Jade Country to Watson Lake

 The picture above is of our idyllic life aboard the Veggie Voyager. We were at Dease Lake and that was actually after we were at one of the beaver created Gnats Lakes, below, with moose prints everywhere but no Moose to see... We went for a long bike ride along an old railroad grade and came on some Korean men who spoke no English drilling for something...the locals thought Jade. Dease is the Jade Capital of the World but Cassiar also has that distinction, we don't know who is right however. In our own way we ended up with a unique peek into jade country.

 We suddenly blew a radiator hose coming up a grade. Notice how sunny it was? Within a half hour of being pulled off the road here it was raining. Michael fashioned an ingenious inner hose from something else, wrapped the old hose around it tightly with duct tape and we went on to a place called Jade City. The people there were really wonderful and suggested a fellow who is a wrecker in the supposedly abandoned town of Cassiar so we drove up there and it was really unique meeting Judi and Larry in their sled dog, chicken, car/truck etc parts extravaganza high up in mining country. Michael got anti-freeze from them, some more hoses, an antenna and we shared some time listening to their stories of life in the remote mountain terrain with grizzlies and miners.

 Last night we hiked at Boya Lake Provincial Park and then took a hasty swim in the crystal clear waters as a fire raged in the distance. We came through many miles of fire ravaged forests today.

 Also today we made it on across into the Yukon where Michael was able to pick up many gallons of veggie oil from the folks at the restaurant where Highways 37 and 97 junction and we came on to the Alaskan Highway east to Watson Lake, where there are over 71,000 signs from places all over the world, a signpost forest they call it. They are celebrating Discovery Days here in town and so it is time for us to move on... one thing we noticed immediately though is the increased signage, yellow divider line in the highway and increased traffic and population. We sure loved our time on Highway 37 up through the wildlands of British Columbia and it is bittersweet to be headed south from here even if it is on the storied Alcan Highway.