July 28, 2006 Day 18 – 518 Miles Ranceria, YT, Can - Beaver Creek, YT, Can
Ranceria, YT, Can - Beaver Creek, YT, Can
Morning dawned clear and C-O-L-D in Ranceria, Yukon Territory, Canada. As usual, I’m up and ready to go before anything is moving so I had to wait until the restaurant opened to get my coffee and breakfast. I managed to do this and set off once again toward Alaska. I’d asked one of the owners in the restaurant what the temperature was outside and he said “three-to-four.” That, of course, is Celsius. For us Fahrenheit guys, that means between 37 and 39 degrees. That’s not the important measure, though. At a speed of 60 mph the 39 degrees becomes something like 25 degrees F and that’s bloody cold; at least to this Texas boy. I rode down the road alternately putting one hand then the other between my legs trying to thaw out cold fingertips. I can report that it helped the fingertips considerably. Didn’t do much for the ambient temperature of my inner thighs though.
At Upper Liard in the Yukon Territory my Hwy 93 mysteriously became Hwy 1, but the terrain remained virtually unchanged: mountainous, winding roads, the usual number of potholes and “Caution – Loose Gravel” signs. While a pretty ride it was difficult to enjoy or pay much attention to it, I was too busy thinking about a warm cup of coffee poured generously in my lap. Didn’t happen. It did, finally, begin to warm up and I trudged onward bravely.
The Upper Laird river
At Teslin one finds a museum dedicated to George Johnson, the first man to bring a car into the Yukon Territory. He was also a great photographer and documented many of the people of the area between 1910 and 1940. One also finds, supposedly, the longest grate-decked bridge in the world. I don’t know how long it is but my bike tried to swap ends at least three times going over. These usually don’t bother me much because I treat them as I do sand or loose gravel: maintain steady traction with the back tire and allow the front-end to find it’s own way through. That normally works on the grate-deck bridges with the bike “moving” left or right one or two “grid spans” then moving back the other way. If you let it have its head it generally moved in a narrow, though slightly scary, range. That wasn’t the case here, the front would move right, then right again, then right again, forcing me to steer lightly, more with my knees than with the handlebars. The bridge didn’t seem to like that all that much because, sure enough, a second or so later it’d begin to move me to the right again. First Republican bridge I’ve ever seen in my life.
The "Republican" bridge at Teslin
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon Territory and, with a population of 30,000 + exceeds the next most populous city (Dawson City) by about 28,000 folks. I never thought I’d see a traffic tie-up in a town of 30,000, but, arriving at lunchtime, I saw one here. I was part of it for awhile. In any event, I had a great Rotini dish at an Italian pasta restaurant ran by a Chinese couple (it’s Canada, folks!), and resisted the temptation to stay. I’d just lost too much road time over the previous couple of days and wanted to move…so move I did, right on through Haines Junction.
My intention was to stop in Haines Junction, but I arrived there relatively early and, leery of the cold start to this day, thought perhaps the thing to do was ride on until at least 8:00pm or so tiring myself to the point where I would sleep later in the morning; I'm tired of waiting for restaurants to open.
Out-thunk myself again; now I hit the bad road. There was a tremendous amount of construction activity beginning east of Destruction Bay (a prophetic name, or what?) following the lakeshore almost to Burwash Landing. And "following the lakeshore" is a long way. This is one huge lake. There were more than the usual patches of loose gravel; there were sections a quarter-of-a-mile long of the stuff. Lane switches between one side and the other were even more problematic; the heavy construction vehicles had dug mud holes. Riding through these was eventful to say the least. Once again, the front grew leary of what it was seeing and wanted the rear to lead. I took it steady and made it through just fine. Seriously, this wasn’t life threatening, but it made you question the status of your Last Will and Testament. Besides, the best was yet to come.
The road from Destruction Bay on into the U.S. was a serious, pay-attention-dummy road. Up here the road will heave up in the winter due to sudden bouts of cold-then-warm periods. The road department’s concept of repair is to sort of line these newly formed Whoopty-dos with loose gravel. The loose gravel is an attempt to make obscure the holes in the pavement, some of which appear capable of swallowing a small Buick. I throttled back to between 50-60 mph for the remainder of the journey and felt like I was once again riding in the Texas Enduro Circuit circa 1978-81. After about 100 miles of this I was moving that big Nomad around like it was my old 290cc Can-Am of yesteryear. Since I didn’t lay it down, it was kinda fun.
Pulled into Beaver Creek, YT, the last Canadian city before Alaska about 8:30 p.m. and got a campsite. A good meal and a few samples of Labatt's Blue later I was laying in my tent wondering when the last bears had come though this campsite. Managed to go to sleep somewhere near nightfall. Of course, that's somewhere around 2:00am this time of year.
