The Yukon!

Our campsite on Watson Lake was really lovely, and there were several other people in camp that night. We had a visitor in the form of a bird. He flew little laps around our campsite, constantly getting closer to us. He was not a very graceful flier, but his feathers were beautifully marked in black and white, and he had a little red on his head. He reminded me a little of a chicken actually, and i finally realized he was a ptarmigan. He seemed to be quite curious about us, and would wait at the end of our campsite if we both walked away. Like Mr. Precious Poomaker, i wanted to take him with me.

We left Watson Lake and drove to Whitehorse, Yukon, stopping along the way to see some of the sights Button pointed out to us the night before. They have a small set of waterfalls they are super proud of, and you can pull into what looks like a rest stop and walk out along a boardwalk to see them.

Carrying bear bells (given to us by John in Sagle) and bear spray (given to us by Don in Flaming Gorge) while singing and reciting cheers from Bring It On to keep the bears away while we hiked. Remember, I saw 11 of them the other day....

 

We also stopped in Teslin to gas up, take a picture of a sign (I'll post it later cuz it's on one of the cameras), and eat lunch by the lake. The lake was in breakup, so we could sit listening to the ice cracking, and watch as ripples pushed piles of ice floe up to the shore.

It hadn't been a great day of riding--lots of wind and straight roads. Very little wildlife. So we were happy to pull into Takhini Hot Springs. This would be camp for the next two nights as we were getting a day off. We camped at the hot springs, had some dinner, soaked in the hot pools, and took my bike apart again because it has been having gas mileage problems, and started stalling in neutral. We found what we thought was the problem, water in the air box and a wet air filter, and set out the next morning to find a replacement.

Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, but that is not saying much. It has a population of little over 34,000 people, the one brewery in the entire Yukon (which brews REALLY good beer), and one motorcycle store--formerly a Harley dealership. Having no luck finding a new filter, I called Foothills BMW at home and talked to a service tech about the problem. We were on the right track with drying out the filter. He said the bike will continue to run, just not at it's peak, and we located a filter in Fairbanks, so when we get there we will replace it.

We spent the next couple of hours exploring the city, visiting the brewery, and soaking in the pools again. This was really nice, and we will be ready to head out tomorrow on a long day's ride to Dawson City.

Oh yeah, we also met a really nice group of people from Skagway (formerly from Minnesota) who have invited us to stay with them when we get there. There were two little boys in the group, and Julius, whose 2nd birthday they were celebrating this weekend was super excited to sit on my motorcycle. It was funny, he wasn't super talkative, but the one word he said over and over, super clearly, was motorcycle. We can't wait to meet up with them again!