25 June - Pink Mountain to Coal River

25 June.

Saw my first bear this morning. A black bear and cub feeding by the roadside. No way was I going to stop.

I sort of expected today would be a transport stage. I'm starting to be over vast tracts of forest with miles of straight road, especially when wet.

It threatened to rain all morning, but nothing much happened weather wise, only the bear sighting to break the monotony. I got to Fort Nelson by midday and had lunch and then it began to get interesting...

Entering Stone Mountain Provincial Park.

...and the downhill run just after the previous photo, yee har!

I was flinging myself around the bend at the bottom of this pic with reckless abandon and there was a caribou right on the side of the road! Only problem with the big single is it makes more noise when you throttle off than when you are running, so we both gave each other a fright for a moment, but no real drama.

At Toad River I stopped for a breather and gas and met Richard, who related a tale of woe about blowing his beemers rear drive seal. He was making arrangements to ship his bike back to the nearest BMW dealer in - Edmonton! 1200 km away. His was not the only sad tale there, a couple of young girls were also there waiting for a new distributor to come up on that day's Greyhound bus from Fort Nelson. Hope it all worked out OK for everyone.

Later I had to stop for a road construction red light for 5 minutes, and that's when it chose to rain hardest all day! I'd been running into and out of weather cells all day, never more than 10 minutes of rain at a time, but so often! At least when you're running a bit of the rain misses you!

My plan was to make it to Liard River for the night, but it was still early and raining, so I sailed right on by, running out of steam at Coal River. Donna and Brent, the proprietors are really nice people. Brent let me park the bike in the garage workshop and dry out my gear, bought me a beer and we nattered for a while. Later on after tea (supper here) they told me a great deal about the local area including the giant whirlpools in the river - not reachable by road, unfortunately. I also met up with Bill and Dusty from Iowa on Goldwing 1800s, on their way back from Arctic Circle after 3 weeks on the road. The sneaky sods paid for my Buffalo Burger and then forced me to drink bourbon and coke. I must be more careful!

Time on the road, aboot 8.5 hours, 64mpg, 569km