Layover in Dawson City YT

Today we were supposed to ride the Top of the World Highway from Dawson City YT into Alaska, including a stop at the curiously named village of Chicken.  Much to our disappointment, we awoke to discover the highway was closed for the second time in as many weeks due to a washout.  It had rained pretty steadily in Dawson City over night, and apparently the TotWH got much, much more rain than we had.

There was no way we'd get to Alaska today, so we took advantage of a break in the rain to cut some wood for the bath house I complained about in the last post.  There was no chopping block, and I didn't want to abuse my hatchet so we used the unbelievably dull one (hereto referred to as a "mallet") provided by Dawson City River Hostel, as well as a buck saw we found that was in good shape.  We sawed logs into lengths with one of us on either end of the saw, and split them with the mallet.    We started a fire using our own matches, and continued to cut more wood for the next weary travelers.  I did my best to cut up some of the shipping palettes using the mallet, but it mostly just bashed them into splinters.  I cut up one ankle when one particularly bothersome board finally exploded.  While Dad enjoyed the bath house, I kept at the wood.  When we were done we had a pretty good pile, nicely stacked in a dry section of the wood shelter.  We also stacked wood and kindling neatly under a bench in the bathhouse.

If there is dry wood available, you've got your own sharp hatchet, time to cut wood (including sawing the tree, not just splitting logs), your own matches, and time for the water and bath house to heat up, then the bath house is a great way to get clean!  The sauna aspect was very relaxing, and it felt great to pour that hot water over myself and finally wash that Dempster mud off and out of my hair.  Unfortunately, the bath house is not a reasonable way for a tired traveler to get clean at the end of a long day, if it's after dark, or if it's late enough that chopping wood would wake up other guests.  It's a novelty, not an amenity.

We took the ferry across the Yukon River into town, and stopped by the visitor's centre for news on the wash out.  The repairs wouldn't start until the rain stopped, and the rain wouldn't stop for a day or two.  We'd heard stories of motorcyclist being let through previous wash outs, so we decided to stay around one extra night and see what news came from other travelers.

We went to the Dawson City Hotel for some food and to look for the previous owner, now employee, Dick.  The adv riding couple we'd met while at Liard Hot Springs knew Dick, and said we should look him up if we had time.  We definitely had time now.

Dick is one of the founding riders of the Dusk to Dawson ride, which now attracts hundreds of riders to Dawson City each year.  He knows all about traveling by motorcycle in the north west (as well as other locals, I'm sure), and is The Guy to Know if you've got motorcycle problems while in the area.  He's got a collection of used tires that can help you get by if you've a flat or need help changing a tire, he let us use his wash station with a pressure washer out behind the hotel, and is a great guy to have lunch with on a rainy Yukon day.

I stayed in the hotel's restaurant, The Jack London Grill, all afternoon catching up on blog posts, while Dad went out and played tourist for a while in the rain.  I washed my bike up, in the rain, which might sound funny unless you saw how muddy it was after the Dempster Highway in the rain.  We were still sitting at the restaurant come dinner time, so we had dinner there too before heading back to our tents.

Even though I'd already used the bath house in the morning, I thought I'd do so again before heading to bed.  After all, we'd cut, split, and stacked a bunch of dry wood up that morning, so it should be pretty easy to get hot water this time.  We discovered that the wood we'd stacked under the bench in the bath house was taken and scattered in front of the wood shelter, getting soaked on the ground in the rain all day.  Much of the wood we'd stacked in the shelter was missing too.  Dad gathered enough wood to get the small bath house warm again, and I went to ask the camp owner if he knew what'd happened to our wood.

He told me it was very dangerous where we'd stacked the wood under the bench.  The sharp splintery bits (because we smashed the wood with a mallet instead of having a proper ax) could poke people.  I agreed that made some sense, but wondered why the wood was scattered on the ground instead of being moved as a stack to a dry place.  "Look, it's not my job to cut and stack wood."  He was quite upset.  I wanted to complain about his false advertising of a "hot bath", but decided to just walk away.

