Cruising toward Whitehorse

Day 22. Watson Lake to Rancheria, Yukon. Distance 75 mi. My distance 64 mi.

Good day. Not too anything - not too hot, cold, windy or hilly, with good roads most of the time, and I saw a grizzly bear.

The total miles of the trip so far are 2127. I've ridden 1560 mi. The difference is entirely due to the RV driving I've done.

As you can see, we continue to have marvelous scenery. Those are the Rockies behind me to the west. We will cross the Continental Divide tomorrow for the 2nd time, but this time we're so far north, the rivers flow either to the Arctic Ocean (on the east side) or to the Bering Sea (on the west side). However, the elevation at the Divide is not very high - only 3200 ft or so. That's about what it was when I crossed the Divide by bike in New Mexico in 2007 when I rode across the country.

Here's another shot of our scenery today. It's so wonderful to take a bike ride along this route.

We ran into two young German women riding bikes loaded down with all their stuff, since they are self supporting. I asked them where they're headed. Buenos Aires!! They just began three days ago in Whitehorse (where we'll be in two days), and they have only about 7500 miles to go.

I was the first driver today. The other four left, and then I actually washed the motorhome! The campgrounds always have strict rules against washing your RVs, but the one last night had a special RV wash station, with a high-pressure hose. After three weeks, it was pretty darned dirty, with bugs stuck to the front too. Well, I got it all clean. I then drove to a turnout, and got on my bike and rode back to them, all of two miles. But I rode a bit more, and then drove the RV to the 38-mi lunch stop and got in a longer ride for a total of 21 miles. So, I "lost" only 11 miles of the day's total instead of the entire 38-mi distance to the lunch stop. See how it works? We provide support to the other riders when we drive, but we also squeeze in some riding.

Tonight we are in a place called Rancheria. Let me provide a map of this section of our ride:

Rancheria is the very bottom right circle. You can see that tomorrow we are in Teslin, then Whitehorse, then we head north to the gold-rush city of Dawson City (not to be confused with Dawson Creek, which was Mile 0 of the Alaska Hwy back in British Columbia). The morning after Dawson City is when we will enter Alaska! It will be a spot most people do NOT enter the state from. Since it will be my 1st time in Alaska, I think it'll be cool to enter at such a remote location, along the "Top of The World" highway.

Rancheria, where we are tonight, shows on the maps as a city, but it's not that at all. In fact, several of the places we've stayed in BC and Yukon are on the map and therefore you'd think they are little towns, but no. They are just roadside stops, that have been here since after the war. A gasoline station, a little cafe, maybe a small motel, and an RV campground. Their electricity is produced by huge generators, most of which run all night so it sounds like there's an 18-wheeler truck engine running just outside the motorhome. (At one campground a few nights ago, they shut off the generator at 9 pm.) Coal River two nights ago was like this. Pink Mountain a few days ago was like this. And many of these roadside businesses that look like towns on the map have gone out of business, so there is actually nowhere to stop after all, which makes the maps incorrect.

If we can maintain this excellent Internet service, I will post a separate entry this evening with additional photos from the past few days.