Cold and Hot

Sunday, July 21, 2011
Day 38
Contact Creek, Yukon to Ft. Nelson, BC

Sometimes, many times, it's not easy to get out early when camping out, at least for me, with the overhead of breaking down tent and gear, usually wet, but today I was on the road before 6 am. Being light all nite helps both the getting up and the finding things not in the dark.

There were multiple rewards:

Awesome ground fog formations

Wild life - saw 3 black bears this morning

Challenging driving conditions at some times...

...leading to apparitions in the fog...

...to which a motorcyclist must pay close attention to stay alive!
These behemoths were all over the road, laying, standing...

...peeing

Whirlpools and driftwood on the Liard River

Great breakfast at Coal River Lodge (highly recommend a stop to get the big, hearty breakfast there which I needed after yesterday) and conversation with Richard and Taylor Sprague of Yuma, AZ, who had just arrived to join a stone sheep hunting expedition. Richard owns a gun shop, coincidentally named Sprague's Sports, www.spragues.com, seems really knowledgeable.

Then back on the road.

Welcome detour for a dip into the Liard Hot Springs, and HOT is accurate.
I went into only the so-called "cold" pool, and only the cold end of it; I didn't even try the hot pool.
There was some sort of competition to see who could place a rock furthest along the shore toward the hot end of the pool which I did NOT take part in, preferring to keep my skin to use another day.

After Action Report on lunch at Toad River Lodge:
Food: tasty; Service: way below the usual relaxed standards that one gets used to as the norm up here

But they did have this big collection of ball caps hanging from the ceiling...
purportedly over 6,000 donated by Alcan travelers

After lunch, a long sleepy ride toward Fort Nelson.

Last remaining suspension bridge on the Alcan Highway

By now you can guess what that is over Muncho Lake, and where I was going.

Wet and raining, I drifted into Fort Nelson, BC and picked up a motel room to dry off and a Subway sandwich for dinner.

Saturday, July 30, 2011
Day 37
7,139 mi / 11,422 km ridden so far

Breakfast with Pat, sharing his favorite: coffee spiked with cardamom. Last night's rain had stopped, at least for the moment.

There's been a gravely noise from the bike's drivetrain ever since Deadhorse (go figure, 1,000 miles on dirt road in the rain on a sportbike?). That's worrisome. My religious every-day chain maintenance has turned almost fanatical in hopes that I can keep it together until I can find a new one. That's part of today's quest.

So a quick ride back down the hill into Whitehorse to Wally World to get more chain lube, been going thru it at a fanatical rate -- then on to Yukon Yamaha for a new chain. Common item for a bike dealer so I was disappointed when it was not to be had there. But the dealer tech looked at my chain and proclaimed that it still had thousands of km left to go. Made me feel for an instant better about the chain, then I began to wonder if it was then a deeper problem...like something in the tranny. Murphy has a way of revealing the answer in his own good time, which for me will probably be at the worst possible time.

So it was on down the road.

beautiful clouds over river

"Scarecrows" such as this often are found adjacent to openings in the forest thru which narrow gravel lanes depart the Alaska Highway, as if to be an individualistic marker for the residents beyond? Creepy.

Crossed over the Continental Divide, now looking east of what is the northern extreme of the Rocky Mountains

View looking east of the divide...can you guess?
Hammered again by thunderstorms, this one was pretty ugly, fortunately going 60-70 kph thru them they don't last too long. Time to get boots bagged again.

Signpost Forest, Watson Lake, Yukon.
Check it out: http://www.yukoninfo.com/watson/signpostforest.htm

This really is a forest of signs

Some stolen, some home-brew

"Let the good times Roll" on the Alcan Highway

Do you need a paddle for that one?

Camped alongside the road; price: free; amenities: unlimited mosquitoes

A New Friend Made

Friday, July 29, Day 36
Dawson City to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Yukon Rest Area along the Alaska Highway. These were ubiquitous and handy. Always the same two little green one-hole outhouses dressed in white trim.

Cruisin along the Stewart River

River crossings were many, lots of rivers.
Sharp Shadow is in this picture!

Another beautiful river, another crossing

At 1250 I'm sitting at a table at the Selkirk Centre at Pelly Crossing, a general store, having a cup of machine-made cappuccino and my last night's leftover hamburger from Riverwest Cafe reheated in their microwave.

The generous cashier would not take my credit card nor my US $20 bill and instead insisted she buy my cup of coffee. I protested that I was going to also use her bathroom and only barely succeeded in leaving her with all the change in my pocket, around 75 cents US, a double-discount on the 80 cent Canadian price considering the exchange rate now favors the Canadian dollar.

On long stretches of easy, rolling good road, I lock the throttle, sit back and enjoy the scenery and meditatively hum along, kilometer by kilometer. Today has been a good driving day so far and the kms are ticking off.

So far today I have been often escorted by my fickle friend Sharp Shadow, but sometimes round a corner or top a hill and he disappears as if frightened off the clouds in the distance. I don't understand his behavior, as they have been impotent for the most part and only enhance the beauty of the sky without extracting a toll.

But looking down the highway, what do I see ?

Not just pretty sky decorations, these were speaking to me in loud cracks and booms.

See the grocery bags over my boots...they are not there as a fashion statement!

Glad I did that! Then the heavy soaking rain got really bouncy -- bouncing from my helmet, ricocheting into the windscreen, every which way like pinballs. It took a few seconds to realize that this phenomena is motorcycling in hail.

