Day 11 - To Whitehorse, YT

Day 11 – Wednesday: June 26, 2013, miles travelled: 412.0

Broke up camp as the rain taunted me. Dr. Brian K., who I met the day before, came by to see if I was ready to go to breakfast. Seems Larry & Grady were taking their time… and it was Larry who said: “7 o/c kickstands up”.  Walked over to the overflow area of Liard Park to see this world traveler we heard about. Pictured here is Jeffrey Polnaja, from Indonesia, he’s travelled 78 countries over the last four years, and plans to be on the road two more as a promise to his children to Ride for Peace. WOW!

We also met John C. from New York camped next to Jeffrey. Riding a Harley Davidson, he blew a rear tire 8 miles north of Ft. Nelson. It did significant damage to his Motorcycle wiring, and rear light. Towed back to Ft. Nelson he had to wait 2 days for a replacement tire to be shipped in, all the while he was allowed to camp in the junk yard due to limited resources; he rides till he tires then finds a spot off the hwy. to camp every night. It’s free! Anyway, from my previous post I mentioned the rain, yes the same storm all the while he was stuck in the junkyard for two days; and here I was in a nice motel (but it was my birthday & Bruins game was on).

After breakfast at Liard Hot Spring Lodge, Brian, Larry, Grady, John, and I travelled to Watson Lake together, at which point Larry and Grady set off to post a sign in the sign forest in Watson Lake. This was a tradition started during the war by a homesick GI deployed on the construction of the Alaskan Hwy.

I saw three Black Bears today on the side of the road; actually one was brown.

Poor John C, his bad luck just keeps coming, his luggage rack bracket started to fail, cracks across the heavy 7-gauge stainless steel brace had to be fixed immediately. We stopped at an auto supply in Watson Lake and he purchased a couple of straps he rigged to hold things together:

This should do it for a while… talk about belt & suspenders!

The Alaska Hwy. goes from BC into Yukon, back into BC, then again in Yukon:

John, Brian, and I rode to Whitehorse, YT where Brian and I stayed in a Hostel. John wanted to keep riding on till he was ready to pull over. So at this point it was just Brian and I calling it quits today. After stowing all our gear, securing the bikes for the night, we hiked to dinner at a local favorite restaurant. We met two other Hostel guests there, Dr. Angela T. from Chicago, a college math professor and Hanz from Germany, who ran a canoe guide business on the Yukon for 34 years as a summer diversion from his business of designing Nuclear Medical Facilities (hospital X-Ray, CT, MRI installations).

Back to the cabin, I had the top bunk, Brian ground level; I’ll tell you what happed to me in tomorrow’s post. Anyways, the Hostel was nice, it was clean; mean age of the other occupants was mid-late twenties. This being my first experience in a Hostel, I left with a positive impression.

Lata'