Showered, packed and on the road again! We left our motel, after a nice conversation with the lady doing the cleaning, and a quick trip to pick up more bananas from the store, just after 10 am.
The weather today was perfect for riding. Just bordering the hot/cold divide where it was occasionally too warm for a jacket and other times too cold to be without. The sky was mostly overcast and occasionally we got to see the sun. Perfect.
Shortly after leaving Watson Lake, Gerald and Cheryl saw a fox heading into the trees. A little while later, Amelia saw two foxes perched on top of a hill near the road. All three were very cute!
Roadside entertainment consisted of deciphering messages written with rocks along the highway. Some words were so washed out, they weren’t possible to make out. This custom of spelling names, messages and hometowns with stones, was started by a Fort Nelson swim team in the summer of 1990. The first message they wrote, “P-Break.”
Gerald and Cheryl both picked something up from the side of the road on our way to Big Creek Campground. Gerald found a wrench (a heavy-duty one!) and Cheryl held on to a cloth that later became very helpful in cleaning off our picnic table.
For something completely new, we met a fellow touring cyclist today! He was en route to Watson Lake while we were heading the opposite direction. We stopped and chatted for a bit. He gave us a tip of where not to camp in Whitehorse and complained about water not being available at campsites in Yukon. We told him about our vehicle in Whitehorse and our plan to stock up on water for our return drive, in case we encounter any parched cyclists.
We were against wind and mostly up hill today, so our average speed was fairly low. After 61 km, we pulled into Big Creek Campground by 4:20 pm and pitched our tents. A squirrel was our biggest problem during supper hour. We are happy this campground has bear proof (and squirrel proof!) food lockers for us to use. (It certainly beats locking our food bags in an outhouse, like we did on our first night of tenting!) Now we boil water from the creek to fill our bottles and explore this small, 15 site campground while we wait for it to get dark enough to sleep.
Adventures on a bicycle 