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Day 19

I awoke the next day, readied the truck and drove on. I spotted a sign for the Teslin village dump and pulled in to get rid of some garbage and change the oil in the truck. As the truck clambered up the little dirt road and into the clearing filled with mounds of garbage, huge ravens cawed and moved as if to protect their claims. These birds were really big. Big as eagles I would guess. In much of the Indian lore for this region, the raven is viewed as a spirit from a person who has died. It is a shame that civilization had brought the birds here to scavenge garbage. I continued to work and replenished the oil in the engine. The used oil I poured into the old containers and left them in the auto waste section of the dump.

I left and continued east along the Alaska Highway towards the intersection with the Cassiar Highway. At the junction I stopped for gas and dinner in a cafe. I ordered the chicken, ham and cheese sandwich. I reviewed a book called the "Milepost", which contains information about Alaskan and Canadian highways. I was looking for a place to stay that night, and happened to notice Mighty Moe's Place on the map. That sounded familiar, and I remembered that Dave at the youth hostel had said to stop by and say that Bigfoot had sent me. It was already 8 PM, and I didn't know if I would make it there before they closed. I tried to call, but information didn't have a number listed. I paid my bill quickly and rushed out the door.

I began the trek down the Cassiar highway. The roads were good, though unmarked, and this also happens to be the route used by a lot of commercial truckers, who almost never slow down. I didn't meet many cars, and I enjoyed the scenery in the growing darkness along the ride. The area is also rich in mineral resources, and I passed a gold mine and a jade mine along the way. There was also an old asbestos mine in Cassiar, but it has been closed. Darkness fell and finally I arrived at Mighty Moe's. As my headlight beams passed over the sign, however, I noticed an extra "Under New Management" tacked on to the bottom. I continued down a dirt road into a camping area. There were some people sitting around a camp fire, and one of them got up and came over. It was Jake. Apparently Mighty Moe had been to a hospital, and then retired, and now his friend Jake was running the place. I guess even Mighty Moe grew feeble in time. Jake showed me a place to put my tent and invited me to share the campfire.

The campfire was warm and inviting and a pot of something cooking sat on a grill. There were two others sitting there -- Jim and Peggy from Alabama. They were probably in their 40's. Jake was in his 30's. Also there were Jake's two dogs, Lupe and P2(or PeeToo).

I asked Jake how P2 got his name, and was rewarded with several different answers. One was that he was Pet Number 2. Another was that when tenting somewhere in the Northern mountains of Canada, the puppy would leave the tent to do his thang and come back in and leave pee tracks all over Jake's face. So he peed too much. PeeToo. There were other explanations, but I don't remember them as well.

As we were talking there grew a ruckus behind Peggy and she shone the flashlight over to take a look. P2 had caught and killed a mouse. Everybody went over to take a look. Then Jake said, "I know what I'm going to do with this - I'm going to throw it in the pot", and then to my surprise, he did just that, picking up the dead mouse by its tail and tossing it in the boiling pot with some sort of green vegetables. I tried not to express my disgust, and casually asked if they were just playing in the fire or if they were going to eat that. There was only a snicker for response.

Then Peggy said, "Tonight this is the good stuff, last night they only had fish heads." Just when I was beginning to wonder exactly where in Alabama these folks were from (since I was born in Alabama, but we never followed this menu), I learned that this pot was for the dogs. Whew! We talked a little more, and then everyone except me left for bed. I lingered by the warm fire until it was only little blue flames licking off the tops of the embers, then went to fetch my toothbrush in the darkness. After narrowly avoiding brushing my teeth with aloe vera gel, I went to bed.

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