 This old boy was gorging himself on daisies behind the visitor center. 2000/07/24 Glacier National Park USA - Montana |
 This is another view of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. At the north east end of the Road is a town called Saint Mary's. We stopped there for an ice cream cone and ran into a guy (Scott DeMuth) from my home town (Papillion, NE). Scott recommended that we take highway 93 up to Banff rather than taking the four-lane highway 2 through Calgary. It turned out to be a good tip. To get on hwy 93, we had to take highway 2 as far as Fort McLeod, Alberta, then we got on highway 3 west, which is also a scenic road and in great condition. 2000/07/24 Glacier National Park USA - Montana |
 Hwy 3 took us as far as Sparwood, Alberta where we camped at the Mountain Shadows Campground on the south end of town. I highly recommend this campground if you are passing through Sparwood. It costs $12.00 per site, free firewood, and has clean, hot showers and many trees. Sparwood's claim to fame is it is the "home of the worlds largest truck." 2000/07/24 Canada - Alberta - Sparwood |
 From Sparwood, we followed highway 3 southwest and caught hwy 93 at Elko. I like how they still us pretty young college girls as 'Flagmen' for the highway contruction zones in Canada. It helps to make the cars slow down and makes the whole experience a little more pleasant for everybody. Highway 93 is a scenic two-lane that follows the valley of the Kootenay River through the Purcell Mountains. At the town of Radium Hot Springs. hwy 93 separates from hwy 95, winds through some sheer rock walls and switch back roads in the Kootenay National Park, then proceeds through Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. Somewhere north of Lake Louise it began to rain. Hard and cold. The view of the glacier at the north end of Banff was spectacular, but it was too cold and wet to stop to take a picture. Russ's comment later was "If anybody wants to see the glacier, they're just going to have to come up here." As we passed the glacier in the rain, there was snow a stone's throw from the road. By the time we got to Jasper, Alberta, to rain had stopped, so, after loading up on coffee and hot cocoa, we decided to proceed west on hwy 16 to the town of McBride, British Columbia. After being wet and cold most of the day, we opted for the civilized accomodations at the North Country Lodge in McBride. As we were standing in the lobby checking in, another biker rode up. Heidi, who was on her way south from Alaska, was riding a 1997 Buell that had 49.000 miles on it and Alaska was the 49th state she had ridden it to.She had stories of moose on the road, some guy getting eaten by a grizzly bear, etc. It all seemed pretty exciting at this point. 2000/07/24 Canada - Alberta Canada - British Columbia |
 Highway 16 took us northwest from McBride, BC to Prince George, BC. Riding north from Prince George on hwy 97, we began to encounter more wildlife. Just 18 miles north of Prince George, there was a Black Bear on the right-hand shoulder of the road. I wanted to stop and get a picture but when he heard the "click" of my shifter as I downshifted, he ran off into the brush. A little further up the road at McLeod Lake there are Mountain Goats and Dahl Sheep along the road. Beware of the tourist who are watching the animal rather than the road. Somewhere just north of McLeod Lake when we stopped for gas and a snack, we met a young lady on a Kawasaki Ninja. It was a blast tearing up the broad sweepers and tight bends of hwy 97 with her. When we got to Chetwynd, all I could say was "I want to do that again." From Chetwynd we could have chose to take the easy way through Dawson Creek, but we elected instead to take the Hudson's Hope Highway (hwy 29) north and pick up the Alaska Highway at Fort St. John. Going this way we miss mile marker zero of the Alaska Highway which is at Dawson Creek,but we can see that on the way home. Highway 29 was fun but not quite as well maintained as the roads we had been riding up to now. It switch-backs up the mountain with 10% grades and, at one point, we came aroud a curve to find that about a tent of a mile of the road HAD SLID OFF THE MOUNTAIN! Fortunately there was a Flagman or we might have slid off the mountain as well. 2000/07/26 Canada - British Columbia |
