|
Day5 Wed July 20th, 435 miles
I was ready to leave around six thirty in the morning but I had to wait for Chad to open up his gas station so I could fuel up. This morning there was a whining sound coming from the fuel pump indicating some dirt in the fuel filter. I rode East on the 37A back to the Cassiar highway. I had breakfast at Meziadin Junction, it had started raining already and this rain would continue on and off throughout the day. From Meziadin Junction I headed 59 miles North to Bell II which was the next gas station. The road was getting muddy and slippery, the 500 pound loaded GS was fishtailing and there was still 300 miles to go. It took a few miles to get comfortable with the handling of the bike under the road conditions and rode on. There were low clouds, it was raining most of the time and you seldom saw other traffic on the Cassiar. I rode on to the next gas stop at Dease Lake. It was around Dease Lake that I came around a bend and there was a bus sized RV in the ditch to the right of the road. The front of the RV had been ripped open and there was an older woman sitting inside with blood all over her face. Two other motorists were helping and I pulled over to assist, a trucker also pulled up ran towards me and asked me to ride up four kilometers to a construction site where they would have radios or a satellite phone and let them know that they needed help. I rode up the highway to the construction site, asked if they had radios and told them about the accident. She pointed to one of the others and said that he was a trained first responder, they shutdown the equipment and went to the accident. There were now several other people at the accident site, there was nothing else I could do so I continued on my journey. A few miles up I passed an ambulance heading towards the accident. I got gas from Dease Lake and some miles later rode into a hail storm, the ice was the size of peanuts but boy was it loud inside the helmet as it came down. Towards the end of the Cassiar highway I saw a sign welcoming me to the Yukon Territories of Canada. The front of my bike was covered with the remains of a thousand mosquitoes and various other insects that lost the game of Chicken with the bike. The underside of the bike was covered in mud which contained Calcium Chloride which is used to control dust on the gravel roads. I would wash this off at the next car wash to avoid any corrosion. About 6:00 PM I came upon the Alaska Highway, I was tired and I headed east out of my way towards Watson Lake. Watson Lake was a very small place but it is famous for having a Sign Post Forrest where road signs from all over the world are nailed on to hundreds of posts and arranged like trees in a forest. At the Northern Lights Center in town there were public internet terminals you could use. |
|
|
Off cassair hwy heading to Stewart |
|
 |
 |
| |
 |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
Miles and Miles of Gravel |
|
 |
|
| |
 |
|
| |
 |
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
