Yukon Ho!

June 27, 2006

July 15, 2006 on 6:19 pm | In Uncategorized |

Biking time: 11:00AM to 5:30PM
End: Mukluk Annie’s (near Teslin)
Distance: 104km
We woke up at 4:30 to the sound of a thousand or so birds fighting over a single piece of bread about 2 inches from the tent. Despite it being bright as noon already, we managed to get back to sleep, only to be awoken again at 6, 6:30, 7, 7:30 and finally, 8AM by RVload after RVload of Southern tourists spotting moose across the lake. Figuring we should get an early start in order to make up for yesterday’s pathetic 52km, we decided to get out of the tent and make breakfast.

As usual, we were spotted immediately by a couple of RVers who wanted to know all about the trip, and also wanted to tell us everything about their dog Sassy including her brand of dog food and the number of mosquito bites on her pink belly.

As we were cleaning up, a trucker who had been parked there all morning awoke from his nap and we joked with him about how easy it was to sleep there. We ended up talking to him for about an hour about trucking, the roads, the tourists, his dad’s doormat (”I don’t dial 911, I dial 9mm”), and his disdain for the rules imposed on truckers (weigh-ins and logbooks).

We finally got away (reluctantly and into the wind) at 10AM, with a meagre goal of 54km to the Yukon Day Use (picnic) Area, but with an unspoken hope to make it to Teslin — a 96km trek. The riding started a bit rough as far as wind goes, but there were some decent gradual downhills that carried us along, and before we knew it we had covered 40km and were ready for lunch. During one stretch of straightaway in the morning, a pickup passed us very slowly and rolled their window down. A woman poked her head out and yelled “Gee you guys are slow!” — it was “Mom” from Rancheria, our safe haven in the rain of two nights before.

During our lunchbreak, a big rig rolled in with a flat tire, and I (acting like a little kid) got all excited and went over to help fix it. Turned out it was a cut in the sidewall (unfixable) which the guy may not have found if it weren’t for me due to his tinitus and my eagle-ears.

On we went, confident we’d make Teslin (even if it killed us), and we re-entered theYukon and passed the Day Use Area with ease. As with all towns, they put a pile of hills on the highway in, but despite their best efforts the road engineers couldn’t keep us down today (actually we should thank them because the highway was 8m shorter than the Milepost book said — they had straightened a bunch of curves and flattened a bunch of hills since 2002). By 5:30 we were coasting down a huge hill overlooking Teslin, which is a sweet little town on a small outcropping of land which sticks out into a beautiful lake. Leading us into town was the longest bridge span of the Alaska Highway, and waiting for us at the end was our first access to high speed internet since Stewart.

After firing through our email at the breakneck speed of $6 per hour, we decided to ride yet another 14km down the highway to eat at Mukluk Annie’s, where the camping is free and the breakfast (tomorrow will be so sweet) is all-you-can-eat. Knowing they closed at 9, we were kind of in a hurry when we left Teslin, so we spent 5 minutes grocery shopping and then hit the road. The 14km was not too bad since it followed Teslin Lake and the sun had finally come out in full force for the first time in several days. We pulled into the restaurant at 8:30, and it was still 1/3 full of people (plus a few more late arrivals just after us) so we didn’t feel bad about being the last jerks to arrive and order at the exact instant they were going to close. Our waitress was obviously new though, and she somehow figured that they wouled close the dining room right at 9, even though they said the kitchen was open til 9. So she started telling all of the tables one-at-a-time that they had to hurry up, and she even told the people next to us that she was going to bring their food in a take-out container. Weird. So I told her that we eat really fast, and she kind of agreed we could sit there. In the meantime, we got our food and she must have gotten some instructions from the boss because she came back to tell us we didn’t have to rush after all. She was scared of everyone and everything so it must have been the first hour of her first shift of her first job in her entire life.

Anyway, dinner was great and we ended up doubling yesterday’s 52km because we are friggin hardcore. Three more days at 60km each will bring us to Whitehorse for Canada Day Eve. All is well again in the world!

Click here for today’s pictures