August 1 - Smithers, BC to Williams Lake, BC - 380 miles

Unbelievable!  We had a riding day without rain, without chip-seal, and with only a tiny bit of construction.  We had almost forgotten how to ride on dry, smooth pavement.  It was threatening rain and quite cool, from about 50 to 55^o F, until about the end of the riding day when it warmed up to about 65^o F.  We are now about 300 miles north of Vancouver, BC.

This part of British Columbia continues to be absolutely beautiful.  We rode down sweeping valleys, on the banks of large beautiful rivers, with green forests of spruce, fir, aspen, and birch, interspersed with the greenest grass.  

As we started, the mountains were quite high, and had small snow patches on their rocky peaks.  As we came further south, the mountains became rounded and not so high, first with small farms and then larger and more prosperous looking farms and ranches.  Just wonderfully scenic.  We also saw many huge saw mills and logging enterprises.  It is clear that a lot of lumber comes from this part of BC.

We don't have much else to report, so we'll give a little more about our riding education.

You may have thought we have been overly concerned about riding on gravel, with all of our reports.  Well, we were quite concerned!  Even though we have both ridden in construction before, we felt we were not well prepared to ride the big heavy Gold Wings on the extensive "Chip-Seal" that we've talked about in Canadian and Alaskan road repair, and through some of the extensive construction we've been through.

So, we rated ourselves at "1st Grade" in Chip-Seal and loose construction gravel as we came into Canada, three weeks ago.  We progressed to about 3rd Grade by Whitehorse, and 4th Grade by Dawson City.  Then, over the "Top of the World" highway we progressed to about 5th grade before the terrible gravel road down to Chicken, Alaska.  After 100 miles of gravel road through Chicken, we rated ourselves as passing 6th Grade. 

By the time we rode up to Fairbanks, with a side trip of five miles on muddy gravel roads at night and in the rain to the "Fish Camp" on the Kenai Peninsula, and gravel to our bed & breakfast in Fairbanks, we graduated to 7th Grade.  Finally, in the rain on muddy construction and on rainy, loose Chip-Seal, while going down to Haines, Alaska, we passed 8th Grade.

We think maybe 9th Grade is the 200 mile round trip from Alberta to the Northwest Territories that we passed up earlier because we didn't think we had enough experience.  (We could do that now.)  Then, 10th Grade might be to ride the 400 miles of gravel road from Fairbanks to the Arctic Circle and back.  We don't know exactly what 11th grade is, but we do know what 12th Grade is.  That is to ride the 1,000 miles of gravel road, bad and rutty, with potholes everywhere, from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay and back, IN THE RAIN ALL THE WAY.

However, it now looks like 8th Grade will be as far as we progress this trip, since we're now getting back to better roads.

Back to Alaska Homepage

Back to Trip Index

Next day