Tok is where I spent my first night in Alaska and it is where I am spending my last night here. Not forever as I will be back, as soon as next year I hope. I want to come back here and do my float plane rating and then spend some time exploring this fantastic area from the air. Landing on the remote lakes, fishing  and camping out.

This morning we left Valdez around 10h00 which is an hour later than usual. The primary reason for this is to allow the morning fog, which runs in over the bay to lift, otherwise we will be riding in a cold pea soup. Never much fun and unsafe.

I have a bigger pack than at any time in the past week as I am saying farewell to the Group today. I will do the first bit of the ride back to Glenallen with them, but then will break off to Tok rather than going back to Anchorage and retracing my steps over this route for the fourth time.

On the way to Valdez yesterday we have detoured to a small town called Chitina. This is on the Copper River, which in turn is home to the finest salmon in Alaska, the Copper River CoHo. We have lunch at the Chitina Hotel. The food is excellent but the service appalling. Non existent in fact. It is as if the waitress is in a time warp. we are here today and she is going to become energised tomorrow. After lunch we ride down to the river. Here they catch the Salmon using a fish wheel. This is an ancient design of a machine that has nets attached to a wheel, which in turn is driven by the flow of the water and catches fish that venture into it and then dumps them in an under water cage.

Fish wheel trap in the Copper River

On the way out of Chitina I stop at the post office and post the obligatory post cards to my now favourite grandchildren. I gather their mother is sulking because she has not got any postcards, so I address them c/o her to make her feel more wanted.

Chitina Post Office Alaska. Post card on the way to SA

Then on to Valdez. This is about 120 miles away. On the way we stop at the Worthington Glacier. This is part of the Wrangell St Elias National Park, which in turn is a vast park home to more glaciers than any other place on the planet.

A few quick facts about Glaciers

• Glaciers are formed out of snow, when more snow falls than melts.
• The snow packs layer upon layer.
• The weight of the snow changes the crystalline structure of the lower layers turning it into ice.
• This weight of this ice causes the whole mass to move downward into the valley below.
• The top ice moves faster than the ice close to the ground.
• The mass of ice takes everything with it including large boulders and destroys the vegetation.
• Glaciers grow and shrink over time and in relationship to the earths temperature.
• They play a significant role in the global warming cycle due to their relatively low absorption rate of UV which keeps the area around them cooler than those areas that are covered in rock or vegetation.

We are able to get within meters of the base of the glacier and it is very dirty with fresh water seeping out of every bit of it.

The Bottom of the Glacier

I love the ride in both directions and then also between Glenallen and Tok today after I leave the group. Every 20 to 30 miles there is a patch of gravel. Yesterday this was very tricky riding due to the rain. This has made it very slippery and technique is everything. We are riding fast and hard. My girls like it like this, hard and fast that is. Not always but from time to time to break the routine. It is key critical, as every woman will tell you, to get the angle of attack (In flying terms, for all you heathens this is the entry angle) absolutely right, because if you have a miss entry into the slippery stuff, all hell breaks loose. You have a bucking and very unhappy girl underneath you. Chances are that your ride will come to an end faster than planned. But, get it right and pure pleasure awaits you. Given the speeds involved and the state of the patch, the standing position is essential for a firm footing and a low center of gravity to get the maximum leverage.

Yesterday and today I get it right. However there is a price. The constant action is playing hell on my back and I will have to be very careful for the rest of the trip. I have taken some anti inflammatory tablets for the first time this trip. I also think that the seven weeks of constant riding are getting to my body. Not to my mind, I am up and ready to go every morning. Nothing has changed, the morning is my time of the day.

Just before entering Valdez we turn off for an area called the Fishery. This is a small creek into which salmon swim in trying to get upstream to the place of their birth, to spawn and die. In this creek they die earlier than planned as the bears are here, waiting for them. We watch a mother Brown Bear and her four cubs (this is an unusually large number of cubs for one mother, so their may be another female close by) gorging themselves.

