Day 12. Alaska Ride 2017: Illecillewaet campground in South East British Columbia
I wake and find that it is rather cold. What a difference from yesterday afternoon, where I was wearing a short sleeve shirt. I decide to head back to Golden, since going West would take me too far out of the path of where I want to go, and the smoke appears to get worse as I head West. I stop at Tim Horton in Golden and find that there is a massive crowd in line. It take about 30 minutes for me to get what is essentially an egg MacMuffin. I gas up and get the heck out of town on the 93 going South. The road is nice, with no traffic going Southbound.
There are mountains on both sides of me, which probably explains why there is no rain. Death Valley is has multiple mountain ranges that prohibit rain from crossing over, and these mountains are probably acting in the same fashion as the Death Valley mountains. Visibility is about 95% as I start down the 93. I was thinking about doing the hot springs in Radium Hot Springs, as several people along the road suggested that the hot springs where the place to be. But, I arrive at Radium and find that it is yet another tourist trap. There are two cops in the 4 way stop intersection directing traffic. It is a mad house, with massive amounts of traffic. It appears that the traffic is primarily coming from the South and turning left toward Banff, and ultimately Calgary. I decide to not stop at the hot springs and continue down the road, all the while the temperature gets hotter, and the smoke increases. At one point I stop to make some mac-in-cheese at a rest stop with a nice stream, as the roadside restaurants looked too expensive, or not appealing. As I sit eating, another vstrom pulls into the rest stop. Being a good biker, I go up to the guy on the vstorm to say hello. I ask him what year his bike is and he says it is a 2003, which I immediately know is a dl1000, because they only started
making the dl650 in 2004. I blurt out my knowledge by saying “it’s dl1000”, and then immediately see it printed on the side of the bike. Vince, the biker appears confused and disoriented. I ask him where he is going and I get a very convoluted answer that sounds like he is going North, and maybe South, and will stop at his friends and stay there, etc. After his response, I gave up and hit the rest room, wishing him a great ride, wherever he may go. Along the route, I notice that I see a motorcycle about every 5 minutes. This is much different that what I experienced on the Dalton hwy, where I think I saw 5 motorcycles on the entire highway. In about 30 minutes, I arrived at the US border station. There where 6 really nice lanes with stops signs and a stop light at each one. What was odd, was I was the only one at the station. There was no other vehice, in front or behind me. I went to the first lane and waited at the light, which was red. I waited about a minute and nothing happened and then I decided to ride up to the window, fearing that maybe someone did not see me. I got there and was told that I should have waited until the light changed, and to never to it again.
I apologized for my mistake. The agent asked all the regular questions and then I told him I really expected to see more people.
The agent then said “Who would want to come to this” as he pointed to the smoke all around us. I agreed and was on my way. I rode on for about 30 minutes and decided to turn off the Garmin GPS in order to get it to sync right with the IPhone. The Garmin and IPhone have a very on-again-off-again relationship. Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. This time I turned off the Garmin and it did not come back on. I then pulled over to the spot on a small park road, where I tried without success to get the Garmin to turn on. I remounted it, pulled the battery, and hit it.
Suddenly a fire pickup pulled up to me with two people. A lady was driving and she asked me if everything was okay. I told her that it was just the GPS and it was not mission critical.She
then said “You can get home, right?”, which I gave her the thumbs up.
She took off and I followed behind them using my IPhone as the
navigation device. The smoke was getting pretty bad by the time I got
to Whitefish, and so I decided to get a hotel instead of camping, as I
was not too sure sleeping in a camp fire was too healthy. I get to the
hotel room and read up on Garmin 595 issues and find that if you take
the battery out, and then connect the Garmin to a computer, then the
Garmin will come back to life. I try the recipe out, and it works: kind
of lame. Looking back at the last week, I find it kind of odd that I was in rain about 80% of the time the first week, and then suddenly there is no rain and the world is on fire with smoke everywhere.
There are mountains on both sides of me, which probably explains why there is no rain. Death Valley is has multiple mountain ranges that prohibit rain from crossing over, and these mountains are probably acting in the same fashion as the Death Valley mountains. Visibility is about 95% as I start down the 93. I was thinking about doing the hot springs in Radium Hot Springs, as several people along the road suggested that the hot springs where the place to be. But, I arrive at Radium and find that it is yet another tourist trap. There are two cops in the 4 way stop intersection directing traffic. It is a mad house, with massive amounts of traffic. It appears that the traffic is primarily coming from the South and turning left toward Banff, and ultimately Calgary. I decide to not stop at the hot springs and continue down the road, all the while the temperature gets hotter, and the smoke increases. At one point I stop to make some mac-in-cheese at a rest stop with a nice stream, as the roadside restaurants looked too expensive, or not appealing. As I sit eating, another vstrom pulls into the rest stop. Being a good biker, I go up to the guy on the vstorm to say hello. I ask him what year his bike is and he says it is a 2003, which I immediately know is a dl1000, because they only started
making the dl650 in 2004. I blurt out my knowledge by saying “it’s dl1000”, and then immediately see it printed on the side of the bike. Vince, the biker appears confused and disoriented. I ask him where he is going and I get a very convoluted answer that sounds like he is going North, and maybe South, and will stop at his friends and stay there, etc. After his response, I gave up and hit the rest room, wishing him a great ride, wherever he may go. Along the route, I notice that I see a motorcycle about every 5 minutes. This is much different that what I experienced on the Dalton hwy, where I think I saw 5 motorcycles on the entire highway. In about 30 minutes, I arrived at the US border station. There where 6 really nice lanes with stops signs and a stop light at each one. What was odd, was I was the only one at the station. There was no other vehice, in front or behind me. I went to the first lane and waited at the light, which was red. I waited about a minute and nothing happened and then I decided to ride up to the window, fearing that maybe someone did not see me. I got there and was told that I should have waited until the light changed, and to never to it again.
I apologized for my mistake. The agent asked all the regular questions and then I told him I really expected to see more people.
The agent then said “Who would want to come to this” as he pointed to the smoke all around us. I agreed and was on my way. I rode on for about 30 minutes and decided to turn off the Garmin GPS in order to get it to sync right with the IPhone. The Garmin and IPhone have a very on-again-off-again relationship. Sometimes they work and sometimes they do not. This time I turned off the Garmin and it did not come back on. I then pulled over to the spot on a small park road, where I tried without success to get the Garmin to turn on. I remounted it, pulled the battery, and hit it.
Suddenly a fire pickup pulled up to me with two people. A lady was driving and she asked me if everything was okay. I told her that it was just the GPS and it was not mission critical.She
then said “You can get home, right?”, which I gave her the thumbs up.
She took off and I followed behind them using my IPhone as the
navigation device. The smoke was getting pretty bad by the time I got
to Whitefish, and so I decided to get a hotel instead of camping, as I
was not too sure sleeping in a camp fire was too healthy. I get to the
hotel room and read up on Garmin 595 issues and find that if you take
the battery out, and then connect the Garmin to a computer, then the
Garmin will come back to life. I try the recipe out, and it works: kind
of lame. Looking back at the last week, I find it kind of odd that I was in rain about 80% of the time the first week, and then suddenly there is no rain and the world is on fire with smoke everywhere. 
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