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| August 02, 2008. Day 52 - 44 km from Eagle Plains - arctic circle - Eagle Plains |
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| Not raining but sun rays only barely penetrating overcast sky. We set up array early in the morning, had breakfast (oatmeal, noodles, hot chocolate, coffee), tidy stuff, work on car, nap, eat lunch . . . Several cars pulled over to check out XOF1. Everyone visiting us learned about the solar car on the news or heard from someone who seem the car, word of mouth goes a long way here. Stopping to see the solar car becomes a must for both locals and tourists. Many are amazed and can't believe the UFO looking car took the Dempster challenge. Now that we are here, we can't believe either :) Since we entered the Yukon and NTW we had so many German tourists visiting us we felt we were in Germany. Hey, we have our own German speaker Mo. We left our overnight spot around 3pm, crossing the arctic circle and continue on towards Eagle Plains. We paused before big hill to charge momentarily before conquering the ascent and rolling into the parking lot of the Eagle Plains lodge. The crew makes haste to free hot showers before settling into the dining room for first hot meal (besides noodles) in a couple of days and take advantage of coin operated washing machines to get backlog of dirty laundry cleaned. Marcelo specially welcomes the opportunity to do laundry after recycling socks for a few days. While inside the lodge, Marcelo is hailed by a crew of construction workers in the lounge adjoining the restaurant and stays to chat. They all have seem the solar car on the road and have been following our progress. It would been nice to have cheerleaders with pon pons but the group of workers enthusiasm makes for it, lots of words of praise to XOF1 courageous take on the Dempster highway. Every single road repair, resurfacing and cargo trucks we passed by on the road have been extremely courteous to us, slowing down and communicating with one another our location. It was like a big brother looking after us. To date we haven't had a single rock from any passing vehicle hit the solar car. So, thank you all for your support! The road resurfacing crew were enjoying a few drinks by the lounge, tomorrow is their day off. They invited us to joined them and buy us a round of beer. Marcelo is a cheap drunk, one beer makes him happy, two beers super happy, 3 beers he is dancing on the table and hugging everybody. So, he settled on just having one beer. Mo our German team member chuckle a few beers and Carrie just a couple. It was nice to relax and have a place to rest. We decided to stay for the night instead of driving, the sky got overcast we barely got any charging. The plan is to get a full battery charge before venturing on the Dempster again. A very hilly and challenging terrain waits for us. The food at the Eagle Plains Lodge is surprisingly good! almost worth a drive just for the food. Putin was a favorite! |
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