Uraling to Alaska - Day 14: Stuck in Watson Lake?

Late start today, went to do a short ride to warm things up so I could drain the final drive fluid and the accelerator cable behaved as if the portion leading to the junction with the throttle cables going to carburetors was broken!  Damn, thought somehow the cold had done it though it really hadn't been that cold overnight.

Ice-coated Valencia in the morning.

Luckily, I thought, I was carrying spare throttle cables!  I started dismantling things in order to get at the junction tube where the cables meet up.  In the process of yanking on things, I discovered the throttle cable was working again!  On the one hand, great!  On the other, I should have checked for frozen cables first before dismantling things and getting all my tools out!

So, I repacked everything, took Valencia for a warm up run and spent the time draining the still slightly contaminated FD oil and putting new oil until it ran clear out of the drain hole while I spun the rear wheel.

Buttoning her up, and packing up all my crap, I said goodbye to Allison and Don (the inn owners) and headed out around 10AM.  The roads were not bad at all in terms of snow coverage though there were stretches where it was snow-packed and caution was required.

I noticed my throttle wasn't returning to idle though, so I pulled over at a rest stop, worked the cables some more and sprayed some WD40 into the cable junction tube.  All seemed well after that!

I was now running over the same ground I'd covered yesterday afternoon before I discovered my wallet missing and noticed there were actually mountains visible now that the weather had cleared somewhat.

 Near Cottonwood Creek

It started lightly snowing about 50 kilometers south of the junction of the Cassiar Highway and the Alaskan Highway.  The roads started to get more and more snow-packed though still the were mostly clear so going was not impeded.

I thought, this stretch of snow would be the last.....how wrong I was.

So, now about 40 kilometers from the junction, it started snowing pretty heavily and the roads were completely snow-packed!  Valencia started acting a bit weird, her pusher tire doing a lot of fish-tailing.  Soon afterwards, while climbing a small hill, much more pronounced rumblings coming from the rear tire, rumblings I unfortunately knew only too well.  I had a flat tire.

I pulled over as much as I could, ended up in a spot just before a curve and with enough rooms for the occassional truck to get by me safely.  Dammit.

Due to angles and such, I could not get the rig onto its centerstand so I used my bottle jack instead.  I bit less safe but that was my only option.  Small issues, snow falling, cold tools all contributed to it taking over three hours before I got the pusher wheel swapped with the spare wheel (with a used tire on it).  

Yep, should have put a new tire on the stupid spare wheel, my fault and lazyiness.  Anyways, the air compressor's plug was missing parts, dammit, so I cut it off and rigged a new power connector using jumper cables.  What a pain, thankfully the air compressor worked and I inflated the spare AND it held it!

You see, in order to fit the new tire, you have to deflate it so you can squeeze it past obstructions.  It's a pain.

Anyways, three fun-filled hours later (during which no truck stopped, to include DOT trucks) and one cager later who did stop but had no tools.....I was done.  Packed everything back onto Valencia and proceeded onwards.  No way now for me to even try to get to Whitehorse, almost 500 km or 300 miles away.

I mentioned the spare wheel had a used tire right?  Traction was a bit hit or miss as the snow was now thicker on the ground.  I had to engage 2WD soon and it was pretty much that for the remaining kilometers till I got to the junction.  Man, that was a long, long, long 33 kilometers!  I sure didn't want to swap in a replacement inner tube by the damn side of the road!

Got to the junction, inquired there after amusing a couple of the locals by just being there on a sidecar in the middle of a snowstorm, and found out there was a mechanic 22 km away in Watson Lake, YT.

Off I went, heading away from Whitehorse along the Alaskan Highway.  Got gas first, then found the shop.  They said they didn't work on motorcycle tires!  Damn.  Still, one of the techs took pity on me and said he'd give it a shot.

