLY...all the way from Brazil since April. 

Today started out in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, waking up in our comfy hotel room.  I am not sure how detailed Dan will be in his entry of Day 9, so I will add that we were pretty happy to roll into our nice, clean, hotel room and take a nice hot shower before walking over to Klondike Rib and Salmon for some kick-ass dinner and Yukon Brewing Co. beer.  Our waitress, Talula is a local of the YT and has some priceless advice for traveling the YT.  I know I have said this before, but we love meeting new people and hearing about their lives and experiences. She has some great recommendations for the boys when they get to Dawson City, and for how to not get eaten by a grizzly bear! I digress….after waking up and getting our crap together for the 10^th morning in a row and packing up the motorcycles, we headed down the street to Tim Horton’s for some breakfast.  Tim Horton’s is the Canadian version of Dunkin Donuts….YES!!! After some coffee and donuts, Dan attempted to score a new rear tire for his bike to no avail.  So we said a little prayer to the tire gods and took off for Alaska. 

The scenery today was again….you guessed it….AMAZING! I need to put the thesaurus to use so that I can learn some synonyms for amazing.  Anyways…we spent a lot of hours gazing at some seriously lush forests that made their ways up a chain of really tall mountains.  Today was one of those days that we each were taken aback by the shear beauty of the surroundings that we have been so lucky to experience.  I know it’s not the beaches of Costa Rica, but I am feeling so fortunate to be piled on the back of this Ducati, behind the guy that I love, swatting at mosquitos while taking this trip of a lifetime!! Ok….enough of the sappy business…sorry Dan!

These blue waters of the lakes in Destruction Bay can rival the Caribbean! 

 Miles and miles of gorgeous mountain ranges

 Mama bear and her three baby cubs! 

 Some of the road construction that we encountered today

 AMERICA!! 

Our frist breath-taking moment from Alaska! These mountains seemed as if they were erupting with big fluffy white clouds. 

We had some rough and bumpy roads to navigate today as we made our way towards the American border.  Talula told us last night that these roads often get repaved due to the potholes caused by the permafrost.  While the roads are waiting to be repaved, they are either ridden with potholes or a hard packed gravel.  So this makes for an interesting ride for Dan and Rick, and a roller coaster day for me.  I just held on tight and enjoyed my 5^th audio book.  Come to think of it, I think that I have spent as much money on audiobooks as Dan has spent on gas.  Highlight of the ride today was a mama black bear with three of her baby cubs as they crossed the highway.  We kept our distance as we watched the sweet clumsy cubs fall over each other as they trailed behind their mama.

After smoothly crossing the border, we made our way into Tok, grabbed some booze and groceries, and made our ways to the coolest campground ever! Tonight we are staying at Thompson’s Eagle Claw Campground.  This campground, run by Vanessa, is curtailed to motorcycle riders and all of our needs.  There are tent sites, wooden cabins, and even an old ambulance outfitted as a bunk to sleep in. Vanessa has equipped this campground into a summer camp for motorcycle enthusiasts with communal fire pits, horseshoes, a sauna, a motorcycle shop, and a community kitchen stocked with a propane burner to heat water.  Tonight we will stay in a 4-bunk cabin with an old minivan bench seat that serves as a sofa.  As I write this, Vanessa is hanging out with us around the fire telling us tails of the campground and how it came to be. I would HIGHLY recommend staying here if you ever find yourselves passing through, and say hello to Vanessa. Dan and rick are planning to return to Thompson's on their way back through the area on the way to Dust to Dawson Motorcycle Rally, along with 50 other reservations thus far...Vanessa won't turn away a rider, and says she will take $5.00 per tent as long as there is property for tents to be pitched!! 

Tomorrow we make our way into Anchorage! 

Day 9, Welcome to the Yukon Territory bro!

Yeah, i'm baccckkkk.  The bear is sleeping, and you know what they say about poking a sleeping bear!  So let's get rockin where she left off.

Day 9 was from Dease Lake to Whitehorse, 410 miles.  We crossed over into the Yukon Territory finally, out of B.C.  I would love to tell you it was eventful, but it was fairly uneventful.  More Rain, more middle of nowhere.  Here's the map from our route yesterday.  

