Wild Places and Open Spaces

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August 7th – 13th 2006

After Erik left, we decided to once again travel the Dempster Highway – for the great views, but mostly for the good fishing. It took us a few days to make our way back there, and we had some really bad weather on the way which made driving difficult. Hard rain and dirt/gravel roads don’t mix well. It actually hailed on the Top of the World Highway too on August 7th! Crazy!
When we did make it to the Dempster Highway, we stopped for lunch at Tombstone campground. Turned out to be good timing, because as soon as we turned in, the skies let loose and there was a torrential downpour and more hail. You never know what
weather you’ll get in mid-summer in these parts!

Once the rain stopped, we had a couple really nice days fishing. Jim taught me how to fly fish, which I can honestly see turning into a passion. It is so much fun, and was exhilirating catching grayling on the fly. Only caught the fly in trees/bushes a few times!! Jim was in his glory fishing the Blackstone and Ogilvie rivers which appear to be full of grayling. He also managed to hook himself pretty good a couple of times – luckily just in his clothes, not in skin. However, at least once a week I have to get out the first aid kit and fix him up somehow…usually it is for a sliver or blister or scrape from falling off something. He keeps on trucking though, no problem.

We met a terrific, funny Australian fellow named Luke who is doing an around the world tour – he had rented a bike and was biking up to Inuvik on the Dempster Highway. He lives just outside Sydney, and we are planning to meet up with him when we get to Australia. Our conversation with him quickly lead to deadly animals in Australia, but I think he is more freaked out about getting eaten by a grizzly or black bear in Canada than anything in Australia!

Our last day up the highway we hiked straight up a mountain….and I mean straight up it. There was no switchbacks like we are used to, and the “trail” was loose rocks. I bailed out 3/4 way up the hill because I was afraid of slipping on the rock and hurting an ankle (which I am known to do), but Jim went all the way (he is a trooper). On the way down he found the “proper” trail – a nice easy goat trail along grass that had no loose rocks on it at all….we had just taken a wrong turn earlier. Usually it is me that makes the wrong turns, but this time, Jim was leading the way!

So, our second Dempster trip was much more successful…no flat tires (probably because we had brought a full spare this time!). We only went 230km up the highway…no need to go to the Arctic Circle since we had already been there in Alaska.
Our next “must do” was to head back to Skagway, Alaska to do the Chilkoot trail. This meant travelling through Whitehorse again to get there. On the way there we saw a large herd of Elk – the Braeburn herd – who posed for some pics. Upon arriving at Whitehorse, we were thrilled to find that the King Salmon had just got there – they travel over 3000 kilometeres from the Bering Sea to the Yukon River each year to spawn. At the fish ladder in Whitehorse they count each one of them through it – numbers apparently didn’t look as good as last year, but it was only the first few days of the run. They are beautiful fish – bright pink and full of life. It is unbelievable that they do not eat the entire time they are running – that means months without food!

While in Whitehorse we did a couple “normal” things (sometimes when you are camping for so long you have to do things that bring you back to “reality”) – we saw a movie and had a Tim Horton’s Coffee (by the way, a large Timmy’s is quite a bit more expensive here than at home!). We saw the movie “Barnyard” – we couldn’t get past the fact that the male cows in the movie have large protruding UDDERS…..it is an “udderly ridiculous” movie with no morals, and we will never see another Nickelodeon movie ever again!

Crossing the border into Skagway was a breeze this time – we had the nicest border guy EVER. He was an older gentleman who thanked us for getting passports (because it makes his job easier), showed us how he scanned the passports into his computer, stamped them, told Jim he had a “good looking” wife, and sent us on our way! No questions asked! And this time, we had NO fruit or veggies at all! Murphy’s law I suppose.

Now that we had arrived back in Skagway, we had to prepare to do the Chilkoot Trail!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 13th, 2006 at 6:16 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.