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Then
there is the difficulty in getting here. It was relatively easy to
get to the first town in NWT, Enterprise, and on around the Great Slave lake to our
overnight place, Fort Providence, last night. But getting to the Far
North of Yellowknife is tough. First it's cold riding - about 50o
F, but with a chill factor taking it down to feel like about 20o
F - and 200 miles of that. Then, while the first 150 miles is paved,
there are "repair" sections with really bad loose gravel, thick
enough that it makes handling the bike a real challenge.
Then the
toughest part is the 34 miles under construction. Talk about
difficult riding, this whole section was mud over slick rocks, and the
chances to go down were innumerable. Norm decided to stick with his
Gold Wing, while Deane got his yellow Suzuki V-Strom out of the trailer
and put the Gold Wing in. We made it without going down, but it took
real concentration. (And we had to go to a car wash to wash all that
mud off the motorcycles.)
For the
wildlife report, we saw lots of Buffalo in the Wood Buffalo
Preserve. We saw these buffalo along the roadside every once in a
while for about 150 miles, with sometimes ones and twos, and a large group
of maybe 40 in one place. This is forested area, and when they want
to get out of sight, they just disappear into the forest like
ghosts. (And this time none of them chased Deane on his
motorcycle.) It looks like buffalo are doing really well here, in
increasing their numbers.
Then a
night out to a historic restaurant, the "Wildcat", in
Yellowknife made for a complete day, celebrating one of our important
goals on this trip.
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