TravellingStrom

Friday – Liard River, British Columbia, Canada

Well, another lazy start to the day, but no worries, I am on holiday right! When I finally got sorted out I went back to the bar for breakfast and to post another few days, the photo upload was so painfully slow it took ages 😦 But, it gave me time to take a few photos of inside the bar and the entry door handles is the start. 🙂

Once I got packed up I went next door to the museum, this was full of the history of the Alaskan Highway, very interesting and this took a few hours. There was also a great movie explaining the building of the road. It turns out that in 1942, America figured out that Japan could make a landing in Alaska and then head down into the states, so they commissioned the building of this road from Fort Nelson to Fairbanks. They did this in 10 months and took 14,000 men to do it, amazing stuff in -40C!!!! The displays show the life during those times.

I finally got on the road about midday or so after getting fuel. It was a tad cool at speed, but the roads were mostly fine, I passed a few other riders, but we were all eventually stopped by major road works while waiting for a pilot car!

After about 10 minutes wait it was into the dust cloud for a few kms!

The road followed the river for a short while, but then it was just fun hills and corners, a good time to get some edges worn off, but be careful of the gravel patches, they just appeared from nowhere and could catch you out real quick!

Then I hit dirt, not paydirt, just dirt, major road works with a lot of loose gravel, yuck! And to top it off, another metal decked bridge, this bike needs to learn how to ride a straight line!!

More dirt, more metal decks and wild horses, finally something for my collection!

I fuelled up at a place called Toad River and had a quick snack. Here I met Stoagie, from Detroit, he is also heading to the Arctic Circle, so I may see him at a later stage. He was planning on using the main roads, weras I was going to use some back roads as told me by Debbie!

When they say loose gravel patches, they were not wrong, except maybe they should have said hard pavement patches, cos there was more dirt than pavement!

I got to the lake area, very nice scenery, a bit cool though, but still nice and twisty to ride 🙂

I was not far now from Liard River, it was only 3.30pm but I remember someone mentioning the hot springs here, so as it was another 2 hours from there to Watson Lake, I decided to stop there for the night. There appeared to be Bison around, although I only saw the one lone bull near the camp ground entrance a lot further up the track.

Wow, I saw a mother bear and her two cubs on the side of the road, so I turned around and grabbed a moving shot before turning around again. I did not want to stop on the roadside in this lane as it was too close. It was lucky I took the moving shot, because by the time I had returned, she had shot through!

It was not long before I arrived at the camp grounds, but first a history lesson!

So, after picking a tent site and getting sorted out, I did the mossie dance, by crikey they were thick! I managed to borrow some bug spray from the dude next door, but I needed to buy some soon. For a comparison, those back home in the fishing club may remember Botany Point where we go crabbing, well, not quite as thick as that, but I was told they would get worse the further north I went!!!

After some writing and some dinner and hiding my tucker in a tree I went for a walk up to the hot springs, this is about 1km away over some board walks. Here is a whole series of pictures to enjoy, the water was very hot, especially at the furthest spring and once out of the water, the mossies attacked!!

The evening after my bath was spent wearing as many clothes as possible to beat the attack, I eventually hid in my tent, there is a total fire ban, so I could not even use smoke, oh well, reading a book in a tent is fun too

Day 200 miles and 322 km
Trip – 26,865 miles and 43,235 km

Cheers
TravellingStrom

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