Trouble was, he wasn't familiar with inner tubed tires and he managed to damage the first spare inner tube.  I took on a more active role from that point on and basically taught him how to change out the inner tube.  It was really the use of a semi-dry work bay that ended up being what I paid $20 for.  Oh well, inner tube changed out and now I theoretically have a working spare.

I left and found a room in a nearby motel: The Big Horn Motel.  Kind of pricy but when its snowing heavily outside and one is exhausted.....

Went to dinner, chatted with RichardM via text for weather conditions and such.  He thinks I should wait an additional day, I am not sure as the hotel clerk told me they don't plow on weekends unless conditions are really bad.

The "word" I heard is that the road to Whitehorse was a mess, lots of accidents and cars/trucks in ditches.  No proof or news coverage that I can find yet but that's the decision making environment I am presently in.

I examined, after dinner, my pusher's thread vice the repaired tire's thread, they're remarkably close which means I was not going to get more than say 5000 from the new tire I got in Washington!  Damn.

So, we'll see how things look in the morning.  I do have snow chains but really, can't go really fast.  RichardM said the roads were being shown as mostly clear on the way to Whitehorse, so if I can get clear of the snow around Watson Lake and the Junction, I might be golden.

Or

I could get stuck in bad conditions, have to camp out somewhere between Watson Lake and Whitehorse on the Alaskan Highway.  The forecast lows are within my expected parameters, but again, the decision is to be made in the morning.

I could, also put the new street tire on the pusher wheel but it's a street tire and probably just as good on snow as the worn knobby tires I have on the rig now.

Hopefully there's a motorcycle shop in Whitehorse where they can perhaps supply me with new inner tubes to keep as spares and maybe swap in my new tire.  What would be great is if they have new tires that I can use but the odds of that are slim.

More tomorrow.  Wish me luck.  

Previously: Losing my wallet and phone near Dease Lake BC

Uraling to Alaska - Day 13: Dease Lake and the Lost Wallet/Phone Incident

Wow, what a day.  Truly a "luck" day, given the date.  Still, I must have done something right in a previous life as it all turned out well in the end!

I woke up to a gently falling rain in Hyder, Alaska.  I'd slept nice and warm inside my tent, no water leakage and temperatures didn't get too cold, 39F is the recorded low!

Still, it was a chore to pack everything up, most of it getting wet and now sitting outside in still more rain/snow in Dease Lake, BC.  I am hoteling it tonight, but there's good reasons for it as I shall explain later.

So, I left Hyder under even cloudier skies than yesterday, the nearby mountains' bases were barely visible in the thick fog which would be my traveling companion all the way to the Bell 2 service area on the Cassiar Highway.

Funny thing, as I went through Canadian customs one more time, the agent remarked that she'd seen my photo on Tom's facebook page!   Tom, as I mentioned in the previous posting, was the Hyder resident who'd helped me out by allowing me the use of the parking lot of a building he maintains.

I rode in at times pretty thick fog and lightly falling rain all the way back to the junction of BC 37A and BC 37 which I took northbound (This is the Stewart-Cassiar Highway).

 Small Glacier

 Foggy Day

I rode on the Cassiar Highway, northbound, not seeing much in terms of wildlife and darn sure not seeing much in terms of scenic mountains as the low cloud ceiling and fog conspired to hide things from me.

The weather did clear up a bit as I gained altitude and I was finally able to get some mountain shots but still, the weather proved quite the downer.  It wasn't too cold though, from low to high 30s depending on the altitude.  I was wearing my heated vest so it was a cozy ride for me for the most part.

 As you can see, the weather cleared off and on all day long.

 I passed several lakes today, most of the still frozen and snow-covered.

Took this shot 79 kilometers north of Dease Lake, I had been riding 

towards the border with the Yukon Territory when I stopped because I 

saw something flapping loose when I looked to the left at something else.

So, the Cassiar Highway is now paved all the way to the junction with the Alaskan Highway I am told.  I will tell you that it's got frost heaved sections that make life a bit bumpy when riding.

