Alaska Tomorrow August 20th, 2009

Or today by the time you read this...

Hello from Smithers, British Columbia, the last stop before taking on Alaska.  Hopefully I'll be there in time for lunch.  I spent my day off in Kelowna on the bike of course.  I left the trailer at the Hostel and drove around the lake.  It was about a hundred miles.  The one side was very twisty, with a steep rocky drop down to the water,  The other side had a nice sweeping high-speed freeway.  Both quite nice.  The next day was my service.  Turns out the slop in the front end wasn't from having the neck bearing lubed at my last service (it was really dry then).  Apparently the two bolts that hold the fork tubes in the tripple clamps were snapped.  They appear to have been over tightened, and may have been loose since my last service when they would have been loosened to replace the fork oil.  The mechanic had to extract the broken-off bolt ends and replace them.  Very good mechanic, though, and they had me on the road by noon.  I was shooting for Valemount, BC that night but was about 50 miles short as the sun was going down.  I followed some signs on the road to a campsite that appeared to be long shut down.  I stopped to ask some locals that were drinking beers in their yard and they told me it had been closed for three years, but there was another one across town.  Before I could depart I was offered a beer and ended up chatting for a while.  As it got dark I tried to excuse myself to go set up camp but they offered to let me camp in their yard.  We lit a bonfire and stayed up late into the evening swapping stories.  I never bothered to set up my tent and just put my sleeping bag under the stars and slept that way.  In the morning I tried some homemade moose-in-a-jar.  Apparently it is marinated in it's juices, cooked in a pressure cooker and sealed in a jar.  It keeps for years.  We ate it on crackers with hot sauce.  Not a bad little breakfast snack.  I bid farewell to my hosts and hit the road around 10:30 and started heading toward Telkwa.  I passed out of the mnountain region and into the lake region.  I saw two black bears at different points in the day.  I wrapping this up because my battery is waning fast.  I was headed for Telkwa, but the campground din't have any good spots left according to them and suggested I try Smithers.  I camped on the 17th hole of a par three golf course.  Fun times!  Tomorrow Alaska!!! Stayed tuned......