Day 12 - Fort Nelson, BC to Watson Lake, YT

It was a beary, beary nice day for a ride today ;-). For only the second time on this trip, we did not need to put on our rain gear to head out in the morning – either because of the liquid sunshine or because of the cold. It was just over 12C when we left Fort Nelson, and by the time we arrived in Watson Lake, in the Yukon, the temperature was about 25C.

It was a day full of wonderful scenery, a lot of wildlife viewings right up close and personal – bears (black and brown), wood bison and mountain goats in particular – and although there will be plenty of pictures posted, they truly don’t do justice to the beauty that we saw.

Parts of the Alaska Highway are constantly being worked on and we did encounter a portion – about 8-10 kms long – where the dust was so thick from the vehicles in front of us that it made it nearly impossible to see in front, or behind you. Other parts of this portion of the highway are in great shape and then there are others were the tar and chip repairs aren’t very bike friendly.

There was just one other little incident today as we were turning around at the Whirlpool Canyon Viewpoint – LiB decided that she wanted to play in the mud (hidden by the shade of the trees around it) and down, gently down, she went. Thankfully, the driver, the passenger and LiB herself were all just fine.

We stopped at the Toad River Lodge for fuel and lunch and the reality of the remoteness of the area really hit home – they had not received their shipment of food, so they had no potatoes, no mayo, no tomatoes, etc …

We did see quite a few other bikes on the road, most of them dual sport bikes and ran into a bicyclist who started off in Whitehorse and is riding to Newfoundland, hoping to do it all in 3 months. We also

talked to a fellow from New York riding a Yamaha that has done 10,000 miles in the past week! As we neared our destination, the highways takes you into the Yukon and then immediately back into BC three times before eventually dropping us off in Watson Lake and the Big Horn Hotel (for Brian, Jana, Vicki and I) and at the Cedar Lodge Motel for Joe and Romy.

Dinner was next door to our hotel at Andrea’s Restaurant. After our meal, we walked down the street to check out a real cool local spot, The Sign Post Forest, where I’m thinking around 100,000 different signs have been posted. This was something that a local started in 1942 and over the years it has grown and grown!

We have now travelled as far as Milepost 613 (MP 980 km) on the Alaska Highway since our departure from Dawson Creek’s Mile 0.
Wildlife sightings today: 1 elk (very dead), 17 black bears, 3 brown bears, lots of mountain goats, a couple of heads of wood bison and a few stragglers, a couple of whitetail deer, a couple of hawks, and more and more crows.

For the day, we logged just over 527 kms, bringing the total for the trip to just over 6,257 kms. With all the great scenery and wildlife we saw today, trying to pick put just a few pictures for displaying here was rather a difficult, but pleasant, task