 On the Alaska Highway at last. The little stone monument behind the bikes is a tribute to the Surveyors who layed out the Alaska Highway. The surface of the highway is made by spraying down a layer of tar or seal-coat and then putting chipped up shale on top of it. They roll the rock in a little bit, but they depend on the tires of the cars to finish the job, so when the surface is fresh it can be loose and gravelly. Even when it is not loose, the surface is very abrasive and hard on tires. A mechanic told me that 85% of the flat tires that he fixes are just a rock off of the highwy that has gone right into the tire, almost always a rear tire. Sometimes it made me laugh because you would bump along for miles on a particularly irregular section of road and then you would come to a "Bump in Road" sign marking a relatively minor wave in the surface of the highway. Or you would weave through twisties for an hour , then come to on of those yellow "Curve" signs marking a nice gentle sweeper. Occasionally they post a large ominous looking sign that says "Slow - Dangerous Curve." I would look at the curve and tell myself that it'll be OK as long as there is no loose gravel. Then, half way through the curve, there would be another sign that says "Loose Gravel." That one would really made the old grommet pucker. 2000/07/27 Alaska Highway Canada - British Columbia |
 Sometimes, on the Alaska Highway, you just had to stop and take a picture. 2000/07/27 Alaska Highway Canada - British Columbia |
 This time of year and this far north, if it gets this dark it's usually a bad sign. Between Prophet River and Fort Nelson, we had serious thunder showers on our left, severe thunder storms behind us headed our way, and dark clouds overhead with an occasional drop of rain on the windshield to remind us of the urgency of the situation. The only thing to do was focus on the clear skies ahead and ride. It was seventy-five to eighty miles per hour on fresh seal-coat and loose gravel to out run the storm, but we beat it and broke out under blue skies a few kilometers before Fort Nelson, BC. As the storms were fast approaching we opted for dry beds at the Shannon Motel in Fort Nelson in lieu of setting up the tents in the rain. 2000/07/27 Alaska Highway Canada - British Columbia |
 Going west from Fort Nelson, the Alaska Highway is designated Hwy 97. Somewhere along this stretch of the highway, a young moose almost ran into Russ. The road around Muncho Lake is excellent riding, nice fouth-gear twisties through high rock walls, well banked, good surface. Gas is a little more scarce between Fort Nelson and Watson Lake, two of the stations we stopped at were out of gas. From Watson Lake to the Alaska border the Alaska Highway is Hwy 1. We hada lot of rain today but thankfully it let up shortly before Whitehorse, Yukon. The road gets real good a hundred or so miles east of Whitehorse, more asphalt than seal-coat and cold-patch. Whitehorse is a relatively large metropolis that sort of pops out of nowhere, a vestige of the gold rush I lthink. Just west of Whitehorse we camped at the Takhini Campground, on the shore of the Takhini River. For $10.00 you get a nice campsite with good shade, but there is no running water. Guests are allowed to bath in the natural hot springs. We arrived a little after 10:00pm, it's hard to keep track of time when the sun never sets. The campground office closes at 10:00, so we just picked a site and paid in the morning. One of the other campers noticed our bikes and asked if we were on some kind of an epic journey or something. She had just finished reading "Jupiter's Travel's," which is Ted Simon's biography of his trip around the world on a motorcycle. I had recenly read the same book so we chatted about that for a while and said goodbye. It's cool to be compared to Ted Simon. 2000/07/28 Alaska Highway Canada - British Columbia Canada - Yukon |
 As I said, sometimes you just gotta stop and take a picture. 2000/07/28 Alaska Highway Canada - British Columbia |
 The people in Canada have been super freindly. Last night in the Takhini campground we didn't have any paper to get our fire started, so a School Teacher from Juno, who was camping with his son and a dog named Monkey in a WV van, invited us to share their fire. They were traveling around to various hot springs to camp and bath. We talked untill midnight and it was still light out. This perpetual sunlight seems to throw my internal clock off. The fire felt good, though, after riding all day in the rain. The ride around Destruction Bay was fun and very scenic. The road surface gets worse west of there, and there was a lot of construction between Destruction Bay and the Alaska border. The last 120 miles east of Alaska was the worst part of the Alaska Highway. Average speed was about 40 mph through there. At 96.9 cents Canadian per litre, the gas at Destruction Bay was the costliest of the entire trip. 2000/07/28 Alaska Highway Canada - Yukon |