Dan's Travel Adventures

Our time in Prince George is largely unremarkable, except it’s the first time in a while for a modern hotel experience. It’s a run of the mill, national chain hotel, but it signals we are one step closer to a more familiar way of life. Until now, we’ve been staying in places that were someone’s venture. A roll of the dice in the middle of nowhere that had varying levels of growth or success, much the way it must have been when leisure travel was a new idea, and the roadway beckoned people to far away areas. In Stewart, it was a small, eclectic collection of spaces, with price points and commensurate levels of service to meet the needs of travelers like us, or fiber optic crews, road crews or hunters. Jade City was 4 rooms in one converted trailer, bathroom down the hall – one price fits all. Talkeetna was a cabin with 2/3 of the sleeping arrangements up a folding attic staircase. For us, it was just one of the ways the frontier experience played out in northern British Columbia, much of Alberta, all of Yukon Territory and most of Alaska.

So we check into the the very clean, generic space of a modern hotel, and enjoy good lighting and climate control, unlimited hot water and a luggage trolley. High living, to be sure.

From Prince George, we head further south in BC, down to Cache Creek. Our accommodations are again entrepreneurial, but nice. A Chinese family owns the lodge, and they serve “authentic” Chinese food in the restaurant, or so the sign says. It reads authentic in Cache Creek, but being from New York, we’re not fooled by the duck sauce from a jar and the wrong stuffing in the egg roll. Our fortune cookies remind us we have a bright future, and Mitch and I find some shade for a cigar before bed. In almost every place we stop for a few moments, our NY license plates generate conversation. Next to our room is a couple from only a few hundred miles away, out for a few days. They have remarkably clean bikes, and it’s a huge contrast to our road-weary, bug coated rides. But riders always have something to talk about, no matter how different our experiences or our familiarity with chrome polish.

Come morning, we are treated to Rte 99, a nice, winding road through a range of hills that proves entertaining. It winds through many areas marked as Indian Reservations, and we see small clusters of families trying to make a living on the land. It feels somehow hopeful, but isolated. Hard to know if this isolation is a blessing or suffering.

We continue on to Whistler, a full blown town, and famous ski area. Meal, gas, stretch, then we push on. We will arrive Vancouver tonight, and we’ve already agreed to a rest day tomorrow. Vancouver is a good choice, as there are good restaurants and services. We enjoy an Indian dinner, which is excellent, and spend our rest day walking, relaxing, trying to get a massage (our efforts ultimately thwarted), walking some more, and another nice dinner at a sidewalk Italian place. Mitch and I enjoy a conversation with some skateboarders in a park. Our rest days are so welcome – no obligations, no miles, time to pick good meals, and sleep. The fatigue of extended travel takes hold in ways we don’t always recognize, but the rest days refresh and recharge.

By the time we are getting back on the road, we’re all ready to be riding again. We each find we miss our bikes on the off days, and the bikes seem to reiterate the feeling. More than any other space, the cockpit of the bike is where we have spent the most time. It’s home away from home, and this morning it feels like we are turning, once again, onto another leg that will bring us back to our lives. Onward.