Where the heck have we been??

Goodness, Gracious! It has been way too long since there have been any additions! All our “groupie followers” must be ready to disown Kevin and me. I can tell you where we are right now, Malta, Montana, in a motel room that is infested with mosquitoes since ‘someone’ left the door open too long and now we are seeing how our aim with face towels are with the pesky buggers. We have decided (been ordered, actually) to make Indianapolis and the end of this journey by Sunday, the 23rd of August. Today we rode 488 miles, plus or minus one or two. There will be more of these long days from here on out to make the deadline mentioned above.

Since leaving Dawson City, we traveled to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, looking for a campsite for the night. We had heard that there was a public campground there which we thought would be reasonably priced since it was ‘public’. Right! Tent spaces were $18 Canadian, and, oh, if you put another tent on the same space it would be another $18 please, and thank you. Whitehorse rules, you know. Well, according to Kevin and Larry’s rules that would not do, and since Teslin Lake was only 100 miles away in the direction we had to go anyway, we started off. If you remember, we had stayed at this beautiful place on our way north and knew we would be welcomed at half the price and had free showers and internet which the Whitehorse one wanted to charge extra for.

My front tire was wearing very badly, I changed my worn out knobby for Kevin’s old street tire which we had been carrying around. Then we started down the road towards Watson Lake and the Cassiar Highway.

The Cassiar is a pretty good road, but we had been warned that there were long stretches between gas stops. We checked the map given to us at one of the tourist places and decided that we could fill up at Watson Lake., then Cassiar, then Dease Lake, which is about half way down this road. Were we surprised to learn that the ‘town’ of Cassiar is no longer there, even though it is still on the map. Seems it had bee bought out, lock, stock and barrel, and the name had been changed to Jade City. You guessed it, we blew right through there, thinking our gas stop must be just around the next bend. It never happened, but we still made it to Dease Lake on the fumes that remained in the tanks.

We decided to motel it that night and ran into a fellow Army man that was riding his Harley to his next duty station in Texas. It was nice to meet him again, since we shared a meal earlier in the week, now we decided to share the road also since we were all going towards Hyder, our next, and last, Alaska destination. Hyder is the most southerly place on Alasaka’s map that can be driven to, and, since we had already been to the most northerly Alaska road, this was a natural decision.

We parted company with Scott there in Hyder and headed towards Jasper and Banff National Parks in Alberta and British Columbia. These two parks are a must see for anyone who enjoys beautiful scenery. We have put pictures of these parks on the Flickr link. One great view after another….judge for yourself.

Coming into the USA at the border was a little unusual as the Border Patrol detained Kevin for a bit. Seems an Indiana car license plate with exactly the same numbers as his motorcycle plate was reported stolen, so, of course, it took almost an hour and a squad of para-military types to come the decision that this was not the guy they wanted.

Today we left Troy, Montana and a pleasant night plus a few hours with Dawna and Peter Stenros, one of my wife’s (Ada) cousins and their family. We were treated like celebrities (we are, really, aren’t we?) and we’re sorry we could not have stayed longer, but duty and Indianapolis were calling. So, here we are, 488 miles later in Malta, Montana. By my reckoning we have traveled about 8,500 miles on motorcycles since July 7th, when we left Indiana.