Ups and Flats

July 6, 2010
Back across the Yukon

Up this morning to a very good breakfast of blueberry pancakes and reindeer sausage.

We left our B&B about 10.
We started from Tok planning a day of many miles ending near Watson Lake, 6 or  7 hundred miles down the road.

We had to wait for some construction. No big deal.

We crossed into Canada on three questions this time.

Some big toad stools.

Some fireweed. Called that because it's the first vegetation to recover after a forest fire.




These mountain avalanche chutes look like the branches of trees.

Some really cool cloud formations caused by the winds pushing air up the slopes and over the tops of mountains. You had to be there.

So we were tooling merely down the road thinking about what to have for lunch in the town of Haines Junction when I became aware of a new noise on the van rapidly getting louder. I tried to deny it was there, but in a few seconds I realized we had a flat tire.

NOT IN THE PLAN !!!

Fortunately of course I had help. And a good spare.
We dismantled the rear rack, dug out the jack, and got the tire changed in a half hour or so. By the time we got to Haines Junction there were no shops open, and probably no tires in town to match the rest of mine. I'll only use Michelin.
On to the big city of White Horse a hundred miles farther on.

On the way our luck changed.

A real grizzly, all be it a small one.
We pulled over to watch him. He totally ignored us as though we were no where near.

He nuzzled stuff on the ground and casually walked across the road without even looking each way for traffic.

We hung out the windows and snapped away.


 




 


 If we hadn't had a flat, we wouldn't have seen the bear.There's always a positive twist.

No more moose today.





Kernal insists she can tell the difference between bear scat and moose shit at 65 mph. (plops vs turds). In fact she claims to be an expert. Both appear regularly on the berm of the road for some reason.
We may need to bring home a sample to have a real expert  (some one like Cloyce for example) to identify for sure.



When we got to Whitehorse, no tire shops were open, but on the first phone call I got us a B&B for the night. For 90 bucks we could have gotten a smoking room in a sleazoid motel. For 99 bucks a room we got the whole lower floor of a nice house, washer and dryer, and what's promised as a huge breakfast. Can't beat those B&B's

Tomorrow, a new tire and hopefully we'll cover some real miles.