June 29, 2008: 400 miles, from Liard River Hot Springs, British Columbia, Canada to Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada
Despite a very cold night, I woke up early and stumbled off to the long-drop bush toilet (no flushing or running water or showers in this campsite).
Jaryd woke up to say that he’s had a tough night – between my loud snoring, and Jaryd hearing the motion-detector loud-speakers going off all night all the way around us, and the cold – he’d barely slept.
Mike was already up, and took a lot of nice pics of the Hot Springs, from the long wooden deck walkway that led from the campsite to the hot springs where people can soak in the waist-high hot water.
The wooden walkway leading into the moss-covered forest area where the hot springs are located…
Jaryd and I decided we needed to soak in the hot springs (nice and relaxing and also a reasonable substitute for not being able to shower, so we took our shorts and towels and had a lovely soaking in the springs. The springs themselves have multiple pools with varying degrees of heated water, and within each pool, the water circulates in bands of different temperatures. You can move 3 feet and suddenly be in cooler or warmer water, by maybe 5-10 degrees!
I got speaking with a German guy who was traveling through Alaska and northern Canada in his rented car. He’s also a biker, but this time he was doing it by car, and said he’d love to come back with his BMW bike and do a full tour. I believe he was from the Hamburg area of Germany, and we spoke for maybe 30 minutes about Germany, and my own experiences of living in Germany in 1990-1991.
As we wanted to get back on the road, we cut our bathe short and headed back to change and pack up and hit the road again. Mike was just about ready for the road, after taking some of these pics.
Today, we would be heading almost North-west up the Alcan, crossing the border from British Columbia in the Yukon for the first time, to Watson Lake, and then almost due West for a bit until a little dip south-west back into BC, then north-west again and back into the Yukon before heading up to Whitehorse, which is our next overnight destination.
We’ve decided that we need to change the oil in the bikes at Whitehorse, for the long trek up through Dawson City, and then all the dirt roads to Inuvik and back. We’d been running the bikes quite hard, and with approx. 3260 miles on them when we get to Whitehorse, they will need the oil change. These bikes are known to be hard on oil, due to their engine design, and one generally wants to change the oil every 1500-2000 miles, so we are already pressing it.
Back to the trip today….as we near Watson Lake, we will need to keep a very close eye on wild-life on or near the road. Watson Lake is renowned for having lots of wild animal crossings, and we had recently heard of a Gold Wing rider who had collided with an animal, and come off much the worse for it. We expected to see many more bears now as well.
This is so COOL!!!!
It wasn’t long when we were rewarded with our first close-up bear encounter, although it was a relatively small black bear, not a grizzly. He was grazing right alongside the road, although when we stopped to take a pic, he moved off quite quickly into the trees.
Although he was clearly even more nervous of us than we were of him, we adopted our soon-to-be-normal approach to taking these pics, which is stop a little past the animal (so that we can shoot forward and away from it, if necessary), and leave the motor running, while keeping an eye on it at all times, open the tank bag zipper and get the camera out and switch on by feel, then quickly shoot the pic and close the camera up again and move on. Of course, any large, angry bear is able to cover 30 yards in just over a second, and we’d be toast, but we felt relatively safe on the bikes.
We have MUCH more respect for the many cyclists (bicycles) that we’ve come across on this trip, and even some hikers walking the roads. There’s simply no way on Earth that I’d have enough courage to travel these roads by foot, especially alone.
He quickly started moving away, but Mike snapped a few pics as well
Only a few miles further on, we came across a few more buffalo on the road…
After passing the buffalo, we came to a nice vantage point overlooking the Liard River we’d been following for much of the day, and stopped to take some pics.
Just before reaching Watson Lake, we were rewarded with some spectacular vistas, with the snow-covered mountains in the background.
We then arrived in Watson Lake, with its famous Signpost Forest, that was started in 1942 by a homesick G.I. who was working on the highway construction, when he put up a sign with his home town and the mileage to the town, in a spot in Watson Lake. It now has well over 10 000 signs planted by thousands of travelers! The town of Watson Lake now maintains the site, and even supplies new empty signposts for travelers to place their signs!
Some info on the Signpost forest
Mike taking a pic of a small section of the signpost forest….
Do you think that Mr and Mrs Burnell from Orleans, Indiana enjoyed traveling in this area? Take a look….
We looked for a restaurant to have lunch at, but it seemed that Watson Lake really didn;t have much to offer us other than the signpost forest. We eventually found a little corner eating place within one of the stores in town, and had a store sub, doughnuts and coffee.
As our AT&T cell-phone no longer worked with the “Rogers Wireless” network provider in these northern parts of Canada, we no longer had any cell communications with home, so Jaryd and I used the coin phone outside the store to call reverse-charge back home in Michigan, to speak with Karen. One thing we never thought about, was that as the telco operator has to speak with a living person to accept the reverse charges before she will put you through, you cannot leave even a voice message for anyone back home, as there is no-one to accept the charge for that time!
So, if you ever travel outside the country and wish to call reverse charge, make sure the person you’re calling is available to actually answer the phone!
