7-28-08 Day 31 Burns Lake to Kamloops

On the road at 7 this morning. It's 30 degrees but partly sunny and we see blue sky!! No rain gear but the electric jackets are on! We continue west on Route 16 and get into Prince George about 9. There's a Harley shop there and Tom wants to pickup some oil as Old Red is marking it's spot well. We stop and get oil, gas up and decide to grab Subway for lunch so we don't have to have a long stop for lunch as we are shooting for a 600 mile day to Radium Hot Springs. We burn another tank of gas getting to McBride and stop for gas and to eat our Subway. While fueling up, our bubble is burst when we are told that Route 16 is supposedly closed ahead due to an accident. Just like when we hit the accident on our way up near the start of our trip we are told the closing will be a minimum of 12 hours. Our options are wait or take what will end up as a 300 mile detour on Route 5 south (which is about 40 miles ahead just before the accident) to Kamloops. What we have learned is that most of the towns along the road do not have police/fire/rescue/ambulance depts. They are only at the more major cities/towns which are many hundreds of miles apart. In this instance the major town is Kamloops, 220 miles away. We eat and head east on 16. Sure enough at the junction of 16 & 5 we are detoured onto 5 or told to wait. We head down 5 and for the next 50 miles we pass response vehicles periodically heading up to the accident. This is more then 2 hours after we learned of the accident and these vehicles haven't even got to the scene! Canadians have a different view on life safety! On the evening news at the hotel we find out that 3 people died at one of the rest area/turnoffs they have periodically along the side of the road when a trailer truck pulling in smashed into several other vehicles. These are bare bone areas that are generally paved, no services other then sometimes there is an outhouse! we also learned that helicopter was used for response.

On a brighter note our route through BC (British Columbia) is some of the best scenery you can encounter. These roads through the Canadian Rockies are great motorcycle rides. See todays pic which also gives you an idea of one of these turn off/rest areas. Another observation we have made is that in Alaska and on parts of the AlCan the bikes we saw are Harleys and dual sport BMW's with a few V-Storms. We have seen maybe 10 -12 Hondas. Since we've come down lower it's been 98% Harleys. from talking to people we've met along the way we found that lots of folks either ship thier bike and many mid & west coasters take the ferry. Another big group you see are bicyclists. I think we've seen probably 30 -40% as many of them as motorcycles. I know I'd never make it through on a 10 speed!