At the last shot above, when I went to check to see what was flapping in the wind, I discovered to my horror that the zippered compartment where I had been stashing my wallet and cellphone in a waterproof box was open and all the contents were gone!

I quickly turned around and started racing back towards the Dease Lake service station where I thought initially I'd failed to secure the zippers and it had fallen out there.  It was the longest 79 kilometers I've ridden in a very long time!  As I rode, and encountered the frost heaved sections once again, I developed a theory that perhaps the zippers had come apart slowly, and soon the box fell out without me noticing.

I rode fast, in snowy conditions at times, scanning the side of the road for the box.  No luck.

I arrived back to the Dease Lake Service Station and asked the clerk if anyone had turned in my wallet and iPhone.  My heart sank when she said no.  Totally discouraged now, I walked out to the parking lot and retraced the track on foot leading back to BC37.  Nothing.

I was standing there, at the junction, when a guy in a pickup truck pulled up and rolled down his window.  I figured he was just checking on a person looking lost.  His name turned out to be Don and he was the owner of the local hotel, the Northway Motor Inn.  He asked if I was riding the orange sidecar rig and was I looking for my wallet?  

My face must have registered shock as he smiled and I recall him saying: "I'm about to make your day!"

Turns out, he wasn't the one who found the wallet and phone but it was a couple from Washington State who spotted the contents of my wallet and my phone lying scattered on the road about 7 miles north of Dease Lake!  The couple had just checked into the Northway Motor Inn and Allison, Don's wife had phoned the RCMP for them to come pick up my stuff!  Don connected all the dots when he spotted me searching for my stuff by the side of the road!

What are the odds right?

After thanking Don, I hurried over to the RCMP station which just happened to be next to the nearby hotel and met Constable Smith who had been in the act of calling my insurance company to try and get a contact number for me!  He'd been unable to unlock my phone, which survived the crash just fine due to having been in the watertight case, and had been going the extra mile and calling my insurance company to find a way to contact me!  

I got all my stuff back, to include cash and such, though both my credit cards were damaged, one was in pieces and the other's magnetic strip card no longer worked.  Thanking the constable, I then headed over to the gas station to fuel up again (that's where I discovered the magnetic strip was damaged) and ran into Carl, the driver who with his wife Dinni had seen my iphone on the road, stopped, and retrieved all the contents of the wallet!

After talking with Carl for a bit, he was refueling his truck in readiness for continuing the drive down to where they live in Wilkeson, WA, we agreed to meet in the Northway Motor Inn's lobby so I could meet his wife Dinni and thank her as well.  It had been mainly her sharp eyes that spotted my cellphone.  They had also figured it must have come off my rig as they'd spotted me on the way down as I headed North and one of the items they found was a bungee cord which had been in the storage bag.  All this they told Don, who put everything together in a split-second as he was driving out of his hotel and spotted me!

After they figured out how to enter my credit card number manually at the gas station, I went over to the Inn and met with everyone involved in saving my trip.

Don and his wife Allison, owners of the Northway Motor Inn

Carl, Dinni and yours truly after we'd had dinner together.

Folks, the above people I met through the unlucky happenstance of losing my wallet and cellphone, while traveling in a different country, were the highlight of the day and probably of the whole month!

Carl is retired from the National Park Service, where he'd been stationed as part of the Mount Rainier National Park unit.  He ended his career managing the trail teams that play the important role of maintaining the park's trails, having worked his way up from seasonal worker and up the ranks!

I had dinner with them, and he told me of his life's work which he enjoyed (how many people can say that eh?), Dinni told me about how they'd made the trip to Sealy, Alaska over about five consecutive Februarys as that's Carl's time off; to build a cabin there near her sister.  Dinni also has a sister (Corrine R.) in Boulder, CO (again, what are the odds of that?) who's a hard core bicyclist, who in her 50's had just completed a ride in South America all by herself, one of many foreign countries rides.

