Weather, weather and more...

The story of this trip is the weather... Cold, wet, windy.
Our truncated trip today took us back down Hwy 58 from High Level, through Slave Lake and Red Earth to Edmonton. That's about 300 miles of rain.
From Edmonton to Calgary, where we are tonight, we rode in the dry -- though my electrics were plugged in even for part of that stretch.
Tomorrow, if the weather doesn't slow us, we'll spend the night in Sheridan. In fact, maybe we'll stay at the familiar motel 6 u e stayed in at least once on every bike trip I've taken to/through western Canada. (It was brand spanking new when Jessica, Terry Summers and I stayed there in 2009.)

Good news, bad news

That's me in my Captain Jack pose with bike (pack mule) in the foreground.

Good news:
Northern Canada is still lovely and, in general, its residents congenial. Yellowknife residents are surprised to have tourist-visitors who aren't there to fish.
Fishing is a big deal. Great Slave and the hundreds of other lakes offer a bounty of fish, including the popular lake trout and grayling.
We lunched at the legendary Wildcat Cafe and breakfasted at the popular hole-in-the-wallish Gold Rush Bistro.
We were in town for National Indigenous People Day... Many businesses were closed and traffic was light.
We also spent a couple hours at their wonderful Prince of Wales Heritage Center. Fascinating look at the history and culture: indigenous, Metis, miners, trappers, Mounties.
Got a lesson in economics from the cashier at Circle K. Janitors at the mines "up north" work 2 weeks on, 2 off and earn 80,000 to 90,000 per year. The cashier doesn't want that life but says he can afford a nice $1500 per month 1-bedroom apartment on what he earns at the convenience store..
Lots of Wood Buffalo beside the highway today. Inattention can lead to serious health issues.
Bad news: Skip's mom is having a 'surprise' brain procedure tomorrow so we're hurrying back to Texas. From tonight's pause, our route will take us through Montana and Wyoming -- we'll avoid the heat of the midwest. Even spending long days on the bike, we're 4 or 5 days from. home -- hurrying and fast are not synonymous.

Another box checked.

When I was in the fifth grade and brother Bert in the third, we won a rope-climbing competition. The prizes were a world history textbook and a world geography textbook.
I developed a fascination with Great Slave Lake, the city of Yellowknife, the Metis, Hudson Bay Company, the Arctic shield... The whole thing.
Today,Skip and I wandered around old town, ate at a restaurant established during the gold boom of the 1930s. We motorbiked north and east where thousands of lakes dot the hulking granite and gneiss outcroppings.
Beautiful day...64 degrees, sunny. And a part of the world I've waited almost 60 years to see.

It's the summer sostice

Five years ago, I marked the summer solstice in Dawson, Yukon Territory with a couple hundred other motorcyclists.
Tonight, Skip Honeycutt and I are camped by Prelude Lake -- a great Territorial Park -- outside Yellowknife, the bustling capital of Northwest Territories.

At 10:30, it's so light out you can see all two jillion of the mosquitoes arguing over that last parking place on your arm. We're some hundreds of miles north of the 60th parallel.
The day started awful. We broke camp in the rain -- packing a wet tent, you will never do it as well as you did when you practiced in your back yard on a dry day.
We were wet and 48-degree cold until about 2 p.m. The mirror (left) on my bike broke loose... It's now attached with duct tape, reinforced with an 8 mm box end wrench.
We're 15 miles from town -- dinner came from the snack box at the park office. Ruffles chips and a can of Coke.
Notes:
-- the fine for littering in NWT is $1725.
-- they weren't kidding about Woods Buffalo; those huge critters love to find lunch on the highway right-of-way.
-- virtually every town in Canada offers a campground with spaces for tents and RVs, showers and -- in some -- laundry facilities.
-- it is not logical that there could be this many mosquitoes in one place.

Pretty far north, but not there yet

'Tis the night before the summer solstice and we've established a damp camp at Aspen Glade, a campground at High Level, Alberta -- 120 miles from the northwest Territories.

