198 Route 16 to Prince George

Friday 5th July 2013  continued.....

We could not post these videos at the place we stayed yesterday for technical reasons so we have fitted them in here. If you double click on them they will go full screen. Double click again to go back.
 

A speeded  up video of the planes take off from a mirror calm inlet.

 And a video of some Bald Eagles doing some fishing. Until someone disturbs them !

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Saturday 6th July 2013 Miles Today 178 Total  12,591

The maid started knocking on the cabin door at 2:30am (we had jumped forward an hour as we entered Canada overnight) to prepare for disembarkation. Oh my God we had only been asleep for about 2 hours.
We packed our gear up and the boat pulled into Prince Rupert, as scheduled at 3:15am and we were off the boat and queuing for Canadian Custom till about 4am. Whilst we were waiting we noticed the first stars that we have seen for about 3 weeks. The nights were finally dark again. Woohoo.

Now, riding a motorcycle is a potentially dangerous task at the best of times, but with 2 hours sleep it was positively mad. The problem is, that at that time of the morning, nothing is open so we just had to run with it. On top of that I do not like riding at night as you cannot see animals in the road till the last minute.

We set off on the road to Prince George. Route 16 only has 1 junction in 450 miles so we just had to get on with it.  Fortunately within an hour the dawn started to break and we could slowly see again and the views in the half light and early morning mist were eerily beautiful.  We overtook a couple of trains in the 100 mile gorge from Prince Rupert. One was 190 carriages long. at around 6am we came into a small town called Terrace that was just waking up and pulled into a cafe that was already full with bikers that had been with us on our boat but had beat us through customs. Lots of coffee with our breakfast helped for the next couple of hours and at around 9:30 we found The Bulkley Valley Motel in  a town called Hazelton, where we had stopped previously on the way North. We booked in and went to bed because we decided it was better than crashing the bike!

 

Sunday 7th July 2013 Miles Today 275 Total  12,866

A normal 11am retiree start (actually it sounds worse than it is, we are usually awake by 8 and slowly shower/watch TV and pack to be away by 11.)

We set off East on the final leg of Canadian Route 16 to Prince George. Having already done this route once already in the other direction we were actually quite bored and the trip seemed to take forever. It is a strange thing that if there is a lot of good (as in new good) scenery and wildlife our bums do not hurt, but if we are bored, it becomes the main event of the day.

We (as in Karen) did take some pics of the scenery. Unfortunately a bug hit the lens so I have had  to do some Photo editing but I think it worked OK. See if you can spot where it was.

There were glaciers all along the road

 

After a clear blue start to the sky the clouds started to build over the mountains.

And then the storm clouds started to build up fortunately we only had a small shower.

 We eventually rode into Prince George at around 5:30 and found the motel we had previously used. We booked in and chilled out for the evening to nurse our sore butts and mentally prepare for the ride South to Whistler and Vancouver.