The owner of the hotel had noticed our noisy efforts out in his front yard - and believe me the 5 of can raise a ruckus - and volunteered that the local mechanic in town was pretty good. "Up here if you call yourself a mechanic, you better be good", I believe was his exact description of Charlie. So first thing in the morning it was to Charlie's Place to see what he could for a broken bolt. With some of his first words after taking a first pass at it being "Wow, that bolt is pretty hard steel", it wasn't looking good. But he managed to get a pilot hole through and enough bite with an easy-out bit to remove the bolt. A few minutes rummaging around the spare parts bin found an appropriately sized bolt with the correct thread count and pitch. And Dean was happy to be on his way with the rest of us.
The morning was clear but clouding over with full on rain by the time we got to Watson Lake. But the nice part provided some great scenery and an ever increasing wildlife count - note the 3-beaver heads in the picture below.
Up near the north end of Highway 37 is a place called Jade City, a family owned operation that mines and sells Jade.
They even have their own reality TV show.
As approximately 90% of the jade that is currently mined world wide comes from this area I'm pretty certain that all the jade bought last year in China by the Silk Road group came from here. I picked up some things appropriate for this year's ride.
After lunch in Watson Lake, which was about the extent of our time in the Yukon, we rode South back into BC. The weather broke as we pulled up to Liard River Hot Springs providing more than enough time for some messing about in the very warm and sulfurous waters.
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