Northern Rockies to the Arctic Circle

     What a ride!!  From the Northern Rockies to the Arctic Circle one spectacular view after another.  Perhaps the highlight of the last week has been our days on the Dempster Highway which runs from the Alaska Highway just south of Dawson City to the Arctic Ocean.  Every few miles brought new landscapes, a changed color palette, and a fascinating array of travelers.  It was like nothing we had ever experienced before.  

    Our original intent was to drive all 500 dirt road miles and put our canoe in the Arctic Ocean.  Nature had other plans.  After 280 miles driving between 20 and 35 miles per hour on a mainly rough road, the weather turned nasty - rain, fog, and wind - and the road became thick with mud and very slippery.  What we’d thought would be a four day round trip would have escalated to six or seven ten hour driving days.  We opted to cross the Arctic Circle, continue on about sixty miles to the Northwest Territories, and then turn back.  At the moment of turning, however, we were fortunate enough to encounter two grizzly bears digging for tubers right beside out truck.  Pretty special!

    Another astounding moment took place a few days earlier at our Tetchun Creek campsite.  We have been listening to a fabulous audio book, The King of the Yukon, by Adam Weymouth (highly recommend).  It’s the story of the salmon migration entwined with a wide variety of local knowledge, stories, and personal experiences.  We searched until we found the spot where the author concluded his story and sat by the same creek taking turns keeping watch.  Our hope was that we might experience what the author did - sighting a King Salmon returning to the place of its birth seven years later to lay her eggs - after swimming as far as Japan over all the intervening years.  Just as evening was descending sure enough a two foot long, crimson red King fought its way through the rapids in front of where we were sitting, paused in an eddy, before being swept back down stream.  After all we’d learned listening to the book, it was an extraordinary moment.  How lucky we felt.

    In fact, every day of this trip has been a gift!  We are enjoying one of the great adventures of our lives.

    We also feel the need to point out the obvious - that every mlle of this journey has been through the ancestral lands of First Nation people.  All along the way we have been constantly aware of this truth.  It generates many feelings.

    Now, it is on to Alaska on the Top of the World Highway!

 

 

Muncho Lake, BC

 

Liard Hot Springs

 

Wood Bison

 

 

 

Entering the Yukon

 

Early morning views

 

 

Forest of Signs in Watson Lake, Yukon

 

 

Biking along the Yukon River in Whitehorse

 

Salmon - Tetchun Creek

 

Beginning of the road to the Arctic

 

Views from Tombstone Park

 

 

 

 

Caribou, bison, and bears . . . oh my!