186km

Yesterday opened cold and cloudless, and we headed out early. The area around Whitehorse is 'semi-arid' which isn't to say it's a desert, but that the riotous growth is shorter on this side of the mountain. It kept us dry though, which became a mixed blessing  as the day wore on. The highlight today was riding around Kluane Lake, a vast body of water about 150 square miles. The highway follows the southern shore before cutting through the shallows on a narrow bridge. It was stunning to see the mountains ringing the lake reflected in the still waters. Also I saw a bald eagle, but that hardly counts because it was Canadian.

The road took a turn for the worse early on. The first warning was a sign that read "road construction -- 186km." The surface soon turned to a patchwork of gravel, mud, and potholes. There were short reprieves of blacktop,nbut these sections werel ittered with frost heaves, sections where the permafrost had buckled the road. We shook our way to the Alaska border on dirt. It was tricky keeping the bike upright on gravel while dodging potholes. I lost my walkie-talkie over the side when I came over a heave into a deep hole. We fished it off the side of the road unharmed, but we took it a little slower from there. We kicked up a lot of dust, but there wasn't a lot of oncoming traffic, so we didn't have to worry about being blinded by some big rig's cloud.

As we rode between a few ranges we watched clouds begin to collect as the air coming down the slopes mixed. Before long we could see that it had begun to rain ahead of us. We can't catch a break when it comes to weather. After a short stop to gear up and get everything covered we headed into the storm. It was a short one, thankfully, and not especially hard coming down. The road turned a few degrees north around another peak and we circumnavigated it. At least the rain kept the dust down!

Crossing the border took even less time than it took into Canada. The suit looked at our passports and wanted to know if we had guns, then he waved us in. It turned colder as we approached Tok and the rain started again. We stayed at my relative's cabin, but we won't see them until Oregon. We finished off the night at a folk concert at one of the local RV parks, my relative's friends' children play a mean banjo and fiddle. I'm hot and cold when it comes to folk music, but it was pleasant, although by the end my road fatigue was biting pretty hard. It felt good to get back to the cabin, pull the black-outs against the sun and call it a night.