British Columbia And The Yukon..........Part One

Canada. The country has given us some of the best riding on the trip, right up there with Argentina. Both countries provided amazing scenery with the added bonus of wildlife. Words cannot describe the scenery and it has to be seen with the naked eye to do it justice. It has been like a self guided safari trip the whole way. We rode up through some great farmland, seeing our first black bears out eating in a paddock. Not long after this a wolf ran out onto the road in front of us and within three bounds was across the road and up through the trees, too fast for a photo though. Soon we were on the Yellow Head Highway then onto the Cassiar Highway, stopping in at Stewart, Hider and Whitehorse on the way to the Alaska border. The further north we travelled the more buckled and twisted the road became, especially near the border. It really gave the bikes suspension a good work out, but you should have seen how some of the cars handled it. Wacky Races all over again.

Wildlife viewing has been astounding, really the best time of the year to see them, as they have their young and are feeding on the new spring growth. The trees are only now starting to leaf, so you can see through them for some distance to see the animals. All the animal photos have been taken from the road which meant taking our time in places and looking all over, quite a mental strain with all the concentration.

We stopped at the intersection going north to the Alcan and west to Stewart. It was raining and I wanted to check the map for fuel stops. Seeing a closed up building at the intersection with a nice dry veranda I decided to do the map reading up there in the dry. But first I needed to hop round the back for a pit stop. Staring into the bush, not thinking of much, I saw the bush move. Coming from NZ, I thought “Must be a bird in there.” It moved again. This time I couldn’t see any bird and the wind wasn’t blowing. Hmm, “What’s doing that?” I thought. Answer. A mother black bear and two cubs and they started coming out of the bush not more than fifteen yards away. I know that as we measured it on our way past the next day. Wow, what happens now? With quivering fingers I safely zipped up in a hurry and started stepping backwards round the side of the building and headed for the bike.

“Annette, Annette, there’s a bear back there.” By this time Annette was up on the veranda.

“Where, where? I cant see one”

Then, “Oh S..T, Here she comes.”

But she was busy eating and looking for those tasty shoots, lucky for us.

I managed to get a photo once the bike was running and there is one of the building we took the next day so you can see the side I was standing on and how close the bush is to the back of the building.

It was an adrenalin moment and one we probably over-reacted to, but I wont be going into the woods for a while to do any map reading .