Carl and Dinni also told me of their travels, how they'd seen the hundreds of Tundra Swan in Swan Haven in the Yukon Territory, and of their favorite motel in Fairbanks, the Golden North.  I hope to be able to find and visit these places.  Dinner over (and they refused to let me pay for it, such good Samaritans), we headed back to the hotel and chatted some more with Allison and Don, the proprietors.

Stories were told of other guests they'd helped out and of interesting travelers they'd met over the years.  The Northway Motor Inn is the kind of place weary travelers like me are fortunate to find.  Like I told Don, I was fated to spend the night here, so I could not only meet him and Allison but also the saviors of my trip, Dinni and Carl!

Oh, and such a great Inn that Allison and Don run, when I asked him about the town's laundromat, he told me it was closed already but no problem!  Just use the inn's laundry room's dryer to dry my wet clothes from yesterday!  Is that service or what?  Really, if you're on the Cassiar Highway, consider using their place, their  inn is not the soul-less corporate run motel so prevalent these days.  The stories they told us, showed they care about their guests and their experiences at their inn.

What a day huh?

My profound thanks to Dinni and Carl for their sharp eyes and actions on the road.  My thanks as well to Don for his quick thinking and Allison for her assistance with the RCMP!  I truly was fortunate today to meet them, even though the way it happened was a bit on the stressful side for the time it took me to ride back the 79 kilometers back to Dease Lake!

I would buy a lottery ticket but I think I used up all my luck for the foreseeable future today!

Previously: Uraling to Alaska - Day 12: Houston to Hyder, AK

Uraling to Alaska - Day 12: Houston to Hyder, AK

Well, I made it to Alaska!  Hyder, Alaska that is....its the state's most southernmost city but it still counts!

 Leaving Houston, home of the world's largest fishing pole or something

 Fog and clouds shrouded the mountains along the road to Kitwanga

where the turnoff for Hwy 37 is, marking the southern end of the Cassiar Highway

 Looking back at the mountains from just north of the southern end of the Cassiar Highway

I saw a small bear off the side of the road shortly after this picture, he ran away.

 At the Indian town of  Gitanyow, home of the World Famous Totem Poles

As I had avoided the PetroCanada fuel station at the junction of Hwy 37 and Hwy 16 due to both Bobskoot and SonjaM having said the gas had too much sulfur, I ran out of gas again on the way to the junction of Hwy 37A, the road to Hyder and Stewart!  I of course had my spare cans of gas so no issues there even after I discovered the gas pumps at Meziadin Junction were not working in terms of accepting credit cards.

I made it to Hyder around 2:00PM I think.  I went to check the rates at the Sealaska Motel but it was still closed for the season.  The lady in charge told me I was a bit early and most everything, to include the local campgrounds were closed.

She then said for me to just pitch a tent out back behind the motel buildings as I was just staying the night.  How cool is that?

Two fellows who were there were doing a bit of UDF so I asked them if they knew someone who'd let me borrow some dry floorspace to change Valencia's fluids (yep, it's been 2500 km already).  They pointed out the house of a guy who used to be a mechanic but when I checked, the bay was not available.  :(

However, as I was checking, this gentleman by the name of Tom was outside taking pictures of Valencia and of me as we talked.  He mentioned he was the maintenance man for a local building just a few blocks away and that I was welcome to use the parking lot to do the fluid changes.

It was only sprinkling very very lightly and with temperatures in the low 40s

it was not a bad experience at all!

I took him up on the offer and he left me to my own devices, I used the rubber ground cloth (ex-army poncho) and about an hour later had changed out the engine, transmission and final drive oils.  The FD oil looked like it had water contamination though so I flushed it out with some new oil and will probably drain it again tomorrow night.

Maintenance done, I wandered back and forth between the towns of Stewart (Canada) and Hyder (AK), going through Canadian Customs twice but not once through US customs as there isn't a station before the town of Hyder!  The locals told me there hasn't been a US customs presence here since the 70s!

