finally made it back to civilization

Don't know if it's necessarily a good thing or not. With it comes WalMart and McDonalds n stuff and lots of traffic. Hard to believe the price of fuel is so high. There's a never ending stream of RV's heading North. My plan to solve the high trucking prices up here was to ask each RV to bring one more thing up with them. There would definitely be no need for trucks.

We're in Dawson Creek, one day away from Jasper, the end of the line. Today the scenery was pretty boring but yesterday from Watson Lake to Fort Nelson was gorgeous mountains, lakes, rivers, real trees again. I didn't realize how depressing it would be with nothing but little spindly spruce trees and some small Alders up North. Now we even have grass and fragrances again. Pretty weird how it changes so dramatically. The mosquitoes are still bad but nothing like they were.

We finished up the last of the dirt road riding when we pulled into Watson Lake unfortunately. Everyone liked riding on those roads much better than on the pavement. You couldn't go as fast but the miles went by more quickly because you had to concentrate much more intensely. Not only were there patches that could send you down quickly but some good size potholes that could really send you flying. And some of the roads were pretty narrow with not much room between the raod and the treeline. Definitely dangerous with the amount of wildlife we saw. Lots of black bears just walking across the road as well as moose munching on the grass and also bighorn sheep eating the salt left over from the winter. even a little porcupine that wasn't much interested in talking to me.

The top prize for the worst place we had to stay won hands down. The TND Motor Hotel in Ross River. Only choice and more than 200 miles from anywhere else, on a dirt road. The smells were incredible but even worse in the second room so we all stayed in the same room. I flipped over the futon and pulled out my new sleeping bag, which will now need a good washing. Amazingly enough none of us got sick from the food and as far as I can tell, none of us brought along any bugs to the next place.

the saving grace was the very pretty college student working there for the summer. I'm still not sure she'll last but I have to applaud her effort. She and her friend didn't want to work in Dawson City because it's such a tourist trap. they wanted some place real. Well, they got real. the few locals there were that we saw just sat on their trailer porch drinking beer and throwing the cans in the yard. when I asked the local store owner what people did for work and he laughed and said ' government', meaning welfare. It was quite a place and we'll all be happy to never go back there, or even stop for gas if we happen to pass that way again.

The only thing that could have made it better would've been if Dug and Brian were there too. Not that I missed them or anything. I just wish they cou'd've been as disgusted as we were. Plus it would've been fun watching Brian tell yet another girl how he did an Ironman and that he had a goal of getting his picture with "someone" every day of his trip. Funny how he never used that line on any guys.

All of the knobbies on our tires are getting down to nothing. Dan still has to make it to Edmonton. Tomorrow plus 4 hours.
Mark doesn't really know how much farther he needs to go cuz he's meeting his family tomorrow and I need to go 2 days past Jasper down to Missoula because the Canadian BMW dealers are jerks and oh yeah, the dirt road I was planning on taking today was closed, which is why I'm heading south to Montana. Should be ok with the slicks as long as it doesn't rain. The way i see it no knobbies just meeans more rubber touching the road.

I'll let you know how it's going as I get souther.