Alaska Day 8

Our day started with a great breakfast at the motel's restaurant. Several of us decided to get the BC Breakfast which had a Trappers Braddock, (I think I spelled that right). The trappers thing is a very large large large biscuit. It is about the size of the breakfast plate. Of course not of us could eat the entire thing. At 6 am we decided to start rolling. The temperature was in the mid 40s, so it was a bit cool.

Nothing exiting on the first leg, except we saw our first moose. He was standing on the side of the road as I came around a curve, but he/she headed into the woods as soon as he/she saw us. I don't think Brian and Jerry got to see him.

We arrived at Fort Nelson around lunch time. Turns out this is O Canada Day, which is their independence day. They were getting ready for a big parade, so we hurriedly filled out tanks and got out of town before we became a part of the celebration. We had planned on eating lunch in Fort Nelson, but with all the festivities, we decided to find something down the road. We did find something 130 miles down the road.

After Fort Nelson is where the scenery starts to kick in. We enter the Northern Rockies Mountain Chain, and rode next to several rivers which of course I don't remember their names. These mountains are not as high as the lower Rockies, but they were snow capped and presented a beautiful sight. I had forgotten how scenic this section of the highway was. We stopped several times for pictures. We spotted a number of bear, sheep, and buffalo. My pictures didn't turn out so well, but I am going to scarf some from the other guys and post a couple.

We did have lunch in Toad Springs, which is just a spot on the road. Some had burgers , I had stew, and I'm not sure what the rest had. Lunch wasn't much to rave about. Just after we left Toad Springs we came up an accident where a motorcycle ran off the road. When we stopped for the night at Laird Hot Springs, I talked to a trucker who had stopped at the accident and he told me that the bike had hit gravel on the side of the road and lost control. He must have been distracted because the road was fairly straight at that point. Bad place to get in a accident, The only real hospital is probably a 1000 miles away. The trucker did say they flew the rider out for medical treatment.

As I said above we planned to stop at Laird Hot Springs for the night. Turns out they only had one double room left, so we decided to head down the road. Some other bikers, we met on the road had made reservations and had a room with four beds. Well some switching was done, and we ended up in that room, but poor Jerry got the air mattress. The air mattress is a full twin, so hopefully his night won't be so bad.

We had dinner at the motel's restaurant and I had ordered the special which was meat loaf and rice. Not bad, but as you can guess it was very expensive. That's to be expected since we are out in the middle of nowhere.

Tomorrow we head to Whitehorse.