 Looking back towards the Canadian border and the customs building

 That's the Sealaska Inn where I am "staying" in back off....

hope it doesn't get too cold tonight!

 Interior shots of the Glacier Inn

Home of the Hyderization Process

I didn't partake, it's basically "white lightning" in large quantities

 The walls of the bar were coverd in bills, with writings/names of folks

who've visited the bar and presumably got "hyderized"

 The outside of the Glacier Inn

 Shots of the dock area of Hyder, it's at the end of a long road

and its quite scenic I imagine when the weather is clearer.

 The town of Hyder is straight ahead in the distance.

Hopefully, the weather will be clearer tomorrow so I can take pictures of the dimly glimpsed mountains that surround Stewart and Hyder!

Previously: Uraling to Alaska - Day 11: Clinton to Houston BC

Uraling to Alaska - Day 11: Clinton to Houston, B.C.

Full day of riding today, covered 705 kilometers or 438 miles, for those of you who are metrically challenged, according to googlemaps.  It was perhaps 10 hours on the road, no stops but for gas and half-hearted attempts to stop for the night.

Left the Village of Clinton around 8:25 AM, and from there it was pretty much dull highway riding British Columbia's Highway 97 towards Prince George.  Smooth sailing for the most part except early on in the ride when this moron in a truck decided he needed to tailgate me as I rode along at 100 km/h.  This was the posted limit but I guess he really was in a hurry.

I ended up pulling over onto the shoulder of the road and he rushed past me....probably rushing back to sleep with his mother, or perhaps he was late for his new job as standard bearer for professional driving habits.

That idiot gone, the rest of the day was straight up riding.  I arrived in Prince George and turned westward on Canada Highway 16 towards Vanderhoof.  I saw a sign there saying the geographical center of B.C. was nearby but kept right on riding.

Somewhere between Vanderhoof and Fraser Lake, I spotted my first moose of the trip.  I think it was a cow as it lacked a rack so to speak.  It was moving towards the road in front of me (maybe 100 meters) when I saw it and it saw me.  It stopped short and quickly turned away from the road.  In the meantime I had been rapidly slowing the rig while keeping an eye on the moose and the other eye on the truck behind me....luckily he'd seen the moose and my brake lights and had also slowed down.  Big moose too, looked taller than the rig!

Next up was Burns Lake where I thought I would stop but then I pulled a "wimpy adventurer" move.

You see, the internet at the visitor center wasn't working and the office was closed.  I texted Martha and asked her for assistance but she was tied up helping the boys with homework.  The "camp site" run by the city of Burns Lake was a muddy, unattended mess so it wasn't an option to me.

Girding my loins, and after apologizing to my wife for being such a wimp, I headed west once again towards Topley which proved a dump and so I continued onwards to Houston, B.C.  The RV Park east of Houston was shut down for the season (yep, there's an emerging pattern here) and the first hotel I tried wanted too much.  I tried the hotel further west but still in town and the price proved bearable.

Houston is home of the world's biggest fishing rod apparently, I saw it as I moved through town but didn't find it very photogenic; maybe I was just hungry and tired.  I'll try and remember to go to it tomorrow morning before hitting the trail again.

Martha later advised that apparently campgrounds don't open around here till first of May.  Sigh.  I'd seen some campsites further south which were open but I guess as I move north, they are still not open yet.

Still, although no pictures, made good progress.  I am within striking distance of the start of the Steward--Cassiar Highway.  This is B.C. Highway 37 and it looks like Kitwanga, B.C. is at its southern end.

How shall I sum up what I saw today?  Pine forests on both sides of the two lane highway, with rolling hills and not much in terms of scenery.  Snow was evident (sometimes a lot) on the fields on the side of the road once I started heading westward on Canada 16.  Not much else to report, scenery-wise I found it unremarkable.  I hope things get better tomorrow in terms of scenery.