After our call, we filled up with gas and headed out west again, and were treated to some truly spectacular scenery! We were now in amongst beautiful forest, clear blue lakes and distant mountains covered with snow. What a day! I was shouting out aloud at some of the sights! Man, this is a beautiful country! I’ve traveled relatively well in my years, and have always regarded my home country of South Africa, as one of the most beautiful places for spectacular natural scenery, perhaps rivals only by the Alps (within the context of my own personal experiences), but I must say that I think this road, this place, this part of North America is just so stunningly beautiful.
I even started thinking about whether it was feasible for me (and my family, of course) to ever move up to this part of the world. I know it’s very different in winter, and it’s a hard place in which to live, but man….there are some stunning rewards for hardships!
Amidst all this beauty, we started looking for gas as we still had some way to go to Whitehorse, so when we came across a little motel with a gas pump outside, in a place called Rancheria, we were more than happy to stop, fill up and stretch our legs. Our thought of filling up was dashed, however, when we say a sign on the pump saying that there is no more gas available!
We approached a guy working there, and he said they have literally only a few gallons of gas left, and are keeping it for bikers and others who truly have an emergency. He was happy to allow us to fill our tanks and avoid a problem with reaching Whitehorse, so we were grateful that any issue had been avoided.
After filling the tanks, he showed us around the little motel, and this quaint little place had some history. The motel itself was built in the 20’s, if I recall correctly, and the original walls still stand, and are reinforced with a modern outer layer, so they are quite thick, as can be seen at the window sills. There is a wood burning stove/heater in the middle of one of the rooms (I didn’t see it, but Mike mentioned it to me), and overall, this place was so interesting, that I’d love to stop over some time and spend a night there.
Unfortunately, none of us got any good pics of the place, but Mike took a really cool picture of a little squirrel.
Me again taking a pic of Mike taking a pic! 
Jaryd even tried his hand with the camera….
A little further on, we hit some dirt roads, and Mike had to stop and take a pic of the mountains from the field of wild daisies
Soon, we came upon the village of Teslin, with its LONG iron bridge, which was a beautiful sight, but we dreaded the thought of crossing that bridge. The problem is that our bikes are dual-purpose (street and dirt capable) bikes, with very skinny tires, unlike the much wider tires of a regular street bike, and these bridges have iron truss roadways with open steel grate for the riding surface, which is not only quite slippery, but there are lengthwise steel ridges about an inch deep and 2 or 3 inches wide, that allows our narrow tires to drop into the steel channels as we’re riding along the bridge. The tires are then almost locked into the narrow channels, and one cannot steer the bike normally.
The result is that we found we had to crawl along at 5-10 MPH in 1st or 2nd gear, with both feet out like absolute idiot beginner riders, and hope that we did not meet a large truck coming at us, while we veered from one side of the bridge surface to the other! Just as bad, was if a car or truck came up behind us, as the truckers tend to get very impatient with slow bikers in the way, and ride right up our rear end. Any fall on our part would/could be pretty damned dangerous as there’s no way the truck can stop so quickly on that open steel surface!
Anyway, some pics of the pretty Teslin area.
Later this afternoon, just before we approached Whitehorse, we rode into a brewing thunderstorm, and pulled over to don our waterproofs and layer-up for the expected cold and wet ride into Whitehorse.
We skirted the edges of the thunderstorm all the way into Whitehorse, getting only slightly wet (well not us, due to the wet gear we had on, but the road and our bikes got wet, of course.)
When we arrived in Whitehorse, we navigated our way to a campground on the outskirts of town, just above the river, and stepped into the office to ask for tent site availability. The young ladies behind the desk seemed to present themselves as happy-go-lucky-hippie types, but it was soon very clear that they were very seasoned and hard business types! I just love how capitalism works for even those who outwardly appear to be of the “let’s all share the wealth” community types. 
Our suspicions were justified when Mike innocently asked one of them if there was a Walmart in town, and her mood changed instantly as she spat out a “Yes, unfortunately there is….” answer to Mike! We didn’t to have a discussion on the merits or otherwise of the existence of a Walmart in town. We only really wanted to find some oil and place to change it, something that from experience, Walmart is always happy to offer the biker!
EDITING NOTE: For some weird reason, neither Mike nor I have any pics of our overnight in Whitehorse, unless I somehow deleted the picture files. I’ll ask Mike if we has anything, and post them up here, with any write-up he may want to provide, on our stay in Whitehorse.
Anyway, we paid for our campsite, which ended up being a small but neat square of sand, just big enough for the three small tents, at the other end of the campground. We set up camp, and then as the laundry at the campground was not for campers to use (!), we headed off to town on the bikes to find a laundry and have a bite to eat while the clothes were being de-stunk!
We eventually found a laundry run by a friendly Indian family, and after un-negotiating some prices (they didn’t waiver, but at least I tried!), we had the clothes in and spinning, while we went across the strip to a MacDonalds.
After eating and heading back to the laundry and folding/packing our clothes (and here, you should watch Mike. He is the consummate folder of clothes…..comes from his Marine days. My own army conscription days clearly did not engender anything like the neatness! )
We headed back to camp and had an early night. Tomorrow, we plan to change the oil in the bikes, so need to find the infamous Walmart, and borrow a pan from them (they are always very helpful to bikers like this), and then we will be on our way to Dawson City, which is the start of our final trek up the Dempster Highway.