Thoughts on Dawson City and Day 3 pix

Greetings again from Dawson City! Yes, I've staying another night for a few very good reasons:

• I no longer take modern conveniences like hot showers and tap water that doesn't need to be boiled to be safe to drink for granted.
• It is really nice not to be on a schedule and just take things day to day.
• Dawson is fun in bizarre and strange ways.  Where else can you get a sourtoe cocktail?  When is the last time you saw functional wooden sidewalks?
• 2500 miles in the saddle in less than two weeks is a lot.
• The poker at Diamond Tooth Gertie's Gambling Hall is pretty spectacular. I even played some No Limit Omaha.  Aside: I think the reason why they spread NL Omaha (instead of Pot Limit) is that the dealers who are capable of figuring out what a pot sized bet is actually want to play in the game.  It was clear that it was the first day "in the box" for many of the dealers, and some of the dealers would only rake $5 once the pot was huge.
• The next leg of my trip means crossing the "Top of the World Highway" which is a lot of gravel, where "a lot" is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 miles or so.

This is probably a good time to talk about my first experience on gravel roads on day 3 of my trip.

Day 3 - 7/30/2017.  Lake Country, BC to Isobel Lake and back to Kamloops, BC

So planning on this leg of the trip was driven by three primary factors: I wanted to camp, didn't want to ride a long distance, and I also wanted to avoid forest fires.  I found the Isobel Lake listing on one of the BC government websites and the price was right: totally free.  So I typed in the coordinates in my phone's nav program, disregarded the warning that said "portions of the route are unpaved" and got a late afternoon start after socializing with cousins at Laura's place.

I probably should have done a little more due diligence with respect to 'portions unpaved' thing since portions meant the last 20 miles to Isobel Lake were on gravel roads and I had no previous experience on gravel.  It was manageable but not a tremendous amount of fun (read: sucked big time), I was very hot and tired after riding through the desert, I took things slow and kept my bike in second gear.  After an hour or so of eating dust, I took at break at McQueen Lake, BC:

After I finally made it to Isobel Lake, I decided to turn back after searching for the campsites for a while - mosquitoes were living large and I wasn't sure where I had packed my bug dope.

While I was disappointed to bail on my first night of camping, the view on the ride back to Kamloops at twilight was extraordinary.

I ended up getting a room at Thompson Hotel and Conference Center in Kamloops.  It wasn't anything special but I was super tired, it was pretty late (around 10pm) so I was happy to check into a motel.