The next morning, as we were getting ready to leave we struck up a conversation with a fellow motorcyclist.  Like us, he was turning back because the Top of the World Highway was still closed.  At one point he asked if we'd had any problems with the camp owner, noting that he'd found him to be odd and in a really bad mood yesterday and this morning.  The camp owner had even gotten angry at him for shaving after dark!

This happy HD rider from Michigan also found the owner of Dawson City River Hostel to be a angry oddball!

I've seen fire and I've seen rain

Well, I've got several amazing days to post about, but not enough time to type about them all.

For now we're laid over in Dawson City, YT.  Our dreams of riding the Top of the World Highway between Dawson City, YT and Chicken, AK having been dashed by rains that have washed out the highway.  Road repairs won't begin until the rain stops, and the rain isn't stopping until at least tomorrow.  No one knows how many days it'll take for repairs, and we don't have time to wait and find out.  We're going to stay one extra night here in hopes of hearing news that motorcycles might find their way through the construction zone, but the rain is pretty heavy, so that seems impossible now.

Tomorrow, we'll probably ride south back to Whitehorse, then maybe over to ride a scenic loop around Haines Junction, Skagway, and Haines.   The day after that we'd like to start our ride down the Stewart Cassiar Highway but it's been closed on-and-off for the past 10 days due to wildfires.  We'll be lucky if we get through.  Watson Lake, YT, near the north end of the highway, was thick with smoke when we went through about a week ago.  If the fire gets really bad at Watson Lake, then we might be stranded north for a bit because the only two roads south (Stewart Cassiar and the Alaska Highway) junction there.

If we could only move this rain down to the fires...

Inuvik to Dawson City

Today we woke up early intent on riding the entire Dempster Highway (plus a tad more to Dawson City) in one day.  The weather was forecast to be good until late in the day, so the sooner we got to the bottom the better.

The first ferry south arrived just as we did.  The young guy running the deck invited us to go up top to take some pictures and have a look around.  We talked with the older guy piloting (?) the ship for a while, and discovered the ship's engineer was from the same small city my Mom grew up in, about 10 minutes from the tiny village my Dad grew up in.  Dad disappeared to go talk to the engineer for the rest of the short ride, come back out only after we'd landed (?).  I'm using flying terms for boating, but somehow it seems correct.

View from down low

View from up high

The riding was pretty easy, although there was a bit more truck traffic today than two days ago.  I'd been trying not to think too much about having to ride back through the section north of the Yukon-NWT border that I'd had trouble with on the way up.  When the time came, I didn't find it nearly as bad as before.  I was much more aggressive this time, with throttle, body position, and attitude.  I was saying things to that road about it and it's mother that an abusive sailor wouldn't say to the cabin boy.  I figured it was my new madd ridin' skillz that made the difference, but Dad figures it was the fact that two days worth of truck traffic can make a big difference on a road of loose gravel.  He, uh, may have a point there.

Having survived the fresh gravel north of the Yukon border, again.

We stopped at Eagle Plains for lunch again, and the waitress remembered us, welcomed us back, and congratulated us on surviving thus far.  I made an Anniversary Post for my wonderful wife, and Dad video Skyped Mom while other restaurant patrons looked on in amazement.

With about an hour left on the Dempster we met up with rain.  It wasn't extremely heaving, but it was enough to make the road messy and a little tricky.

Oncoming rain

Rain falling just north of Tombstone Park

A little south of Tombstone campground we rounded a corner to find a minivan with a camper pulled off to the side.  There was gear piled up on the side of the road, some legs sticking out from under the minivan, and a concerned wife looking on.  We pulled over to see how we could help.  The travelers were a retired couple from Quebec who were touring all over Canada with their minivan and camper.  They had a flat tire and were simply unable to get the spare out from under the back of the minivan.  Seemed simple enough, but the poor guy had already been fighting with it for an hour before we came along.  The spare is held up under the vehicle by one of those cables you have to loosen from inside the van, which should allow the spare to simply drop to the ground.  Unfortunately, they had never needed the spare in the 10 years they'd owned the van and it was completely rusted in place.

