How do you find Alaska? Just drive north from Vancouver? Sorry, that's not where the roads go. We have now covered some 1700 miles, and are still a good day away from Alaska. We began by heading east, then north east, then north, and today we spent all day riding due west from Watson Lake to get to Whitehorse. We even crossed the state line back into British Columbia (BC) from Yukon.
We crossed a section of road that had been seriously washed out by floodwaters, and was being reinstated. A truckie told us that he had spent 4 days waiting for the road to be reopened. Time is money here, and there is a lot of traffic, particularly trucks, on this road. The crew had recently got the road to the point where traffic could use it temporarily, and were busy building a diversion onto a portable bridge span to allow the reconstruction of the original road and cleaning up the mess when we got there. They had just retrieved an armco steel pipe culvert that had been reconfigured in the washaway, flattened as easily if it were made of cardboard. (I know people who understand that stuff). I though this was an impressive response to a difficult and critical situation, but probably just routine for the people who work in this tough part of the world.
A rest day was called for in Whitehorse. And for a change, we tried a BnB, which was quite pleasant. The weather actually improved as well. It was actually nice to get off the bikes for a while and do some walking around to ease the muscles, and generally relaxing. Whitehorse is a pleasant enough town, with an interesting history, and a fair bit to look at. But its back to work tomorrow, and this time we head north west and should make the border. We have decided that weather forecasts here are nothing more than each way bets. It will be cloudy but with sunny periods. It might rain, it might not, but it probably will. That sort of thing. It couldn't get much worse than what we've had, so we will take it as it comes.
We crossed a section of road that had been seriously washed out by floodwaters, and was being reinstated. A truckie told us that he had spent 4 days waiting for the road to be reopened. Time is money here, and there is a lot of traffic, particularly trucks, on this road. The crew had recently got the road to the point where traffic could use it temporarily, and were busy building a diversion onto a portable bridge span to allow the reconstruction of the original road and cleaning up the mess when we got there. They had just retrieved an armco steel pipe culvert that had been reconfigured in the washaway, flattened as easily if it were made of cardboard. (I know people who understand that stuff). I though this was an impressive response to a difficult and critical situation, but probably just routine for the people who work in this tough part of the world.
A rest day was called for in Whitehorse. And for a change, we tried a BnB, which was quite pleasant. The weather actually improved as well. It was actually nice to get off the bikes for a while and do some walking around to ease the muscles, and generally relaxing. Whitehorse is a pleasant enough town, with an interesting history, and a fair bit to look at. But its back to work tomorrow, and this time we head north west and should make the border. We have decided that weather forecasts here are nothing more than each way bets. It will be cloudy but with sunny periods. It might rain, it might not, but it probably will. That sort of thing. It couldn't get much worse than what we've had, so we will take it as it comes.
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