Our time in Yellowknife was great after the rain stopped. We
camped just outside of town by a lake, so we could go fishing. We were hoping
to catch walleye but only caught northern pikes. I caught the 2 biggest ones
and Jason caught the most fish.
We filleted 2 of them and pan fried them for
supper. We had quite the gourmet meal. We bought steak (in case we didn’t catch
any fish), fried up the morel mushrooms Jason found, and made instant cheesy
mash potatoes too! It was delicious!
From Yellowknife, we headed back to Fort Providence to refuel
before the road changed to dirt toward Fort Laird. I didn’t know what to expect
with this dirt road. The first section to our campsite at Sambaa Deh Falls wasn’t
too bad. It was hard packed dirt/gravel with decent traction, so we could
cruise at 100 km/h. I had to follow in Jason’s dust most of the time.
On the way
to camp, we drove by bears 2 different times! One was a baby black bear running
into the words (I thought it was a dog at first) and the other one was a decent
sized black bear up the road from our camp. Lets just say we slept with the
bear banger a little closer than normal that night haha. Our campground supervisor
was really nice. He saw us roll in on motorcycles and knew we weren’t carrying
much, so he brought us a picnic table awning to keep the bugs out while we ate.
It was the best thing ever! We have been swamped with bugs ever since we
crossed into the Northwest Territories.
The next morning we woke up to the smell of forest fire. It wasn’t
too close by but things were definitely smokey. The stretch of dirt/gravel road
we had from Sambaa Deh Falls to Fort Laird varied greatly plus it was sprinkling.
We had nice packed gravel road that turned into packed dirt (which was nice
because it wasn’t dusty) but then it turned into a freshly graded soft squishy dirt
road. A water truck had gone through right before the tractors started grading,
so we were quite muddy by the time we reached Fort Laird.
Thankfully the place
we camped was right by Hay Lake. We were able to use our cooking pot to splash
water on our bikes and ourselves to get the thick mud off.
Just as we were ready to eat supper it started pouring rain
and it didn’t stop raining. We woke up to the sound of rain and went back to
sleep hoping it would stop soon haha.
We still had at least 40km of now slimy
muddy dirt road to get through before it turned to pavement again. By the time
noon rolled around, it was still raining and we decided just to throw on all
our waterproof gear from inside the tent, pack up as quickly as possible, and
hit the road for Fort Nelson. That was the coldest rainiest day of driving yet!
With heated gear, heated grips, and layers of clothes we were still cold. It
was slow moving through the slimy dirt road, but we made it without any problems.
Once again we were covered head to toe in mud, so we put our bikes and
ourselves through a car wash (not an automatic one haha) before checking into a
hotel to dry out. Praying for no rain tomorrow!
A little overview of the Northwest Territories... the
scenery is kind of like the Midwest (like Iowa) and they seem to have a lot of
wild fires despite us getting rained on almost every day. Bugs are everywhere! The
second we stopped our motorcycles we were swarmed with all kinds of flying bugs
(gnats, horse flies, mosquitoes, etc) and they will try to fly into any and all
holes in your head. So thankful to have bug nets with us! Jason absolutely
hates eye drops but after a couple mosquitoes in his eyeballs, he grew to
tolerate eye drops. :) Despite the rain and bugs, people were super friendly in
NWT. They were excited to know where you are from and where you are heading and
offered information about the area or places down the road. It was a good
experience. Our next destination is Laird Hot Springs about 125 miles from Fort
Nelson. Then we’ll continue up the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse, Yukon (where we are finally hoping to buy new tires).
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