We left Oaxaca and cycled towards the mountains. One last mountain ranges was left to cross before we’d reach the coast for the first time in ages! Before though, just outside of Oaxaca, was a small highlight that we didn’t wanna miss: The Tree of Tule (Spanish Árbol de Tule). With a circumference of 46 metres it is the widest known tree of the world! Funnily enough, from far away it looks just like a fairly big, ordinary tree.
So there we were – finally on the mainland of Mexico! A few times we had heard of the Baja California being described as “Mexico light” and being noticeably different from the mainland. And to be honest, after a little time we could feel what they meant by that. The Baja Peninsula felt very touristic and we can’t remember a day without seeing at least one European, American or Canadian number plate. Around La Paz…
What I haven’t talked about in the last blog post about Mexico is how off the local time zone felt to us. Ever since we crossed into Mexico and started cycling on the Baja California, we had adapted our daily routine to match the sunrise and sunset. One of our unspoken rules in Mexico was (and still is) to avoid cycling in the dark as best as possible. Unfortunately for us, it was winter and the sun set super early at around 4:30 pm. In contrary…
Heading to Mexico from San Diego gave us two options: crossing the border in Tijuana or crossing it in Tecate. Tijuana would have been just south of San Diego, but the border crossing there is super busy, with lots and lots of lanes. On the map, Tecate looked a lot calmer, with only one small crossing point and the extra day of cycling seemed worth it to us. On top of that…
We left the city of Page and cycled over the Glen Canyon Dam. The weather continued to be nice and warm and our rain gear sank deeper and deeper into our bags. Our next stop: Buckskin Gulch, a beautiful slot canyon with red walls. In contrary to the Antilope Canyon, which is bigger and more popular, but at the same time very expensive, this one was open to anyone for just a few dollars. We…
Cycling out of Salt Lake City was way better than our last big-city-experience in Calgary. The first 40 km were almost entirely on cycling paths! We left quite late and it was dark, when we finally made it to the spot, where we had planned to camp – a fairly big park with camp site amenities. Unfortunately though…
Our first longer off-bike adventure was about to start! The two biggest logistical problems when bikepacking is – what to do with the bikes, and what to do with the stuff that’s not needed on the hike? We didn’t have a car to just lock everything in, like nearly everybody else. Fortunately for us the welcome center had lockers…
After a week in Stewart, we were on the bikes again and cycled back to Meziadin Junction. It was raining and we started quite late. In Stewart we finally had internet to research what kind of berries we had seen on the side of the road the week before. They were thimbleberries and edible! So we stopped and tried them when…
We left Whitehorse early in the afternoon. We had bought so much food that we had a really hard time fitting everything in our tiny bags and ended up having to use our small foldable backpacks. But the choice and prices at the Real Canadian Superstore were just so good! At that would be our last supermarket for a while.
The wildfire situation did not improve much during our stay in Fairbanks. At least it rained one evening, which lowered the temperature noticeably. The morning we left Fairbanks, the AQI (Air Quality Index) in the city was at 150, which was not the worst they have ever had, but most likely the worst we both have ever experienced. Thick smoke was in the city…