They asked if we'd continue south and try and call help for them once we found a phone or cell coverage, and we were more than happy to oblige.  I asked if I could crawl under and have a look before taking off though, noting that it'd be several hours before they'd even know if we'd managed to call anyone.  The rain was really picking up, and the road was slick with a fine, greasy mud.  They put down a rain poncho for me to lay on, but my squirming around quickly had me off of it and onto the mud.  I fought with the spare for a while, but had no luck.  We tried several things including WD-40 and a few methods of pry bars, but it was on there pretty solid.  The most luck I had was with a small hack saw the driver had with him, but I found it very had to get a sawing motion with the room available.  The driver offered his chainsaw, and I laughed thinking it was a joke.  I came out for a breather, and while trying to clean the mud out of my hair I noticed he really did have a big chainsaw packed away in the back of the van.  This guy had one of everything packed away in the back of that van.

Rejuvenated by our efforts, the driver got back under with the hack saw and went at it like a desperate man on the side of a remote road with a flat tire in the rain.  He sawed that damn support column clean off.  The spare fell right on him, but thankfully it didn't have far to go so it didn't hurt him.  We pulled him and the tire out, and celebrated with applause and pats on the back.  The spare wheel rim was full of several pounds of gravel, likely a collection from all around Canada.  We dumped the collection onto the Dempster, and had the tire changed in a few minutes.

Helping some fellow travelers with a flat tire on the Dempster Highway

The couple was extremely thankful for our "help", and tried to give me a $50.  I explained I didn't want their money, and that we actually hadn't accomplished anything that helped them - he'd done all the work. They were insistent, but we were slightly more so and eventually they seemed OK with us just being happy to have helped.  Then the wife's face brightened, and she whispered something to her husband in french.  He got a big smile, and started nodding in agreement.  He told us he had something we just couldn't refuse, and came back from their minivan with a bottle of wine!  They explained it was a very, very good wine from southern BC and that we needn't worry because they'd bought plenty more for themselves.  He was right, we couldn't refuse the wine, even though neither Dad or I drink.  What can you say when they're so happy with their very generous offer?  We took the wine, exchanged email addresses, put some paper towel over my head so I could put my muddy head back in my helmet, and headed south while they headed north.

We arrived in Dawson City about an hour later.  It was late, and the visitor's centre was closed.  The only campground we saw signs for was Dawson City River Hostel, across the Yukon River by ferry.  All I wanted was a place to put a tent, and a hot shower to get all that Dempster mud out of my hair and off my face.  The sign for the campground said "Hot Bath", which I figured was close enough.  We checked in, and headed back across the river into town for some hot lasagna at Diamond Tooth Gerties while catching the end of their evening show.

Once fed, all I wanted was that hot bath and into my dry sleeping bag.  It turns out the "hot bath" isn't really a bath at all.  There are two sauna/bath houses where you build a fire under a barrel of water, wait for it to heat up, then poor it over yourself while standing on a platform with a drain.  OK, so it takes a little work, but the sauna aspect sounded nice.

Picture taken in the light of the next day of Dawson City River Hostel's bath house.  This is the smaller of the two bath houses, and at least this one has a sawing block for the wood.

Inside the smaller bath house at Dawson City River Hostel

There was no cut wood for a fire.  OK, I'd chop some.  There was a wood shelter, but it was full of wet wood, and mostly-whole shipping palettes.  I found a small hatchet, but it might as well have been a mallet it was so dull.  OK, I have my own hatchet and saw packed on the bike.  I couldn't find a chopping block.  People must chop wood right on the ground.  No wonder the mallet, er, hatchet was so dull.  I stood in the rain and considered my options.  It was well after dark, and all I had for light was my head lamp.  The bath house doesn't have any lights, but I thought I could prop my headlamp up somewhere enough to see in the bath house.  I realized it was near midnight, and I didn't want to wake the entire camp up by chopping or sawing wood, even if I went and got my own hatchet and saw.  I went to bed wet, cold, muddy, and pissed off.  "Hot bath" indeed.  Dawson City River Hostel, you should be ashamed of yourself!