Mosquitoes are still terrible, so is the mud. There’s a bit of smoke in the air, too. Azule took off on his bike a couple of hours before we left. He had biked around 20 miles by the time we caught up with him. I can’t imagine riding a bike on these roads and these distances – alone. Impressive and crazy all at the same time.
Before we left our boondocking site, Mike noticed the rear passenger Airstream tire pressure was low. It did hold pressure as we drove, but he kept a close eye on it.
First stop was Iskut where we got 87 grade gas (the only choice), some bags of salad and skittles (the latter are for Braxton). It’s a pretty small place but the station had an impressive selection of fresh produce.
Stop number two was Dease Lake, population 450. It’s bigger than Iskut, population 295. We stopped for lunch at the café in the grocery store but all it had was fried food. We got some beer recommended by one of the locals and some Canadian Bourbon called “Swear Jar”. We then went to see if the burger stand was open, it wasn’t. It was at that time Mike notice the pressure in the tire had gone down significantly and, gulp….there was a screw in it. He was prepared to fix it himself, but it started raining and we were in a dirt lot. Luckily there was a sign that said “Charlie’s Shop” was 5km away. We slowly drove to Charlie’s and had some of the salad we bought in Iskut for lunch while they fixed the tire. About an hour and $60 Canadian later, we were back on the road. Thank goodness for Charlie!
Cassiar Highway is rough. Very bumpy, and I mean VERY bumpy. So bumpy that the salad escaped from the fridge while we drove. When we went in the Airstream after driving, there is was on the floor…. Salad – you’re not supposed to be there… Mattresses were half off the beds… All kinds of stuff was happening inside the Airstream while driving the Cassiar Highway.
Tonight boondocking is at a double ended pullout at Blue Lakes, Milepost J433.6. It’s a beautiful location and a number of other people had the same idea. Dinner was smoked chicken – which Mike did a great job on, and we threw the broccoli on the smoker too.
Mosquitos. Killer mosquitos. Killer sunset, too.
