Apologies to our readers. Mom, dad, there were not so many internet hotspots to be found the last two weeks! Therefore a rather long and extensive update — we left Watson Lake and Barry’s fantastic hospitality on a Tuesday. Simon, a cyclist from the UK who is also touring from Alaska to Argentina, just arrived the previous day and helped us pack our gear into Barry’s truck. We arrived at the junction of the Alaska Highway and the Stewart-Cassiar Highway early in the morning; a new road with new people and new adventures waiting for us to be explored.

Just before we started to drive, an old man threw his bike and stuff in the back of the car. It was Jack, a 74 year old Canadian! Joost and I were quite stunned by his appearance. Apparently, this is what he did every summer; bike from town to town, looking for the odd job. So much for a pension..

Anyway, the pilot car dropped us near Jade City and we took off to cycle a couple of more miles to a lake we had heard of. There we would set up camp for the night. What a beautiful lake it was! Right away, the Cassiar Highway seemed a hundred times more scenic than the Alaska Highway we had ridden for the last couple of weeks. Mountain ranges started just of the road, fast streaming creeks and razor flat lakes around every corner!

We tried to do some fishing, but not with much success. So pasta for dinner it was, again… haha! Both of us being pretty tired from the long day we hit the sack at around 22.00, making sure we packed all our food and hung it from a tree, in case of bears.

The next day, we got up early, had breakfast (oatmeal and a coffee) and pushed ourselves on the bikes. In the early afternoon we reached Dease Lake and went to the general store to do some shopping. We met a Dutch family on holiday. You’ll find ‘them’ anywhere. It’s absolutely guaranteed that you run into fellow countrymen in every corner in the world. It was nice talking Dutch again and we were more than happy to speak with them about our trip, stuff we had seen and the whole water situation.

We were allowed to pitch our tents behind a restaurant, owned by Mama Z, a very interesting and charming lady. If you ever find yourself to be in the neighborhood of Dease Lake, be sure to drop by her place.

The next few days riding up to Stewart were quite uneventful. That is, the cycling and roads were great (though a bit hilly at times) and we saw about 5 bears — all running back into the woods before I could get my camera out to take a picture. We camped at nice spots near rivers and lakes and bumped into a couple of cyclists going north. One of them was Heinz Stücke. This guy is a living legend. He even has his own Wikipedia page!

In 1962, the 22-year-old Stücke quit his work as a tool- and die-maker and rode out of his home town, Hövelhof, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, on a three-speed bicycle, with a plan to see the world. He has never since returned to Hövelhof. In the early 1980s, after two decades on the road, Stücke decided to attempt to visit every country in the world. Between 1962 and 2006 he cycled more than 539,000 kilometers (335,000 miles) and visited 192 countries. He was registered as the most travelled man in history in the Guinness Book of Records between 1995 and 1999.

So to make a long story short, it was totally awesome to meet and talk to the king of all bicycle touring! I think we spent an hour chitchatting next to the road. Heinz has a very bright and uplifting personality and with him in the back of our minds, it was not hard to cycle 100+ km that day. May you have tailwinds wherever you go, Heinz!

We arrived at the Meziadin Junction at noon on the 9th. We decided to make a side trip to Stewart and Hyder, a 60 km detour from the Cassiar Highway. But a detour worthwhile!  Tons of glaciers, rapids and majestic rock formations! By nightfall we arrived in Stewart which is a little town with a population of 2.000, just on the border with Alaska. As most towns in the Yukon and BC area, it boomed during the gold rush around the 1900’s. Nowadays, mining companies still operate the area, but with big machinery.

Stewart itself is pretty and had a nice little bakery. We decided to spend a rest day here and met up with Devon and Jessica from The Scrimshaw Project again, who we met back in Watson Lake and who are also cycling to Argentina. We had a great BBQ and drank a couple of cold ones at the camp fire. Great way to end the day.

On the 10th, we planned to visit Hyder. Hyder is a town in Alaska, but has a Canadian postal code, uses Canadian money and the kids there go to Canadian schools. The only way to reach this town from the US mainland is by airplane or boat. So most visitors drive through Canada and cross the border (with no US border control) at Stewart. Back in the day, 10.000 people used to live in Hyder. Now, 100 people are listed as permanent residents and serve the heaps of tourists that visit the place. People go there because alcohol and cigarettes are cheap and it is the home of the famous Fish Creek where black bears and grizzlies come during the months July-September to feed on the spawning salmon that swim up that river.

We had a close encounter with a black bear just two minutes cycling from that spot. As I was cruising uphill, I saw something dark at the side of the road. In a reflex I hit my brakes and gravel flew around the place. The bear was standing just 3 meter away from me. By now it noticed me too, scared as sh*t because of the flying gravel it jumped up into the air and ran into the bushed. Pffffew…

On our way back from the Fish Creek, we jumped into a bar and got ‘Hyderized’ This is the practice of drinking a shot of strong alcohol, also known as Everclear. Of course this was no problem for Joost, but I shed a few tears while downing the liquor, haha!

It was great to spend a rest day in Stewart before our final push to Prince Rupert and Vancouver Island. We’re almost done with mainland Canada and that feels a bit weird.