Monday, June 9.Quesnel B.C. to Hazelton B.C.  My first night  camping did not go well. It did not get dark for most of the night. Even after sharing several bottles of wine at the family reunion my mind could not convince my body that it was time to sleep. This light thing is going to disrupt my sleeping pattern for the entire trip. The further north you travel the longer the days become. June 21^st will be the longest day of the year. The longer days are bad for sleeping but great for riding. You can ride all night if you want and not have to worry about visibility. I get a late start this morning. It takes until 9:30 to break camp and repack the bike. Maybe the sixteen hundred plus miles from the previous three days is taking a toll on my old body? I spoke to Willie Davidson’s relative and other riders at a local coffee shop on my way out of town. They are nice people and if I had the time I would have taken their offer  to ride with them to Barkerville. They were going to ride to Barkerville for lunch. I felt the need to get moving.  I catch a thunderstorm and rain on the road to Prince George. It slows me down but it was only an inconvenience.  The ride north to Prince George from Quesnel is nice but nothing spectacular.

At Prince George I turned west on to the Yellowhead Highway. [pic]  Things are starting to feel more remote and the scenery is great.   The traffic is sparse and the road allows you to press as hard as you dare. I hit my first roadway construction shortly after Fort Frasser. I skipped to the front of the line of waiting cars, dismounted and stretched for five minutes. I followed a pilot car for about two miles and then was off with no traffic ahead of me for miles. This country was made for motorcycles – in the summer. On through Vanderhoof B.C., the center of British Columbia. [pic] 

 B.C. is a big place with just over four million people. It occupies 365,900 square miles and is Canada’s third largest province. [pic] The scenery along the Yellowhead starts to get really nice around Fraser Lake and continues to get better all the way to Hazelton and Kitwanga. The RT and I are in a grove and the riding is perfect.   I saw only two other bikes in three hundred and fifty miles today. Both were going east and probably coming from Prince Rupert and the Alaskan Marine Highway. At Smithers you can see Crown Mountain [2836 m.], Thomplinson Mountain [2591 m.] and Hudson Bay Mountain [2560 m.].  Each is snow covered with dense trees all the way to the snow line. It looks as if someone painted a brilliant green mat over the entire mountainside. Nice! The temperature is really cooling off and the riding could not be better. I have come to the conclusion that sixty-six degrees F is the ideal temperature for riding a motorbike. Not sixty-four and not sixty-seven. Sixty-six degrees is perfect! After three and a half days of riding I am now in an area that I would describe as remote. Mountains, snow, lakes, waterfalls and very few towns, cars or people. This is why I came north! This place is everything I hoped it would be. I decide to stop in Hazelton after an easy riding day of three hundred and fifty-two miles. [pic] I view the town’s display of totem poles and check into a small motel. [pic]

Earlier in the day I had the option at Prince George to take Highway 97 north to Dawson Creek and then to the Alaska Highway to Fort Nelson and Watson Lake. I decided to take the Yellowhead and the Cassiar Highway because I wanted to visit Hyder Alaska and I had read that the Cassiar would take me through the more remote areas of British Columbia. The four hundred and fifty mile road carves a route through mountains, lakes and glaciers. Talking with other riders who chose the Alcan instead of my route, I am pleased with my decision. Although the Cassiar is rough and a difficult ride, the scenery, wildlife and general sense of isolation is unmatched when compared with the Alcan .  

  Previous      Home    Next