Northern Exposure II
^{Towards Alaska, 2005}

Thursday 25 August 2005 - YUKON OR BUST!
_{From Racing River BC to Watson Lake YT}

MORNING: We left our Racing River camper site and drove up other racing rivers in beauteous, sinuous valleys, past folded and sawtoothed peaks and fans of flash-flood alluvium and all like that. The mountains are bare and rocky. These are old seafloor sediments that got shoved up and twisted around, and the trees only grow up so far. We're looking at the treeline right in front of us.

If you could hear this tape you might think I was talking funny. My speech pattern hasn't gotten as bad as Robert Shaw in JAWS, but it's getting there. More like Norm MacDonald on SNL. Sorta half Canadian, half Celtic, and half psychotic.

Now we're crossing the Toad River, a beautiful thing it is but I see no toads. (singing) Toad away, toad away...

MUCHO MUNCHO: We roll along Muncho Lake, supposedly the jewel of the Northern Rockies. But it doesn't look too jewel-like — more bleak. Long narrow lake with thinly-forested hills to the west and this long bare barren rocky sawtoothed glacial-scoured mountain chain, along whose base we're traveling, on the east side. The roadway is hacked out of a narrow rocky ledge. There are boat ramps but we don't see anyone boating or fishing here. Probably a tad chilly.

Fuel prices here are the worst yet, $1.30 per liter. And yet we must purchase some. Running the truck engine on prior days, trying to keep the RV batteries charged to keep the refrigerator operational, has been very expensive.

We pull into the Northern Rockies Lodge for fuel, only $1.16 here. Several small and medium airplanes here, and a helicopter. Inside the beautiful lodge we find nice woodsy decor and very expensive Internet access — $5.00 for the first 10 minutes, 20 cents a minute after that. We overhear that there wasn't much of a summer up here, and the trees are all so colorful, so yellow, because they got too much water. And now they're turning yellow because of the early frost. Welcome to the not-so-sub Arctic.

The lodge is a big-log Swiss-style thing (no big rocks) dated 1996. Inside are photos documenting having flown their larger (10-seater) plane from the NorthWest Territories to the Libyan desert, complete with camel. One damn extreme or another, eh? Oh yeah, Northern Rockies Lodge is located on a wider alluvial fan so it's slightly more scenic here.

Many of the conifers look very dry and gray. Back a ways, we passed burnt stubs, tall burnt trunks sticking up above the newer green foliage, remnants of a fairly recent forest fire. Atop each taller burnt stub sat a big black raven, keeping an eye on things. I went over to talk to one of the ravens. He said, "You southern folk, you've got it easy. But thanks for driving through here. If it wasn't for all the critters you hit, we'd have a lot less caribou and other carrion to munch on." Then he and the rest of his flock went back to working on a carcass.

BEYOND THE ROCKIES: We leave Muncho Lake and the Terminal Range. This IS the northern end of the Rockies. From here on it's the MacDonald Range that continues on through Yukon and Alaska, becoming the Alaska Range. The other end of the Rockies is down around Santa Fe, New Mexico, a long long way away. Or so says the informative sign. Hmmm, then what's that stretch of mountains looming on the western and southern corner of New Mexico? I always thought that was the Southern Rockies. Better look that up. Or maybe these BC sign-writers have inadequate information, or are being overly-general or something. We'll be charitable, and try to overlook their misspellings.

We drop down from Muncho Lake into wider, lower valleys. Forests crawl thickly up to the crests of the lower mountains around us, much lusher and greener here, more inviting. And then a big warning sign: BUFFALO ON ROAD. We are keeping our eyes peeled. Ouch.

We come up to the great Liard (lee-ARD) River and its long bridge, the last suspension bridge on the Alaska Highway. We'll follow the Liard all the way up to Yukon. We get a little ways past Liard Hot Springs and we log our first bison sighting! A small herd right by the road. Free-range buffalo! And we didn't bring our Sharps rifle! Damn. And just beyond, another bison band. That's probably two or three dozen there. Not exactly the millions, stomping across the prairies, but they'll do.

