Yukon Ho!

June 16, 2006

July 10, 2006 on 12:58 pm | In Uncategorized |

Biking time: 12pm to 5:30pm
End: Meziadin Junction
Distance: 75km
After waking up alive, we counted our blessings (mainly the blessings that included no attacks by any bears, either real or imagined) and made breakfast among clouds of mosquitos. Fried eggs with no butter along with oatmeal was sufficient but by no means deluxe. Despite having only a bit of water, we decided to make coffee, figuring we’d hit a creek or a well stocked RV before too long. Our photocopied Stewart-Cassiar guide sheet (courtesy of the Prince Rupert tourist office) told us that there was a general store 58km away at Meziadin Lake, so we hoped to get some groceries before hitting Meziadin Junction for camping. The ride started with me freaking out about losing my wallet, then searching my handlebar bag for it and dropping the camera on the highway. Turns out the wallet was in the rolled up tent. False alarm. Then 10 km down the road, I went to take a picture and found the shutter release button was missing. I guess I should have looked at the camera before assuming it was OK. I freaked out again because I hate when I am an idiot, but I can still take pictures with a paperclip, and hopefully when we get to a real town I can call Canon about getting a replacement button sometime. So my impromptu shots taken while underway won’t happen any more, but if there are any great scenes, I’ll stop and shoot. It’s probably better than I don’t use the camera while riding down the shoulder of the highway anyways.

A couple of hours into the ride, we saw a half decent creek, so we filtered some water out of it and had lunch at the next rest area. This highway is scattered with forestry and fisheries roads that lead off into the woods, but very few actual rest stops. This one was actually labelled as a rest stop but it turned out to be nothing more than a bear proof garbage can. We stopped anyway and had a delicious reconstituted Pad Thai packet in the gravel at the garbage turnoff.

Less than an hour later, we arrived at Meziadin Lake, which turned out to be an old logging camp with a few lived-in houses and a lot of abandoned trailers. The general store was CLOSED with no signs of being open at any recent time. So I wiped my ass with their front steps and we carried on with dreams of restaurant bliss at Meziadin Junction.

Though it was only 17km away, it felt a lot further because we were angry at Meziadin Lake, hungry for a real meal, and the last 10km were pretty hilly (no mountain passes, but hills big enough to slow us down). There must be a rule in Northern BC that says that every town listed on a map should be surrounded by hills.

Leading into the junction (on an uphill) we spotted another black bear. It was definitely bigger than the one we saw yesterday, but still fairly uninterested in us in comparison to its meal of roots. The last 400 metres to the intersection was yet another (of many) ‘magnetic hill’ which looked downhill but was most definitely uphill. As we turned into the parking lot, we were greeted by another deserted looking collection of shacks, with a cafe that appeared very closed, and a gas bar which was no more than a one-person hut. The gas bar was open but no one was around. As I looked in the window, a lady came running from the cafe and we quickly discovered that it was indeed open. She seemed to be in charge of the gas bar, and preferred to hang out in the cafe until the customers arived (understandably so). I guess the cafe owners were trying to save electricity costs by keeping their Open sign unlit. The dumpy restaurant offered nothing more than standard fried junk, so we each had the cheapest meal offered (burger and fries). The woman  running the show was a bit of a bitch (not the gas bar lady). The first thing she did when we came in was snap at us due to her being annoyed by our bear bells (did I mention we’d passed a bear less than half a kilometre from the restaurant?) because she was apparently trying to listen in on a CB radio to hear about an accident down the road. So sorry to interrupt your source of gossip. To complement her welcoming atitude, the resataurant had been filled with such friendly signs as: “Do not touch the TV”, “Our menu has two items: take it or leave it”, “We cannot fill your water bottles”, “We cannot microwave your food” and in the girl’s washroom, “Do not flush feminine products down the toilet because it clogs our system and it’s not getting emptied for 3 months and we know who you are”. As an added bonus, coffee was 50 cents more expensive if you wanted to take it in a crappy styrofoam cup instead of in a mug. The bugers were OK, and the fries were too floppy for my taste. Luckily, we twisted her arm into giving us a side of relish for our plain burgers - a luxury usually reserved for those ordering the deluxe model.

Feeling quite depressed by the entire junction, I went to scout out the abandoned visitor’s centre across the road. The cheerful gas attendant had told us earlier that she’d recommended people to camp behind it if they want to avoid paying for a provincial park. The building was an awesome log cabin that had unfortunately been boarded up because Stewart (the town) didn’t want to pay for visitor’s centre staff anymore. Behind the cabin was another touring bike that had been secretly stowed, as well as an outhouse that even had a bit of TP inside. Feeling a bit naughty, I thought it might be a lot better to sleep in the cabin than behind it, so I took a walk around the entire thing and found one non boarded window that had no locking mechanism at all. Bonus! So I went back across the road and asked the gas lady if we could keep our food bags in her hut overnight while we camped behind the cabin (we promised to eat breakfast there in the morning… better to spend money on breakfast than on a 4 by 7 rectangle of tent space at the Provincial Park). She gave us the okay, and also said that the other bike probably belonged to a tourist who hitchhiked into Stewart and left it there for a day or two. Not a bad idea.

Just as we finished climbing in the cabin window, it started to rain. Lucky us, having a cabin all to ourselves in the first evening rainstorm of the trip. The cabin was awesome. It had two levels, plus a two level porch. The loft level was divided in two, with a creepy old bedroom in one  half and a bunch of junk in the other. There was a walkway from the loft to the front of the cabin where a door opened to the second level porch. The main floor had a tiny kitchen area (everything was disconnected) and a main room which still had a bunch of tourist info everywhere. There was no wiring, and only two lights which appeared to be new-old-school gas lights. The fridge appeared to have run off of an extension cord fed through a hole in the floor. We decided to put the tent on the floor to save us from the lingering mosquitos that followed us in as well as any mice that might like to live here (there was some poop on the floor). We also helped ourselves to the leftover tourist information, including a few cool postcards. As an added bonus, Amy found an older (2002) copy of the Mileposts book that the German was crazy about, so we figured we might as well take that too. No one will miss it, and the majority of information will still be valid. Tomorrow we will go into Stewart for the night (a 65km dead end sidetrip).On Sunday we’ll ride back out and hopefully sleep here again. Score!

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