 First off, it has been raining the past 2 days.  Not awful, but pretty consistant and it's pretty wet.

(**I'm now getting back to this 2 days later because i fell asleep half way through this blog entry)

During the ride, Rick kept mentioning "Jade".   After hearing him talk about Jade for a few days, I finally asked him who the hell Jade was?  If she lived in the middle nowhere in B.C., I knew she was deffinatly a mountain woman.  Turns out, Jade is actually a stone that is found 20 miles south of Jade City in B.C.  This "City" has a population of about 20 people, all who basically work in Jade City.  We ventured in, looked at some cool stones, talked to the girls inside and picked up a few small things.  Turns out, they are currently filming a reality show about Jade City and the production of Jade stones.  Great, can't wait until Amandas TV schedule consists of Real Housewives, Buying Alaska, Greys Anatomy, Nashville, HGTV, and Jade TV.

Quite a few miles down then road, when we hit the Yukon, we were super stoked!  Do you know what the Yukon actually is?  I doubt it. Let me tell you.

Yukon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the Canadian territory. For other uses, see Yukon (disambiguation).

Yukon (formerly Yukon Territory)
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: No official motto
BC AB SK MB ON QC NB PE NS NL YT NT NU
Capital	Whitehorse
Largest city	Whitehorse
Largest metro	Whitehorse
Official languages	English, French
Demonym	Yukoner
Government
Type
Commissioner	Doug Phillips
Premier	Darrell Pasloski (Y)
Legislature	Yukon Legislative Assembly
Federal representation	(in Canadian Parliament)
House seats	1 of 308 (0.3%)
Senate seats	1 of 105 (1%)
Confederation	June 13, 1898 (9th)
Area	Ranked 9th
Total	482,443 km2(186,272 sq mi)
Land	474,391 km2(183,163 sq mi)
Water (%)	8,052 km2 (3,109 sq mi) (1.7%)
Proportion of Canada	4.8% of 9,984,670 km2
Population	Ranked 12th
Total (2011)	33,897 [1]
Density (2011)	0.07 /km2 (0.18 /sq mi)
GDP	Ranked 12th
Total (2011)	C$2.660 billion[2]
Per capita	C$75,141 (3rd)
Abbreviations
Postal	YT
ISO 3166-2	CA-YT
Time zone	UTC-8
Postal code prefix	Y
Flower	Fireweed
Tree	Subalpine Fir
Bird	Common Raven
Website	www.gov.yk.ca
Rankings include all provinces and territories

Yukon^[3] /ˈjuːkɒn/ is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. Although it has the smallest land mass, Yukon has the largest population out of the three territories.Whitehorse is the territorial capital.

There you have it!  You didn't think I was actually going to type all that out did you?  Amanda probably would have...

So in my terminology, the Yukon is in the middle of NOWHERE on the way to Alaska.  We hit this cool place called the Sign Post Forest.  What is that you ask?  Let me give you the Wikipedia definition!  Actually screw that, let me just show you some kick ass pictures that we took!

It's seriously been a long week of miles....And for some reason I'm always the first awake every AM.

We promised Arun at Motocorsa in Portland we would show off the cool shirts that A.J. hooked us up with.  Rick never promised to do the Robot, but he sure did anyway.  Nice moves Rick, nice ass Amanda and nice belly shirt to me!

The first half of today was a lot of twisty, tight and wet roads through the middle of nowhere.  The second half was more highway, 120mph straight aways (which I never went above the speed limit on). We rolled into Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory and went over to this place to eat called Klondike.  I think amanda will tell you about this in a later post.  So finally we ran into some issues.  The issue being my rear tire.  It was losing tread and losing tread fast.  I needed a real tire, now.  Take a look at the picture.  This was from the day prior to this ride.  It's totally squared off and off to the left, I had no tread, it was actually concave.  It may look like it has tread in the picture, but it doesn't.  Sure makes it hard to turn.  The bike doesn't like to ride on that nub, but we have no choice for now.

When we got to Whitehorse, the tire had absolutely no tread left to be seen, almost like a racing slick.  I didn't take any more pictures, because I was afraid to look at it and I didn't want to think about it.  I knew my only real chance to get a tire was the Ducati Shop in Anchorage.  

Here's some other pictures from the day.