TravellingStrom

Monday – Moose Pass, Alaska

Just a quick insert note here, I am in a position where I have access to a normal PC. The PC is setup with Firefox and is a normal aspect ratio screen. The pictures I am posting are showing fine and away from the right hand edge, in fact after seeing that I may even increase the size again back to what they were, as there is a 2cm gap there. Those who see cropped images, go into your desktop settings and check your screen size, this site is best viewed in 1024×1128, those with widescreens will see it with no issues

Well, we had another lazy lay in. Well, I did, I never got woken by cramps, but I could feel the muscles tighten every time I moved when I woke up during the night, so I had broken sleep. Never mind, after some late breakfast we packed up and headed off late morning. We only had a short distance to travel as we were going to hit the mail box in Anchorage then head to Seward and probably stay over. It is strange how things turn out eh, because everything went different to the way we had imagined, that is why I don’t make too many plans, go with the flow 🙂 First off we headed south, now I took this photo because really, after all the smoke I had seen over the past two weeks, this is the only fire and it was a controlled land clearance burn off.

So we headed south and after a short time we arrived in Anchorage, it is only 40 miles from Wasilla, first stop was some lunch at a Wendy’s, just because it was there and so were we 🙂

After lunch we stopped at a car repairer to ask the way to the Harley shop as that was where we could get free camping. But, then I changed our minds as we had already decided we were going to Seward, so asked instead the way to Alaskaleather They are the dealers for Gerbing heated clothes and we had heard that the owner Barb, was a very nice person and could help us out. Specifically, the heated pants I bought from the Harley shop in Saskatoon did not seem to be working, also Simon wanted to buy a pair of them if they had some. So, we had an address and the GPS, via some flukey and weird back roads got us to the shop 🙄

Once there we met Barb who straight away wanted to help us, in fact right away she said, here is another pair and a new controller type thing, I will send those faulty ones away for repair! In the end we spent 2 hours here, trying various combinations of different gear to find out what was and what wasn’t working. The end result? Well, my pair of pants worked, but not well enough via the vest connector to be useful, so I bought a Y connector and plugged them direct to power, success 🙂 Now, the only new pants in the shop were small, my pair were medium(which was all the Harley shop had at the time), now as they worked and fitted Simon, he took them and bought the small pair which I took from him and they fitted me better. 😛 Success all around, although I still have an issue with why they won’t work properly from the jacket connector. I am going through Washington state soon, I will drop into Gerbing and find out an answer there 8) Thanks you very much to Barb and staff, they went out of their way to help us travellers out. They also had the Nolan helmet visor, pinlock and sunscreen I needed to replace my scratched and useless ones, so now I could see again 🙂

We then headed to the post office to pick up my mail, but the line was so long with only one person working that it looked like it would take forever, so I said forget it we can do that on the way back through. So we headed south and followed the coastline, the tide was out by the looks, we found out later it is one of the largest tides in the US, about 35ft.

Onwards and the mountains started to appear, some nice picturesque views and the roads were excellent, not much traffic, no idiot drivers, no sky diving moose, I fail to see the concerns about this road, although I did see a large amount of skid marks and quite a few death markers 😕

Late in the evening we arrived at Seward with the clouds below the mountain tops. This was a nice little harbour village and was a total tourist trap as we found out trying to find some lodging 😯

So, after some Chinese tucker we decided to head back north as we had seen some signs for rooms at a lot less than what they start at here, $130 for a basic fold out bed and nothing else 😮 So we found a place called Moose Pass where we asked the question, well the room was still not cheap, but at least a 1/3 cheaper than Seward, so as it was now nearly 9pm, we took it. Camping did enter our minds, but it was freezing outside, so it did not enter for long!

The views around here were brilliant, the weather was tops and across the road was a float plane dock and they had flights for $50 each, so we decided we would check them out in the morning, maybe go for a ride 🙂

Of course we had a beer or 3 while looking at the map to see where to go next. I had also been given by Art, another contact a bit further up north in Trapper Creek, they had been advised we may be dropping through but we had gone past the other day as we wanted to go to Talkeetna. I phoned Joe and he said come on up and there would be a place to stay, so that was tomorrow night sorted out, great stuff. I prefer to know where I am sleeping late afternoon, not 9pm at night, it makes the evening more enjoyable knowing where you are going to crash.

Our time together would be drawing to a close soon as Simon wanted to go to Chicken and Dawson City while I would be heading east and south, but not for a few days yet. For those that know me, they know I am a solo rider preferably, but Simon and my riding styles are similar, we both enjoy stopping for photos and ride a fair way apart, but we also ride at a similar speed on the pavement and the dirt, so we are not holding each other up in any way. Except me that is, I stop all the time for a leak as I am constantly drinking water 😉 Simon has that one worked out as well, as soon as he sees me reaching for my fly, he is gone and I have to catch up later 😆

There was a stuffed bear in the bar, a small one though and a map with location pins in it, I was surprised to see a pin already in Rockhampton, but as it turns out Simon was just stirring and put it in for me, hahaha 🙂

We managed to find a weak signal for WiFi and I tried to get mail, this was bad timing as Des had sent out 4 emails with attachments which hogged the bandwidth for ages, I had no idea what was going on until the first one finally downloaded, but I had to leave it on as it was one of 11, so I knew I had others I needed to view as well. It was a late evening by the time we had showers and settled in, the weather for tomorrow was according to the locals excellent, but the weather page said overcast. We had seen some photos of bears catching salmon in the lakes and we hoped to do that by float plane tomorrow.

Day 216 miles and 348 km
Trip – 29,953 miles and 48,205 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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