A Fall road trip on the motorcycle
Well, we’ve had our first warnings that Winter isn’t far away – on Wednesday we had a few flakes of snow, on Thursday it was heavier. The first photo shows the view from the basement window as I was coming up after lighting the wood stove Thursday morning. I have that wood pile about 70% done – even though I have enough wood stacked in the shed and house to last the winter, I would like to get this cleaned up.
I got the garage 3/4 ready for winter Thursday afternoon, and put my car in. When I looked in there on Friday morning, the sight of the motorcycle – “the noisy bike” is my usual term for it since getting the e-bike – and the rapidly-improving weather made a road trip seem like a good idea.
While I was getting ready to go, I got a 10-minute warning about a lunch date I’d forgotten. I sent Cathy a text telling her I’d forgotten and was heading north on the bike. At 12:05 I shot this selfie and was on the road a few minutes later.
On the Alaska Highway at the western edge of Whitehorse at 12:40. There was a very strong, cold, south wind on my back.
My next photo stop was on the North Klondike Highway along Fox Lak at 1:20. The wind was rapidly stripping the Fall colours from most of the trees. Although I can stop the bike in places I can’t stop the car for photos, it’s more complicated – I have to put the bike on the kickstand and get my camera out of the zippered bag behind me.
By 1:50 when I stopped to get this photo at Km 292 (from the ferry terminal in Skagway), the weather ahead was looking quite ugly.
Just after 2:00, north of Montague Roadhouse, the temperature dropped dramatically, to just above freezing. When it started raining, I was half expecting it to turn to snow. I had dressed warmly, but if I had also brought a can of gas with me, I would have turned around, but I needed to get fuel at Carmacks. I took the next photo at 2:40 as I was about the head south again. I had hoped to do a bit of exploring around Carmacks but it was much too cold for that.
I made a few Fall-colours photo stops on the way south, the first one just 10 minutes out of Carmacks.
A glimpse of a colourful side road at 3:00 prompted a U-turn. I couldn’t find the photos I’d hoped for there…
…but the puddle in the foreground of the photo above worked out well.
The final two photos show the Twin Lakes Campground just before 3:30 – I made a couple of loops around it just looking for photo ops, and shot a few, but the light and the wind were both bad for photos of the lakes.
I was getting hungry, so stopped at Braeburn Lodge for a bowl of soup and a couple of huge slices of their wonderful bread, as well as a cinnamon bun to take home.
I got home at 5:30, having put 398 km on the bike. Hopefully I can get a few more rides before the roads turn white.
About The Author
That was a good call on the ride!… Get out while you can. Do you wear an electric vest? I found that a wonderful way to keep my digits and my core delightfully warm and always extended my comfort and the ride. A good number of miles down and back… more than worth your time and effort. Hope you do manage a few more before you put the bike away for the season, even if you have to keep them more local.
I don’t have any electric warmers – I bought heated handlebar grips many years ago but never did get around to installing them. It looks like our perma-snow has arrived, 3 weeks early. I was going to put the bike away for the winter today, but I’m going tom keep it out for a week or so yet, just in case this stuff melts for a few days.