Day 14 - Monday, July 13/2009
Starting Location: Dease Lake, BC
Ending Location: Skagway, AK
Distance Travelled: 509 miles or 828 km
Distance Travelled to date: 4780 miles or 7747 km
Today, we would experience the worst road conditions and one of the most beautiful rides. We started off at the Dease Lake on the worst ection of the Stewart-Cassiar Hwy. Road was hard packed gravel most of the way. Good that it wasn't wet or slippery. Took about 3 hours to get to the Alaska Highway. At the end of the Stewart-Cassair highway, it is the border of the Yukon and B.C. Met a couple at the Yukon sign from Smithers. The woman was from a farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake, just miles from where I live. Small world.
Went into Watson Lake, about 14 km east to get gas & someting to eat. Took a photo and added our names to the place of signs where, during WWll, someone stationed in Watson Lake was homesick and put up a sign showing how far it was from his home, and it caught on and now there are over 600.000 signs from people showing their hometowns. Now it's 600,000 +1 more.
Scenery from Dease Lake to Watson Lake and west was uninspiring, with a lot of flat landscape with trees. I guess we were spoiled by the Bell ll area.
But as we went west, around Tagish, the landscape once again became amazing. High hills with lakes. Saw people fishing. Older gent with his grand=daughter caught huge trout. They were from the Parry Sound, On area.
We went south to get to Skayway. I was in Skagway on a cruise, but getting to Skagway by ship pales in comparison to riding there by bike or car. The scenery makes you want to stop every corner of the road. High mountains, ddep valleys, glaciers, lakes, everything in one area. This was the area of the gold rush and makes you wonder how they could ever manange to get here by foot or mule. Got to Skagway late and had little chance to walk around the town. It's a very old rustic town kept to appear like the goldrush days with boarded sidewalks, saloons, and general stores and old-time looking banks, It's amazing how they kept the appearance of the old town, but its for tourism and the cruise ship sightseeers.
Stayed at a hotel that night as we must get up for a 5:30 a.m. for a ferry to Haines, AK (the ferry only runs once a day and leaves at 7:00). We wanted to spend the day in Juneau, the the ferry schedule did not work into our plans. Off to Tok, AK tomorrow.
Gas:
Dease Lake, BC $1.209/li 13.4 litres $16.22 total
Watson Lake, YT $1.189/li 14.24 litres $17.06 total
Tagish, YT, $1.099/li 13.92 litres $15.30 total
Motel, Skagway, AK, $150 US less $20 CAA with computer access
Stewart-Cassiar Hwy was very rough with a hard packed gravel surface for most of the final 250 km. Gravel was not heavy, so could travel at 80km/hr
Temperature was cool to start until the afternoon when it reached a high of 25 degrees Celcius. Started off cloudy but cleared up by afternoon.
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