The day began cool (48 degrees; I wore my electric jacket liner all day and had it turned on until early afternoon), windy and rainy.
 The problem with using a cell phone as GPS is that it's not waterproof, so we checked a map before departure and immediately became confused. Rain, wet face mask, unfamiliar territory.
Purely by luck, truly by luck, we found ourselves on the correct highway, headed toward Yellowknife.

At Lesser Slave Lake, we stopped to chat with the hosts at the visitor center and for a photo before heading north on the WRONG road. Though the shorter of two options, this one offered limited fuel opportunities... Not a problem for my bike and its large tank, but Skip coasted into Red Earth with his fuel reserve officially consumed.
We made it here, finally.
Strong wind has been our constant companion, pushing us this way and that but keeping us alert... No monotony today.
As we moved north into the boreal latitudes, scenery improved markedly. Hills, millions and millions of hectares of fir and birch. We saw some deer and our first bear -- a gaunt black bear -- but no moose and no unrestrained bison.
We're told there is no fuel at Enterprise -- one of my planned fuel stops. If we find that to be the case, we'll take a 50-mile side trip to Hay River, a full-service community on the south side of Great Slave Lake. If all goes as planned, we will be in Yellowknife for the solstice.
Your homework: read up on the Slavey Indians and the lake.
And I leave you with this: Lordy, I love motorcycling in northern Canada.

Just when Saskatchewan started to look good

The scenery was improving. The terrain  trees were scattered here and there. Occasionally one of the hundreds of ponds and bogs might include a beaver lodge.

But, ahead loomed a massive cloud. Shaped like a tootsie roll but black and threatening, the cloud dominated the western horizon. It delivered.

I've ridden in colder temps. Ridden in heavier rain. Ridden in stiffer winds. But all 3 together were too much. A hundred or so miles from our destination, we bailed. We spent most of the afternoon in a motel in Vegreville, Alberta. I spelled it correctly, you decide how you want to pronounce it.

Tomorrow, we'll add the balance of today's miles.

Random thoughts:

In Minnesota, the bridge over the Whiteface River is but a few miles east of the bridge over the Paleface River.

The most interesting feature of our route across eastern Saskatchewan is the Quill Lakes wetlands. The series of shallow lakes are protected under the international Ramsor Treaty. The wetlands (it's a singular collective noun) is home to gazillions of water fowl and other winged critters.

From Minnesota to the Saskatoon

Sorry about the photo quality, but trust me... It's a pump with ethanol-free gas, 91 I take. Guess what I bought.

And this in Virginia, MN for OCD motorists with very specific needs.

No service yesterday and spotty service tonight... I will hope this posts.

First, today. We left a delightful campground at Oakville Manitoba and made quick stop (ATM Canadian currency) in picturesque Portage la Prairie. That was pretty much the last picturesque anything for today.

If I had a job like, say, Canadian Mountie, and they told me I was being transferred to Eastern Saskatchewan, I'd probably quit.

Saskatoon, though, does appear to have a lot going on. We're at Gordon Howe Park and Campground, named in honor of the city's sports hero.

Yesterday: northern Minnesota is beautiful. If trees, lakes, rivers are your thing, Minnesota is the place to be.

Lakes, lakes and more lakes... With rivers in between. Alumacraft and Lund OWN the boat market here, Skeeter needs a marketing person in Minnesota; call me.

In Baudette, Alice's Family Restaurant offers a walleye sandwich worth writing home about. :)

Tomorrow (Wednesday), Edmonton and beyond.

Headed for the Mackenzie Highway

Yesterday, I celebrated my 68th birthday by taking this photo at my campsite in Duluth.
Skip Honeycutt and are going to Yellowknife and out Ingraham Trail to the end of the road. From there we'll follow the Mackenzie Highway, visiting Fort Simpson and Fort Liars before turning south through BC and then home.
As energy permits, I'll try to update here.
Yesterday and today -- resting up from a 1036 mile day Friday -- we've been poking around Duluth. Chippewa, Ojibwe and iron ore. Visually appealing but worn out... Some development for tourists, Canal Park is the hotspot, it and the Duluth Trading store downtown are the highlights.
Tomorrow, we'll cross into Canada and overnight at a campground west of Winnipeg.