Morning dawned clear and C-O-L-D in Ranceria, Yukon Territory, Canada. As usual, I’m up and ready to go before anything is moving so I had to wait until the restaurant opened to get my coffee and breakfast. I managed to do this and set off once again toward Alaska. I’d asked one of the owners in the restaurant what the temperature was outside and he said “three-to-four.” That, of course, is Celsius. For us Fahrenheit guys, that means between 37 and 39 degrees. That’s not the important measure, though. At a speed of 60 mph the 39 degrees becomes something like 25 degrees F and that’s bloody cold; at least to this Texas boy. I rode down the road alternately putting one hand then the other between my legs trying to thaw out cold fingertips. I can report that it helped the fingertips considerably. Didn’t do much for the ambient temperature of my inner thighs though.
At Upper Liard in the Yukon Territory my Hwy 93 mysteriously became Hwy 1, but the terrain remained virtually unchanged: mountainous, winding roads, the usual number of potholes and “Caution – Loose Gravel” signs. While a pretty ride it was difficult to enjoy or pay much attention to it, I was too busy thinking about a warm cup of coffee poured generously in my lap. Didn’t happen. It did, finally, begin to warm up and I trudged onward bravely.
The Upper Laird river
At Teslin one finds a museum dedicated to George Johnson, the first man to bring a car into the Yukon Territory. He was also a great photographer and documented many of the people of the area between 1910 and 1940. One also finds, supposedly, the longest grate-decked bridge in the world. I don’t know how long it is but my bike tried to swap ends at least three times going over. These usually don’t bother me much because I treat them as I do sand or loose gravel: maintain steady traction with the back tire and allow the front-end to find it’s own way through. That normally works on the grate-deck bridges with the bike “moving” left or right one or two “grid spans” then moving back the other way. If you let it have its head it generally moved in a narrow, though slightly scary, range. That wasn’t the case here, the front would move right, then right again, then right again, forcing me to steer lightly, more with my knees than with the handlebars. The bridge didn’t seem to like that all that much because, sure enough, a second or so later it’d begin to move me to the right again. First Republican bridge I’ve ever seen in my life.
The "Republican" bridge at Teslin
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon Territory and, with a population of 30,000 + exceeds the next most populous city (Dawson City) by about 28,000 folks. I never thought I’d see a traffic tie-up in a town of 30,000, but, arriving at lunchtime, I saw one here. I was part of it for awhile. In any event, I had a great Rotini dish at an Italian pasta restaurant ran by a Chinese couple (it’s Canada, folks!), and resisted the temptation to stay. I’d just lost too much road time over the previous couple of days and wanted to move…so move I did, right on through Haines Junction.
My intention was to stop in Haines Junction, but I arrived there relatively early and, leery of the cold start to this day, thought perhaps the thing to do was ride on until at least 8:00pm or so tiring myself to the point where I would sleep later in the morning; I'm tired of waiting for restaurants to open.
Out-thunk myself again; now I hit the bad road. There was a tremendous amount of construction activity beginning east of Destruction Bay (a prophetic name, or what?) following the lakeshore almost to Burwash Landing. And "following the lakeshore" is a long way. This is one huge lake. There were more than the usual patches of loose gravel; there were sections a quarter-of-a-mile long of the stuff. Lane switches between one side and the other were even more problematic; the heavy construction vehicles had dug mud holes. Riding through these was eventful to say the least. Once again, the front grew leary of what it was seeing and wanted the rear to lead. I took it steady and made it through just fine. Seriously, this wasn’t life threatening, but it made you question the status of your Last Will and Testament. Besides, the best was yet to come.
The road from Destruction Bay on into the U.S. was a serious, pay-attention-dummy road. Up here the road will heave up in the winter due to sudden bouts of cold-then-warm periods. The road department’s concept of repair is to sort of line these newly formed Whoopty-dos with loose gravel. The loose gravel is an attempt to make obscure the holes in the pavement, some of which appear capable of swallowing a small Buick. I throttled back to between 50-60 mph for the remainder of the journey and felt like I was once again riding in the Texas Enduro Circuit circa 1978-81. After about 100 miles of this I was moving that big Nomad around like it was my old 290cc Can-Am of yesteryear. Since I didn’t lay it down, it was kinda fun.
Pulled into Beaver Creek, YT, the last Canadian city before Alaska about 8:30 p.m. and got a campsite. A good meal and a few samples of Labatt's Blue later I was laying in my tent wondering when the last bears had come though this campsite. Managed to go to sleep somewhere near nightfall. Of course, that's somewhere around 2:00am this time of year.
posted by Minuend | 11:49 PM
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