July 11 - Whitehorse to Dease Lake

We both woke up around 5am... seriously? We're in a warm, dry hotel room in a comfortable bed and both Lynn and I were wide awake at the crack of dawn. We were both thinking about a million and one things as we start to mentally transition ourselves out of our adventure and onto the many things that await our attention when we get back home. Sigh.... 

We finally got out of bed around 6am, packed up and had some breakfast. The day was overcast but with hopeful southern skies. For the first hour south of Whitehorse, the riding was great. The road was in excellent shape and we were making some good time. Gradually, however, the weather fell apart and, for the rest of the day, we were in and out of rain and several times, we rode through some brief but impressive gully-washers. 

We pulled into Teslin to the Yukon Hotel and Restaurant and it was PACKED - line ups at the gas pumps and in the cafe continuously. The gal at the till said that this is typical during the summer and sometimes it gets even busier! Hard to imagine... 

We made our way to the junction of Hwy 37 and started south. Soon after we made the turn-off, we arrived back in British Columbia. It always feels good to get back into your own home Province. Highway 37 is a much narrower road with lots of twisty corners and rolling humps and dips. It's also under construction in many places and a lot of the old pavement is cracked, frost-heaved and roughly repaired so the going became slow and a bit arduous. It cuts through a lot of heavily treed terrain so there isn't much to look at but... well... lots of trees. North of Dease Lake, there is a huge swath of burned out forest from a wildfire a few years ago. A lot of it is carpeted with bright pink fireweed, the flowers in stark contrast with the blackened, spindly trees. 

More rain and then more rain... the temperature dropped and we started to feel chilled. We pressed on because there isn't anything out there until you get to Dease Lake. Finally, about 30kms before Dease Lake, we got swamped by a torrential downpour and got thouroughly soaked. :( It was at this point that I wholeheartedly hoped that a warm, cozy hotel room would be waiting for us when we arrived and, what luck, so there was! We got one of the last rooms at the Northway Hotel (very nice hotel!) and, hot on our heels was a line-up of other hopeful, soggy motorcyclists. We're not sure if they all got a room but we're pretty sure the hotel booked out completely and the parking lot was full of motorbikes! 

We had a decent dinner at Rumour's Cafe beside the gas station and called it a day.