Eat little boy. You need to get big. Its a hard world out there and in your life their are no social support services

This is a scene of epic tragedy which is reinforced when we revisit this morning and watch one of the cubs feeding. The salmon have chosen the wrong stream. Not because  of the bears, but because this stream goes nowhere. About 50 meters off the sea the stream runs out into a huge waterfall that not even these salmon can get up. The water in the stream is also only inches deep and cannot possibly allow them passage. They can hardly swim. These salmon were reared in hatchery up river and were able to swim down. Their instinct drives them back in a fruitless sex driven desire to reach their birth grounds upstream.

The young cub is like a cat. Pouncing on the moving fish. It catches a big salmon and brings it out, flapping in its mouth. It squeezes the roe out of the fishes stomach and then leaves it helpless and flapping around, for the gulls to peck at it. Finally it dies. Then the next fish comes out and then another. It is endless, for now. Shortly the run will stop and winter will be here. The bear and the gulls will go into survival mode.

I cannot help but think that this is natural selection working as it was meant to be. These fish have made a mistake in coming to this creek. Their counterparts have chosen the Copper River or the Yukon and get all the way to Chitina or Teslin, where I will brave the metal bridge again on Monday. They spawn and give birth to the next generation of healthy wild salmon bearing the genes of the toughest and smartest.

I compare this with what we are doing as humans. we continue to support the weak and stupid. This is going to backfire on us. Ultimately these weak and stupid end up with the vote and continue to back the Mugabe’s and Malema’s of the world. I saw the following words on the wall in a hamburger joint , The Alaskan Road Runner, in Anchorage.

From Bondage to Bondage. I cannot turn the image so you will have to crane your neck

This is of course where we are going and I have long maintained that in Africa it suits the ruling elite to have a large, poor and uneducated majority as these are the only people who will continue to keep the corrupt elite in power. No one ultimately protects fools from themselves.

Last night in Valdez, dinner took and interesting turn. Larry, the smallest guy in the group, suddenly disappeared as the main course was served. We did not know what had happened to him until Brendan the tour leader returned in stitches of laughter. Larry was apparently unhappy with his main course. I am not surprised. It looked like someone had regurgitated his halibut into a pink fruit bowl. He indicated his displeasure to the restaurant manageress, who in turn looked like the other half of the main course. This interchange became quite heated and the police were called. Before they could arrive, the chef got there. The manageress was his wife and it appeared that Larry had told her she looked like like the food offering. When Brendan arrived the chef, who was big and now like a wild grizzly, ready to defend his wife’s honour, had Larry by the throat and in the air. Larry was not giving up. 68 and feisty, he was kicking and screaming and trying to hit the chef, but being only about 5’4″ he could not make contact.

Anyhow Brendan restored the situation to normal by agreeing to pay Larry’s bill and Larry had to agree not to set foot in the restaurant during his stay. On his way out he recommended that the manageress get a face job which nearly set off the war again. Fortunately the cops were on hand or I suspect Larry would have been in with the pickled halibut he did not like. This morning, when I went out to load my bike, Larry was pacing around outside clearly very unhappy with events.

My food was outstanding. Like the bears I have stuck to Salmon. The salmon here is the best I have ever eaten. By law, no farmed salmon can be grown or served in Alaska. This suits me. I do not eat chicken nor do I eat farmed salmon. There are five major salmon species and the ones to eat are the Kings, the CoHo, the Sockeyes. Here they feed the Pinks and the Springs to their animals. You and I would be delighted to eat them.

This evening on arrival at Young’s Motel in Tok I saw that the special at their restaurant, Fast Eddy, was Copper River Sockeye salmon and salads. I was not hungry having eaten enough over the past few days. A lot of the weight I lost during the past eight weeks will come back after eating every meal with the gang during the past week. But the opportunity to eat this fresh salmon once again was too much to pass up.

Tomorrow, provided it is not pouring with rain, I will ride the Elliot Highway to Chicken and from the their the Road to the Top of the World to Dawson City. This is a very tough ride and Bonnie is heavy, I think we are up to it. I am now the first 300 miles into the 3800 miles it will take me to get back to Michigan.

I want to knock this off in under 12 days so there will not be much time for writing this blog.

Good Night and Good Luck from Tok Alaska.

Copyright 2012.