THE SHUNPIKE EXPERIMENT
A 15,000 Mile Trip from New Orleans to Alaska & Back
Cottonwood River, BC to Whitehorse, YT
Friday, July 15
Well. The “beautiful”, “listening to the river”, Cottonwood River experience turned out to be a total disaster.
We were infiltrated by Mosquitos in the Ironhorse. Steve and I battled with them for a couple of hours as it seemed like they were multiplying. Buzzing and biting turned us into psychpaths. Many were full of Steve’s blood so it turned into a complete blood bath.
There are hundreds of dead flys and battle scars all over Steve’s body and all over the van. But in the end, I’d say the victory went to the Mosquitos. We slept for a couple of hours, max, and woke up totally exhausted and pissed off, even contemplated going home.
After trying to diagnose the problem of how all those bastards got into the van, we left the campsite, defeated but not deflated.
Brendan drove for a while to let steve and I catch up on sleep (bc he slept through the war somehow), and after a couple of hours we started feeling better. The boys stopped at a jade market, where supposedly 90% of the jade (that nobody wants) is made.
We ended up in Whitehorse for the night and all enjoyed a well deserved night in the pretty quaint city. We had a quick bite at “Sam and Andy’s TexMex”
and then stood in line for the Harry Potter opening day movie behind some “First Nation” people (Canadian native Americans), and watched the very excellent 8th and final HP film.
Then ended the day with some Chinese food and a night in a less than average hotel that seemed like a 5 star hotel because of the king size bed, toilet, and shower.
THE SHUNPIKE EXPERIMENT 
Damn, you guys have been tortured by the friggin mosquitos way too many times! I felt much better when I saw the pic of you both crackin’ up at Sam & Andy’s TexMex! Very cute pic! I continue to be inspired by your great stamina,etc. Love to you!