It was late by the time I got to Whitehorse, partly wet, somewhat cold and definitely hungry. When I went in to pay for gas at the local supermarket, I asked the clerk if she knew of a hostel in town, as the thought of pitching my tent in the darkening evening rain was not so palatable. As is so common here in these small northern towns, she knew many of her patrons and asked one of them for his help. That was how I met grocery shopper Pat Maltais. A fellow motorcyclist, he invited me, there on the spot, to his home, and I accepted. Down the road we went.

Here is Pat with his dogs Shade & Ranger in front of his cabin house near Takhini Hotsprings, outside of Whitehorse.

Pat has a pride and joy beautiful KLR cross bike that he got a out a year ago. He took my bike for a spin and liked it, found it very different than his. His is really the appropriate machine here. He generously offered me a test ride on his but I was ready to hit the shower and get warm and eat the sandwich I bought at the grocery market where I met Pat.

My stuff strewn about the room at Pat's, an effort to dry out. Pat often has guests staying with him because he is a Couch Surfing host; see www.couchsurfing.org.

Shade and Ranger.

Tying up an Open End

So, about the night I spent at Jason's International Hostel in Anchorage.


More people drinking and smoking than sleeping. Fortunately, I can sleep under pretty much any conditions. I drifted off about 11 with it all going on outside, and smoke wafting thru, the open window of the room I inhabited.

The room door flew open and slammed against the wall. I bolted awake. In the middle of the night, my heart painfully jumpstarted. Barges in a bearded man, dressed in black, demanding to know which way is east. With intense determination he attempts to make physical contact with each wall of the room, tripping over and stepping on the luggage thereon, demanding, "Tell me which way is east? I must know which way is east. I am not fortunate like you, I cannot sleep until I pray, and I must eat..." I keep quiet, hoping that without stimulus he will grow bored and go away. After tense long minutes, he did, leaving the room door open. It was then impossible not to hear him accosting others with the same demand.

At some point, a young, loud, native voice belts out "That Rabbi's on acid, man, and if he gets in my face again I'm going to take him down." Some relatively quieter time passes, then, apparently after the presumed Rabbi had determined which way was east and completed his prayer, the same native voice emanates from the kitchen: "Rabbi, this is not your F-ck'n food, you can't just take this shit..."


More time passes. I don't know whether the rabbi ate or not, but the door bangs open again and my bunk shakes as rabbi-man flopps into the one under mine, the raw stench of sweat and accumulated body odor fills the room.

Though I somehow sleep for the few remaining hours to morning, I cannot recommend Jason's International Hostel to any who wish to sleep.

Dawson City

July 28, 2011
 Day 35
10,311 km / 6,444 miles ridden so far.

took a break from riding for a nice day in Dawson City checking out the sites.

First stop was Midnight Dome, a hill overlooking the town.

Looking out from the Dome

Dawson City and the Yukon River


Next stop, cabin of famous poet of the north, Robert Service, where a ranger read from his works, which include The Cremation of Sam McGee and The Shooting of Dan McGrew (see www.birdsnest.com/rservice.htm)

Poet Robert Service's cabin in Dawson where he spent several years writing. Despite the rustic setting, he was already pretty successful and rich at the time...had others doing his cooking and cleaning while he wrote, exercised and had a good time in town

Desk in the front room of the 2-room cabin

His Bedroom

This was really quite nice inside....I just wonder if that little stove kept it warm in winter...

I ate some of these raspberries growing on the sod roof

The typewrite he used. Not much to it.

Toured inside this huge dredge machine, size of an apartment building, built around 1900, digs up riverbed wholesale and separates out the gold. It has a flat bottom and floats.

A diagram of how it operated until 1960 or so when it was shut down.

These are some of the huge conveyor buckets that were on the front end of the machine that dug up the gold-bearing gravel from the riverbed.

Even though it was built around 1900, it was entirely electrically powered, not steam as was common for the time. The electrical power came from a hydroelectric plant that was built nearby just for the purpose of running this equipment. Amazingly, Dawson City, way out in Yukon, was one of he first electrified cities in the world.

Huge cogs inside the machine

Electrically powered water pump

Big levers in control room

This fox was carrying a rodent in its mouth! The rodent's tail and legs are visible hanging out

July 27 Day 34 to Dawson City

A great day of scenery across another dirt road, the Top of the World Highway.

Shortly after leaving Tok is the turnoff to the famous "Top of the World Highway," aka in Alaska as the Taylor Highway.

The story is that this town was actually named Ptarmigan, but finding the word too difficult to spell, the locals renamed the town.

Town mascot, sorry, no sense of scale in this photo, this is one big bird.

Which came first...

Another one of  those mobile restaurants...

Around Chicken, the road turns to dirt and winds along the tops of the ridges of these mountains, apparently smoothed over by glaciers.

View from the Top

Caribou grazing right near the international border.

Welcome to Canada

A mighty ferry took me and my bike across the mighty Yukon River

It's really quite big, fast and powerful.

Here is Juliette's Manor B&B, which I would recommend...

...and here is Sourdough Joe's Restaurant, which I would not.

After dinner of the lousiest big portion of lasagna and Caesar salad I've ever had, I explored the back streets. Here are some interesting authentic structures inhabited by residents:

Mr. sod roof owner opened his door and was on the phone, loudly exclaiming to the party on the other end how "some guy is taking pictures of my house." I went back but he would not stop his telephone conversation to allow me to introduce myself.

simple, cute

Very woody...the owner says it's a necessity, his winter heat source.

Dawson City is motorcycle friendly.