Yukon Ho!

June. 28-31: Teslin to Whitehorse

August 2, 2006 on 7:18 pm | In Uncategorized |

Woke up and snarfed the all-you-can-eat breakfast at Mukluk Annie’s kitchen. The morning food and service were both much better than the evening and we stuffed ourselves with blueberry pancakes and coffee.

The ride that day was pretty rainy but not too bad and we met a lone Alaskan cyclist named Brian, who was on his way to South America. He was miserable because his whole trip to that point had been cold, wet and lonely, so we all stood around and talked for about an hour, exchanged e-mail addresses and kept biking in our respective directions. Sadly, a couple weeks later we heard he’d had to head back to Anchorage due to knee problems.

We had lunch at Johnson’s Crossing -an RV park on the north side of a bridge. It was a weird place because the RV Park and restaurant were the only things there, but the gift shop was stocked to the rafters with clothes and accessories plastered with JOHNSON’S CROSSING logos in our faces. It’s crazy how every little nowhere town we pass through always seems to have an entire line of “RANDOM PLACE” emblazoned clothing.

Anywhoooo we spent the night at Squanga Lake -a Yukon campground. We were the only ones there so we set up our tent in the cookhouse and stoked a fire to dry our wet clothes and selves.

The next day we  ran into a whole huge crew of American bikers. Seven of them had met on adventurecycle.com because of a common desire to ride from Prudhoe Bay to the southern tip of South America. They were all moving at slightly different speeds but wihin 15 minutes all of us were standing on the side of the road together, glutting up the highway and giving each other tips about what lay in each direction. Four of them were retired old guys (one of whom couldn’t even walk but kept a steady pace on his bike) and then there was a young couple about our age. The seventh had been Paul, a cyclist we’d met a few days earlier, but he’d taken off on his own because he was waaaaaay faster than all of them.

Three of them had the same bike as Sean so there was a big Surly lovefest that I got left out of.

We stopped for the night at a rest area on the Yukon River. It was only 40km from Whitehorse but since we were in no hurry we laid out the tent and made a pot of fake mac and cheese. That was the first night a parks employee came by a rest area while we were camped out. Our bright yellow tent was in full view of the highway and area parking lot when we heard a truck pull up at 8pm to empty the bear bins of garbage. Fortunately for us, said employee didn’t care or bother us so we spent the night in relatively peaceful quiet…except for a group of three middle-aged Whitehorsians who appeared to have driven their pickup’s out to the rest area 40km from town to drink beer in the gravel parking lot for two hours before driving back to town.

The ride into Whitehorse the next day was gloriously sunny and downhill and the first thing we did when we got there was find a Tim Horton’s. After that we headed to Phillippe’s Bike Shop -a place that had been recommended to us by the huge group of US cyclists. The bike shop is awesome for two reasons. 1) Phillippe is a little nutty and obsessed with bikes. The entire house that is his shop is full of bikes and parts for sale. Even the bathtub. 2) There is a woman in a bus in his driveway who makes the most incredible burrito’s in the history of sandwich-related foods. They are huge and cheap and delicious.

Anywhooooo, on our way out of the bike shop, we heard a voice behind us ask “Are you from Ontario?” At first we didn’t think this was directed at us but as we are from Ontario we turned around and said yes. The guy who’d asked turned out to be Devin -the husband of a friend of Sean’s friend Gen. Devin had heard that a couple of Gen’s friends might be biking through the city and need a place to camp and it just so happened that he was buying a burrito during the ten minutes we were looking at bike gear.

He gave us his address and phone number and we spent the next three nights and days with Devin at his awesome house, with his awesome dog and awesome cats. Devin took us out to a couple Whitehorse bars that first night, including The Roadhouse and Paddy’s Place, then led us around the city during the Canada Day festivities, and took us to a tacky dress party his friend threw that night. We spent Sunday watching every episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” ever recorded, eating pizza, and just being generally sloppy.

Devin flew to Halifax Monday morning but Sean and I had reservations at the Beez Kneez Backpackers so we packed up our stuff and rode ten minutes to the hostel. For anyone who’s planning on visiting Whitehorse (and doesn’t expect to run into a friend of a friend within an hour of arrival), the Beez Kneez is awesome. It’s a house with about 20 beds I think. The staff is small and they’re all super-friendly, the house is cozy and full of books and CD’s to listen to, laundry is cheap, the backyard is cool, they rent bikes and the prices are not bad.

While we were at the hostel we met a German biker named Matthias, who ended up being the same German biker we’d heard about from a couple other bikers on the road -who had worked at Rancheria for a couple weeks mid-trip to make some cash before continuing on his way to Siberia.