A beautiful day, moderately warm for our location and the sun is out. We are headed north again. About 30 miles out John pulls into a Honda Motorcycle dealer's parking lot. I figured he had a Kawasaki and a Yamaha that he needed a Honda too. But as warm as it seemed leaving Grand Prarie at 70 miles per hour it is a bit cool, John adds another jacket and I plug in my electric jacket liner. Life is good and we are on our way again. One hour later we are in Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway. We stop at the sign and take pictures of each other with our bikes in from of the sign.Our next stop will be Fort Saint John for fuel. It is very interesting as the road drops into a valley very steeply, easy on the bikes but we can smell the hot brakes on some of the trucks. Some of the bridges are made with a steel mesh for the driving surface instead of concrete or asphalt. This one is the steel mesh and my first ride on one. The front and rear tires seem to each have picked a different ridge to ride on so they are each wiggling but to the beat of different drummers. It is not a big deal if one just relaxes and lets the bike take you across the bridge, but it sure feels like you are getting two flat tires at the same time. We fuel up the bikes and head north again. John's bike has a 5.5 gallon gas tank and he get between 30 and 35 mpg.He likes to get gas before we hit a long bare spot if we have more than 75 miles on the tank full. Gas stations are sometimes far apart so if we have a station close we use it. The White Donkey has a 7.9 gallon tank and gets between 38 and 44 mpg most of the time so I don't have to worry too much. Head winds can really cut into the fuel mileage so we play it safe. John does have a one gallon gas can that is full and strapped on the passenger's foot rest just in case. Since leaving Grand Prarie the road has been mostly two lane, three lane on some of the hills to get the slow truck over out of the way, much like our roads up around Payson and Show Low. Still wide areas cover with grass on both sides. From Saint John to Fort Nelson our planed stop is 250 miles and if you did the math on John's bike you know he won't make it so we stop at a little gas station and store at Pink Mountain. I didn't see the pink mountain but I did go in the store and they had lots of stuff for sale, from food stuff to flannel shirts and every thing in between. We are only 75 miles into our fuel so I didn't fill up, wanted to see how the gauge was working and when the reserve light would come on. I had checked all that when I put that tank on but wanted to check it again. For the record the reserve light came on at 230 miles, at 250 miles we were in Fort Nelson and it took 24.9 liters so I had about 1.5 gallons left after running 20 miles with the reserve light on, so my original check was right on.
For the critter watch we did see bears today. The first one we were passed before we had time to get stopped and didn't want to turn around and go back. Now we are on Bear alert and want to see more. Twenty miles down the road we see one and we stop where we can watch her, I say her because she had two cubs. The bear was across the road and up a slope about 40 feet and didn't seem to pay any attention to us. The cubs were a little more cautious and kept running back into the trees every little bit then back around mom and under her and all around, she seemed to pay not attention to them. Fun to watch
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Fort Nelson, we have found a hotel, cleaned up and walked across the street for dinner. We come out or the restaurant and the streets are wet. At least we were not riding in this one.
Until Tomorrow
Traveler and the white donkey
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