Making Miles

Damn.  We have delayed the descent into the lower 48 by about as much as time as we can.  We have left Canada and re-entered four times now since leaving and re-entering Alaska.  Our two side trips, to Haines, AK and Skagway and Hyder, AK had us jumping borders.  Usually Canadian borders. Seems like they care about who enters their country.

Yesterday the trip finally seemed to say “Good Bye Vacation, Hello Return Trip”.  We left our new friends behind. Our buddy Moe left Stewart, BC early and Greg and Cindy started meandering south.  The Chaps are back together again and we have a shit ton of mileage to ride.

We hit the end of the Cassiar Highway at Kitwanga, BC and the traffic started up.  Apparently there is quite a bit of movement between Prince George and Prince Rupert.  Don’t get me wrong. The country was still gorgeous, it was just much more populated with lots of traffic and four lane highways.  Yesterday, we pushed it and ended up in Vanderhoof.   Okay, why not?  It seemed as good as a stopping point as any other random Canadian town,  and we shared a bit of name to boot.

The first campsite we tried in Vanderhoof  was closed forever.  The second campsite was closed at the gate as it was after 10pm and the host house was black as night.  Dave started talking Hotel/motel.  My budget doesn’t allow that so I started knocking on doors. I was very surprised when an attractive young women maybe 23 opened the door to the host house. That is not your usual campsite host by any means.   Sidenote:  We are four guys, lacking on sleep and riding motorcycles and looking what I think was a bit crazed after riding for 12 hours, what was she thinking actually opening up the door?   Anyway, I shared our predicament and she decided to open the gate and walk us to our campsite.   One campsite and 20 Canadian dollars later, tents were set up and we were sleeping like snoring babies.  Before bedtime though, we spent some time figuring out how we are going to make up two days.   Ugh.

Next morning was a quick coffee stop at the local bakery (nothing is really quick with four guys on bikes) but I did finally download some new music on Spotify and we were off to Prince George for gas, then south on the Cariboo Highway.   They should call this Log Cabin Central, because that is about all we saw.   The topography had really began to change the day before from mountains to valleys to farms, but today we started to experience heat and dry.  By end of day the temps were approaching the nineties.

After a long and relatively uneventful drive, we started to descend along the Thompson River, along the Trans-Canada highway.    Amazing!!!   A Baits Motel sign did catch our eye in the town of  Spences Bridge and we ended up

taking a few photos and having an iced coffee and nacho chips at the Packing House Cafe.

Leaving the Packing House Cafe we were treated with a fantastic twisty ride along a fast flowing river, numerous fruit farms, and horse ranches. The Packing House had an interesting history as it was one of the first “prefab” buildings in  Canada and was shipped from Europe.

We finally landed in a campsite along another beautiful river that we were promised to be able to pitch our tent by but could not see.  This campsite puts us in a stones throw to the US border, and we should be able to get there in the morning for breakfast.

After we leave Canada, it will be time to start hitting it big on mileage.  Today total was over 450.