Now we are really out in the sticks

Friday September 11^th

Talkeetna to Glenn Highway N61.93795 W147.17351 307.0 km

Cumulative distance: 1807 km

Maximum speed: 112 km/h

Average speed: 69 km/h

Elevation: 1018 m

Editor's note: I'm getting heat to wrap this up tonight. So, pictures are not really in order or in context. Plus, once again, we are on "virtual internet service".

I can never scribe that date without thinking about the history.

It is raining this morning and pretty hard so we bail on the air tour. In fact, we had thought about a riverboat tour as an alternative but that would have meant being cold AND wet aside from which, the departure time was 8:45 a.m.  so we bailed on that, too.  And since it looks like rain for the rest of our lives, we bailed on the Fairbanks route in favour of the shorter but reverse course way back to Wasilla and then to cross across to Palmer with a side trip to the Independence Mine, an historical sight and recognized with a state park.

Our view outside the Eureka.

Our view inside the Eureka.

Nan's view inside the Eureka. Good thing it's a half portion!

Met an Italian guy riding this Translap from Argentina. He stopped in to the Eureka for coffee while we were having dinner. He had been on the road for 10 months.

This is the diner at the Eureka.

This is the bar. You can see a lot of dead things on the walls.

Matanuska Glacier

Up at Independence Mine, the road in over Hatcher Pass, which we were thankful to avoid.

These buildings are from Talkeetna.

Oddly enough, once we got going, the clouds started to lift and we actually had an hour or more with moderately blue skies.  We had breakfast back near Wasilla then, despite the clouds having moved in and starting to open up, made a side trip up a spectacular windy road up to the mine site. It is not much out of the way at all, as it turns out, and the landscape is rugged and beautiful. I continue to be amazed at the colours: dark green, light green, gold, yellow and red, and the red is frequently interchanged with pink or purple. We have hit the sweet spot for the colour change it seems.

Back on the highway and on the way to Tok, we make the amazing discovery that the Glenn Highway is yet another beautiful stretch of Alaska roadway. Colours, rivers, mountains and an added bonus of two glaciers on the route. The rain continues to be intermittent, at times heavy, at times non-existent but we are all in awe of the sheer beauty of the area.

The destination for the night is the Eureka Lodge, at the above noted coordinates and elevation. I included the elevation because, at the time I started today’s entry, it was 8:20 p.m. and the sky is clearing and it is 3 degrees. It will almost certainly freeze tonight, so I went out to wipe the water off the bike seats; Niels has a nice pool of water in his, which would have made for a pretty cold posterior until he got the ice off the seat.  I have never thought so much about a heated motorcycle seat as on this trip.

As we get closer to the Eureka, we notice that there are an increasing number of people with quads, cammo and camping gear. We hadn’t really thought about it being anything other than people out for a weekend of camping but realize, when we saw someone driving their quad down the highway with a rifle and scope in the rack that it is probably hunting season, as opposed to a self-defence statement.

The Eureka, now that is a place in a time warp. It has been open since 1936 and there are pictures on the wall to prove it. That menu from 1972 features a hamburger for one dollar. The restaurant is a diner, complete with stools at a counter and booths, and a milkshake “maker” (one of those things with the blade on the bottom that spins and breaks up the ice cream into the milk. 

The “lodge” part looks like an add-on, since it is not square to the diner, slopes one direction and has a different finish.  In fact, “add-on” would be flattering. It just goes to show that you can’t always trust Trip Advisor because clearly, all the people who have posted reviews are family of the owners.  It looks like it hasn’t been updated since it was built, the lino in the bathroom has numerous holes and bed spreads are, well, I just don’t know what to say about them. But it is clean enough so we can stay, beside, we are too tired to push on.

The restaurant turns out to be a real gem. Not exactly fine dining, it is pretty standard diner fare but the food is good and the portions generous.  Especially Nan’s “half portion” of ribs. The place is filled with hunters coming and going and one guy (not in camouflage) walks into the place and says to no one in particular “quite a day to be out riding”.  He walked by without even looking at us and cruises in like he owns the place but then comes over and talks to us. Turns out, he rides an FJR, a Yamaha sport touring bike and is the typically friendly Alaskan who is interested in who we are, where we are from and where we are going.

We could do worse. (We have done worse. Omak) buy we will survive it. It is really a very pretty setting and, with a little luck, we will have blue sky in the morning and no snow.