Hell froze over and we made it to Purgatory, then Heaven surrounded us on all sides. The relatively gentle, manageable roads of the prior night continued on throughout the Yukon. Granted, we still had some frost heave space launches and needed to be wary of hidden-from-view-until-the-suspension-crunched potholes. There was also still some gravel, but it was always in short sections of road and the rocks were not as polished, buffed, and waxed as they were in Motorcycle Hell.
This role reversal struck my prearranged ideas as weird: the wilderness-laden name of “Yukon” had more twentieth century roadway than did the much more refined sounding name of “British Columbia”. Rumors, stories, and what tourism sold: environment as product, rather than environment as it was. Certainly the Alaskan Highway was not solely indicative of the rest of the territory, but it was indicative of how full of it predisposed ideas could be.
We fortunately again travelled away from the far reaching feel of main street America that had infiltrated into parts of the AlCan. The landscape slowly changed from the road’s beginning, although many of the same variables were there the day before, only shaken up into new vials of potion. Dark rolling hills would occasionally jut out lopsided or be exposed by a cleared burn area. Interlocking mounds had charred poles covering them, looking like a magnified view of the hair on a mammal’s back. And the gravel-covered road curved on and on between small towns, with occasional rough offshoot roads that always disappeared around a bend into the deep woods.
This day, however, things became even more foreign and unusually beautiful. So many things were almost like a postcard, but had a more pressing, dynamic feeling to them. The people dwindled and the Yukon showed us what “sparsely populated”, “unpopulated”, and “populated only by jackrabbits” meant.
Alaska-Canadian Highway through the Yukon
In a way of showing us how different this place was, over the span of several days we twice came upon burned out hulks of a Volkswagen Rabbit by the side of the road. The second one was enveloped in acrid smelling flames as we approached, a bonfire coming from both the interior and the engine compartment. It was surreal enough coming upon this unexplainable scene in the middle of nowhere, but stranger yet to see nobody around for miles in either direction. Not a person anywhere. We even peered inside to make sure no hapless soul’s charred skeleton was there, but saw nothing except for blackened seat springs on curling vinyl. This was dangerous territory for VW Rabbits, apparently.
There had never been a problem getting fuel, but gas stops had turned into depots combining a gas station, restaurant, grocery store, and motel all together in one family run operation. We stayed in such a place that night: the Bayshore Motel and Restaurant. I overlooked pretty Kluane Lake from my desk there, but the water in my shower smelled funny. Taking the good with the not so good, to make it all great.
Dad and I pulled in needing gas. The father came out and, as had been usual in Canada, he was very friendly. We took a room with no competition from anyone else – though a few people came later – and we asked about getting a meal. Well, they had just closed up, but the wife did not mind making dinner for us. She cooked while one of her daughters served us and asked waitress questions without really being a waitress. The other daughter was outside hanging linens on a clothesline, all from the six motel rooms.
When I came back later to get a Diet Coke for Dad, the food-oriented mother and daughter were at a table by the cash register watching TV, and they were pleasantly interested in my college degree and our trip. Dad really enjoyed these non-commercialized places fueled by friendliness, and I was beginning to get a sense of why.
The Yukon also unraveled impressive scenery, bringing out mountain chains and big-sky clouds. Our travels brought the unusual feeling of having a scene’s mood depend upon which way my nose was pointed. From one traveling spot I could see an incredible range of things.
Sunlit blue sky over deep green bushes and trees. Smoky gray fog over blackened hills. Blue-gray clouds overlapping brilliant white wisps and puffs, all moving over mountains patterned with crisp snow and exposed brown rock. Huge rain clouds with visible streaks of rain and cloud falling into valleys. Nebulous white-gray clouds looking like snow exploding off of the snow-capped mountains they hovered over. And all of this while riding in open sunlight with rain popping on my helmet, running across my faceshield.
Yukon Territory
Our first major mecha-medical problems occurred that day, both in the Suzuki. The BMW had given us trouble before we actually rolled and had needed some extra parts since, but the Suzuki choked up our day with roadside repair. The first problem was an easy one, though it took a while to find: nothing worked because of a fuse. We then purchased 15 extra fuses. After Dad over-bought five extras, we later found that we already had ten more while rummaging through all of our combined tools and parts collections.
After driving for about twenty five miles on a near-powerless Suzuki that barely made it up hills, Dad and I pulled into a Tastee Freez parking lot and tore apart anything tearable. Culprit: snapped-off arm of one of the two sets of points. Of course we had a spare only for the other set that still worked, but Dad cannibalized the old and the new to make a working hybrid. After a very long distance phone call to Dad’s friend back home to get a mechanic’s advice, my father reassembled the beast. The feel through my butt told me it was running even better than before it broke. And that was after a surgery session with minimal tools and no Suzuki dealer for who knows how many mountain chains. Good job, Dad.