While we were there a bus stopped in and a bunch of tourists from the midwest fanned out and it got busy. There was also an interesting guy in the parking lot waiting for a helicopter! He was running a large mushroom picking operation, sending millions of pounds of mushrooms to Japan. He had pickers in the forests finding mushrooms which were processed at drying location he had setup locally, and then shipped by air overseas. Some of the pine? mushrooms were immediately sent fresh via air to Japan. He said some of the pickers could make four to five thousand dollars a day in cash for the mushrooms they found.
We continued on until we saw this creation at the side of the road. It was a Mecedes Unimog that a German couple had transported from Germany to tour Alaska. I had never seen one of these, but Graham had recently owned one. They were traveling with another Swiss couple and we visited for awhile with them. They were headed for the Dempster and were very interested in any information we had on road conditions
We continued following the Yukon River until we came to Carmacks YT. After we filled the gas tanks we discussed whether we should continue down Highway 2 to Whitehorse, or whether we should bypass Whitehorse on Highway 4 to Watson Lake. The map showed it to be a dirt road and we debated whether we wanted more dust, but when the question was posed "when will we have a chance to ride Highway 4 again?" we headed down the road to Watson Lake.
The first 200km was tar road and very scenic. There was little to no traffic. We stopped at this beautiful lake to boil some coffee and roast some sausage.
It started to warm up so Graham went swimming again, even though he figured it was colder the Arctic.
I dozed off and Graham laid on on the picnic table bench to dry off and warm up and he fell asleep too. Then out of the blue he yelled "OUCH I STABBED MYSELF IN THE CHEST". What a way to wake up. He was on his hands and knees holding his chest with blood dripping between his fingers. Yikes! He had been whittling something when he dozed off and then in his sleep swatted a mosquito on his chest but was still holding his knife. Fortunately it wasn't very deep or serious and we got it cleaned out and taped up but it reminded us of how remote we were, and there really wasn't any way to get emergency medical help out here. We were probably 200 hundred miles from the nearest medical facilities.
We crossed the Ross River canyon on our way to Ross River for gas. This would be the last gas for almost 300 miles.
After this Highway 4 turned to dirt. The road was only about 12 ft wide in places and no shoulders. In some places the vegetation and trees grew to the side of the road.
Because we felt even more isolated than we had at any time in the trip we decided to "leapfrog" to provide more safety especially to the bike bringing up the rear. It was so dusty that we couldn't really ride together and had to space up to a mile to avoid the dust. The problem was that if the rider bringing up the rear happened to crash or experience a breakdown, no one would know. We were also far enough out that there was almost no opportunity to turn back too far because gas was limited. So the rider in front would ride for 10 minutes and stop - wait until the others passed by - and then resume from the rear.
It was almost about 350km of dirt road to Watson Lake, with the last section being tar road. The road construction we went through was worse than anything we had experienced. It seemed like it was more of a farm field or mining excavation than a road. We were routed through muddy sections that were very rutted and deep. It was amazing that Risto got through this with his street bike. He said later he thought he was in for a face plant.
We got into Watson Lake late. The skies were really pink.
It was cold when we got in and noticed a hotel with a lot of motorcycles in the parking lot and took this as an endorsement so we pulled in for the night.
It was my turn to sleep on the floor. It was getting quiet. "Hey Graham." "Yeah?" "Where's your knife?" "Its on the table over there. Why?" "Just checking..." "Oh sheesh..." hahaha... roflol
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