Day Six | Riding North

Day Six

Left Dease Lake about 8:30 AM heading to Teslin in the Yukon Territory. While packing up in the parking lot we met Ford from the UK who is riding solo and heading for Inuvik then to Nova Scotia on his BMW. He had planned to do the trip with friends but everyone else couldn’t make it due to wives and work. He asked to join us as we were heading the same direction so we had a 4^th until we turned off to Skagway and he headed to Whitehorse.

The morning was clear and cool riding in the shadows of the trees in the morning. We stopped about 20 miles down the road so David and I could put our jackets on and warm back up.

Stopped at Jade City to see if I could find something for Judi. Didn’t find anything I could carry on the bike but there were lots of stones she would like I’m sure.

There was a big fire along the way a few years ago. I stopped to shoot a photo at a small lake and Marcus and Ford who had been a ways behind came by with an RCMP following close on Marcus. The speed limit most places is 100k or 62 mph, we were usually going a bit faster. The RCMP had been sitting t Jade City when we left so he must have been driving pretty fast to catch up to us in his Yukon.

The roads were good with only a few very short patches of gravel. We had a short stop for a construction site as we headed to Waston Lake for gas, lunch and the sign post forest, there more than 70,000 signs in the sign post forest.

Had lunch at Kathy’s Café, filled up and wandered around the forest for awhile before setting off towards Teslin.

The forecast for the day was 60% chance of thunderstorms, and all we had gotten were a few sprinkles as the rain seemed to miss us. The cooling effect was nice though as it was in the 80’s again.

Got to Teslin about 5 PM, it was warm, muggy, and full of mosquitos. Skagway was 150 miles so we decided to head there for the night. Of course shortly after Teslin it started pouring. David was wearing a t-shirt and I had a light piece of fleece on, we were both getting wet though not cold. Stopped after about 15-20 miles to put on our jackets and Ford added his goretex liner, as thunder crackled above us. A little while later we parted with Ford as we turned off towards Tagish and Skagway and he headed on to Whitehorse.

Got to Skagway about 8, it’s a beautiful ride down the canyon. Found a hotel, grabbed some dinner and got a shower. We’ll start it all over again tomorrow. Our original plan was to take the ferry to Haines and head up from there but I think we’ll head to Beaver Creek from here on Thursday as the ferry to Haines isn’t until later afternoon.