Day 11, Sunday July 17, 2011

This is the world famous Yukon Hotel. Don't laugh, I'm getting a bit remote now. However I will say the room was clean and it had hot water. What more do you need? Wifi? That was out of the question.











The evening we did manage to catch a rather nice rainbow. Right after I put the camera away it came as a complete arch. Very nice.













This guy was staying at the motel. This is a old Ural motorcycle with side car. He had it loaded. This is a unique machine in that it is two wheel drive with reverse. Not too many places you can't get into with this!










Just a different view of the Telsin River bridge.














Pushing north I reach the Yukon River. I thought is was large here, but was in for a surprise as to how large it gets up by Dawson City.











I didn't have any pre-conceived notions of what the Yukon was like. Needless to say, magnificent!














The roads are starting to break up now. Sometimes pavement and long stretches of gravel.












Wouldn't you agree?

















This is an area called the five fingers, although as hard as I tried I couldn't see the 'hand'. In the good old days a steamship used to take tourists up here from Whitehorse. That must of been some trip.










I came across this rig twice. A couple was using it to explore the back country. I think this redefines the notion of an off road vehicle.


I rolled into Dawson City rather late on a Sunday night. I wasn't too concerned about getting a room. Well, I missed the mark again. Turns out that Sunday was the last night of a 3 day music festival. You know the types, all of twenty something crowd 9like my daughter Jamie, sorry Jamie) blow into town with all of their possessions on their back and kind of take over an area. It was rather interesting though, some of the hair was quite colorful.

I had to try four different places before I could get a room for the night. Didn't expect to get much sleep with a music festival going on, all kinds of young people in town and in an area where it m.doesn't get dusk until 2 am. Turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, actually rather enjoyable.


Day 11 Telsin to Dawson City, Yukon Territory 464 miles

Day 10

It's a better day weather wise leaving Muncho Lake. It's warn and there isn't any rain in sight.

It wasn't too far down the raod when I came across some of these goats. I believe they are called Stome Mountain Goats and are unique to this area.








The road is good and the scenery remarkable. Too bad teh slight overcast mutes out the color in the pictures. It is really quite stunning.













The first stop of teh day is the Laird Hot Springs. This is a natural hot spring pool that have been left that way by the BP Parks . Outside of the walkway into the pool and some concrete slabs to sit on, it is undisturbed. Moving around the pool it's amazing how much diversity in temperature that exists in the pool. Some spots get so how you have to move on. Also, the temperatures vary in layers, which is rather interesting.





As it turns out, this is prime bear habitat. Speaking with one of the Rangers, they inform om that I shouldn't venture off into the woods as they have trip wires set up that fire bear spray as a deterrent to the bears. Hmmm, sounds like good advise, who needs a dose of bear spray.









I ran into the guys riding these machines at the springs. They were pilots from North Carolina on a 5 week adventure. They had been taking in some back country adventures on their dual sport bikes. Notice the gun case mounted on the back. They had a shotgun in there for bear protection.









Did I mention bears? I saw four or five today at decent distances. This was as close as I could get to any of them. It's a pretty decent sized brown bear who wasn't much too concerned about me.













Trucking down the road feeling good after the soak, I came across this big dude on the side of the road. Like the bear, he wasn't too impressed with me or my bike. These are a unique species of bison in this valley, with only 250 remaining. I was glad to get to see this one.








Oh, then there was the herd lurking around the next curve. They had the road jammed up for for an hour. They just kept pressing towards me and I had to regroup via u-turns 6 times. The old bulls weren't much of a concern but the cows with calves were and and the adolescent males thought it was mating season. A little too much action for me on the bike.






/
See how they are trying to outflank me? They would come up both sides of the road and then send the main herd up the center. AllI could do was give ground. Wow, talk about an adrenaline rush!













After all of the action with the bison, I stopped for a hike at this recreation area. The waterfall was a bit anticlimactic, but was very nice none the less.















Pushing on, I cross over from British Columbia into the Yukon. The vastness of the area is something to behold.


















Continuing on I reach the Telsin River. This is a large river with a grated bridge that is fun to cross. If you never have, you should try riding a motorcycle across open grates. Loads of fun.

The world famous Yukon Motel is just on the other side and that's where I grab a room for the night.







Day 10 Saturday July 16, 2011 337 miles

Day 9, July 15, 2011

I headed out for Muncho Lake this morning. I called ahead and got a room locked in for the night. It's another day of on and off rain. Here I'm stopping at the 200 km mark on the Alaska Highway.




This stretch of road gets deep into the mountains with 9 % grades. It's a lot of fun with no guardrails, fog, and rain. I was fortunate that when I reached Summit Lake it had stopped. The whole area surrounding Summit Lake is awesome. This in an area that you could come back to and set up a base camp and explore for a couple of weeks.



Summit Lake

I arrived at Muncho Lake without incident, even though I saw a couple of cow moose with calf's and my first Caribou siting. I saw the Caribou on two different occasions. They don't hang around long when you stop. Nor did the moose, I don't think they cared much for the bike with the calves there.


Muncho Lake turned out to be a cool place. They run all kinds of wilderness tours there. I had the misfortune of arriving there the same time that Bobby Knight was arriving with his entourage. He walls himself off from everyone there and is not very social. I did meet some of the people in his party. They were auto dealership owners, hotel property owners, etc. Something smells an awful like a boosters outing with the coach. I didn't mind so much except that had reserved the lounge for their private party and I couldn't even go in and get a drink. I did enjoy the lake anyway.



This was interesting.....very creative.


























I stayed at the only place there is to stay there, the Northern Rockies Lodge on Muncho Lake. It's a 14,000 sq. ft lodge. The weather wasn't very good so I didn't get many pics but here is a link to thier site if you want to see more of the area....


http://www.northernrockieslodge.com/daily_activities/


The people that own and run the lodge are Austrian I believe and they run a good kitchen. Dinner was fabulous.













Day 9 Fort St. John to Muncho Lake 412 miles