I'd had maybe a couple of hours sleep - after drifting off to the sound of a screaming argument, I was roused from my slumber by the fire alarm, an old bell type one which was conveniently located right above the door to my room. I put some thermals on (it WAS cold) and shuffled out to see some old guy standing in the corridor with a blank look on his face.
I shrugged at him and headed off towards reception, which was of course closed as it was 3.30am. However when I got there the same two women whose screaming had lulled me off to sleep were at it again. One was courteously explaining to the other (in language that I won't print here) that she shouldn't just pull the alarm cord, as now they will have to call the cops to turn it off.
I politely asked if it was safe to retire then, given that there wasn't a fire, and was told in exasperated tones that it was fine. Still, I only had to lay with the pillow over my head for forty minutes until the alarm got turned off.
I'd made some arrangements by e-mail to get my bike serviced in Prince George, British Columbia and I knew I needed to be there before the weekend as servicing only happens during the week. As it was now Tuesday morning I'd arrive on Saturday unless I made some ground, so I resolved to get moving. I wasn't just running away from Hotel Carmacks. Oh no.
At Whitehorse I ate some lunch and realised that the Klondike Highway finished here and I was joining the Alaska Highway, which ran all the way to Dawson Creek in British Columbia, from Fairbanks in Alaska (some 1500 miles). It was way too early to stop so I pressed on as far as possible.
Watson Lake is a little town, hardly anything there but they have a "signpost forest" which was started with a couple of thousand signs in 1988 and now has more than 64,000 signs ranging from car numberplates to custom made signs that folks have hung there. I don't go in for that sort of thing so I took a couple of pictures and left. There was only really one bar in town so I had burger number I-don't-have-a-clue-how-many and went to bed.
Morning didn't so much break the next day, the dark just got a little bit less so. It was grey and raining and the temperature seemed to have dropped a few degrees. I'd been advised back at the Sourdough Lodge that I should take the Alaska Highway to Prince George, rather than the planned Cassiar Highway. I'd heard the Cassiar was fabulous but the old couple in Sourdough had said that the Alaska goes through two national parks. Plus the Cassiar was a lot of gravel. So I elected to head south on the Alaska Highway.
Next logical stop would be Fort Nelson some 330 miles away, but that would leave a whopping 510 miles to get to Prince George, all of which would have to be done on the Thursday. I thought I could hear my butt complaining already.
The visitor centre at Watson Lake had warned me that there would be Buffalo on the road south, but it was still a surprise to see the first herd grazing by the road side. Some of them were immense. Unfortunately there seems to be this "keep on trucking" mentality on the road - lorries were passing me doing more than 80mph - and a few of the buffalo were lying at the side of the road, the biggest roadkill I'll ever see. There's no excuse, no way you can not see something of that size. We used to slaughter buffalo for their hides, now we do it because they are in our way. Further down the road a black bear was trotting along the treeline at the side of the road so I stopped and watched him for a few minutes and it cheered me up a bit.
I stopped at Liard for soup to warm up and a Harley rider heading north asked me if I'd seen any buffalo on my way south. Ohhhh yeah. I didn't have the time to stop at the hot springs at Liard, and given I'd also missed the hot springs at Chena due to post accident pain, I promised myself a dip at some point in the near future.
The rain had stopped but the wind was worse than any I'd encountered before, and the bike was being blown around like a toy yacht. My neck was getting tired because my helmet was acting like a sail. The northern Rocky mountains were now imposing companions for the road, and made the long run in to Fort Nelson much more bearable.
A pizza and some hot chocolate after stopping for the night in Fort Nelson warmed me up and prepared me for the longest ride on Thursday, to Prince George. I knew I had to make an early start, so I headed off at 8am in warm sunshine for once. It didn't last long, and got cold fairly quickly. After an enormous pile of bacon, eggs and pancakes I felt warm enough to continue, and I found that riding for two hours and then stopping to warm up worked pretty well. Just before Fort St John I left the Alaska highway and was glad of roads that went around corners again. I'd sort of forgotten how.
The scenery changed as the road wound into Peace valley. No more long green tunnels, the landscape was rural farmland and started to remind me of home, only on a bigger scale. Deciduous trees lined the road, deer skipped away at the sound of the bike approaching, horses roamed free, a solitary falcon perched on a hay bale. Through it all the river cut through thousands of years of rock strata, and I really felt I could live in a place like that. When I saw signs protesting plans to build a hydro electric dam in the area I was nearly speechless.
The minor road I was on turned into a major road again at Chetwynd, which was home to a bunch of chainsaw sculptures. "They're very famous" the girl at the visitor centre told me. Hmm, maybe they are in Chetwynd. Clever, artistic, but a bit cheesy was the vote of the English jury. Nil points.
The final couple of hours (oooh there I go measuring distances in time) into Prince George was spent riding through the familiar green tunnels, only for some reason the smell of pine was intense, like having air freshener jammed up your nostrils. Occasional lakes broke up the monotony. I finally rolled into Prince George just before 8pm, 12 hours and 822 kilometers/510 miles after I started. My butt will never forgive me.
Once Red 5 has been serviced I'll be heading into Alberta and the Rockies. But I don't plan on too many more 500 mile days.
Fraser.
2 comments:
I wound up doing about 4 of them on my trip. They do surely wear holes in your spirit.
You are right too about the Alcan. The first thing that I had to do when I got back was to have new tires put on. I had worn the rear tire flat around the centerline. Oisin also got new tires as his Knobbies were also worn flat around the middle. He made the change in Calgary. We had already split company by then.
Ride safe.
Jim
Your "smell of intense pine" was likely a stretch of Balsa Pine, if my experiences in the Adirondacks of upstate NY are on the mark. Yes, as in balsa wood, the stuff of hobby shops and model airplanes. As part of a trail improvement program I had the odd experience of being able to easily toss around logs of balsa measuring a yard+ in length and over a foot in diameter. The same log in oak would have been a guaranteed hernia after only an inch of lift....if that much.
Glad to hear you are reasonably in one piece after dumping your bike. Two small pieces of advice: "don't dump your bike, it hurts." and "whatever doesn't kill you, makes you scream OOOOOOOOOUCH!"
Safe Travels
Rob
Post a Comment