BIRCHBARK CANOES: The forests down here are tall birches and thin conifers almost as tall, maybe 80 feet high. The birch leaves are mostly green; shorter aspen have turned bright; so we see swathes of color sweeping up the slopes. Maureen says that birch bark contains an oil. When you strip the bark from the birch, it is pliable. You then stitch lengths of bark together and seal the joins with pitch, and make your canoes from this material. I want all of you to try this now. (Maureen laughs.) Except you, Tom; we know you wouldn't do any canoeing.

Past Liard River resort we pull off the road to a likely lunch locale. After lunch we try to restart the engine but it doesn't crank. A pickup truck is nearby. We hear a chainsaw buzzing. We walk over and meet a young lady in a Provincial Parks uniform. A couple of big black dogs lounge around. Her partner is up the woods, felling small trees. We ask if she could possibly give a jumpstart, and yes she does. She advises us to watch a few mile down the road for a pack of wolves.

We start rolling and notice pathologies indicated by the dashboard meters. Voltage is WAY low, subnormal. Flicking headlights on-off causes fluctuations in both voltage and fuel gauge readings. We fear our problem lies beyond just having bad coach batteries. Alternator? Charging network? So we're off non-stop to a shop in the Yukon. And we've just crossed the Yukon line but not for the only time; the Alaska Highway cris-crosses the border a few times, both before and after the 'metropolis' of Watson Lake. But we've now crossed the 60th parallel, 2/3 of the way from the Equator to the North Pole. And we're still running, after a fashion.

WATSON LAKE, late afternoon: We roll into Yukon Territory's third-largest municipality (Whitehorse, 18000; Dawson City, 1800; Watson Lake, 1500; everywhere else, less than 1000) and into BJ's Services, listed in a guidebook. Older guy with a mild Scots accent listens and looks and says the alternator is bad, isn't charging anything. Too late to work on it today but we'll be back at 10:00 tomorrow.

After a one-hour quick-charge, we're out to the park by the lake for the night. Many trees, few campers, not too many bugs. We've switched off coach power so we stoke up a campfire and roast a lovely lentil stew, sponge-bathe with cold water, and retire with our flashlights like rugged pioneers. This is almost like tent-camping except we're not sleeping in the dirt and the beds are more comfortable. Getting in touch with our pre-RV roots, almost.

Friday 26 August 2005 - INTO YUKON, DAMMIT!
_{Watson Lake to Whitehorse, Yukon}

MORNING: The pitter-patter of raindrops in the night. No rain the past couple days but now we're back into it, sporadically.

We arise early, breakfast on granola and instant iced tea (we don't feel like kindling another campfire), punch the starter and the engine cranks. Hallelujah! Roll around town waiting for our service appointment. This is the Yukon's friggin Banana Belt yet most houses are earth-bermed (or have deep basements) or are just skimpy single-wide trailers with windbreaks. The map of town is almost larger than the municipality. This is still a pretty rugged frontier place.

The town of Watson Lake is not on Watson Lake, that's a few klicks away. In town are Wye Lake and Second Wye Lake and Hour Lake, passed by Wye Drive. I wonder, Wye Not? The grooviest place here is the Municipal Building, a buried flying saucer. Tribal offices for two or three First Nations bands; a tiny federal building; not much governmental infrastructure.

Today's theme song is Cyndi Lauper's TIME AFTER TIME. It just is. But I digress.

BJ's Services features a funky eatery, a funkier garage, and an old yellow dog guarding the fuel pumps. The dog gets excited when small white pickups drive by, racing out to chase them away, and is pretty mellow otherwise.

We converse a bit with Chris the mechanic, the older fellow with the Scots accent. How long has be been in Watson Lake? Six years. Where before that? Vancouver Island. So why did you come? To get away from a woman who wanted money he didn't want to part with. Why do other people come to Watson Lake, Yukon's banana belt? He doesn't know. What's the best thing about being in Watson Lake? No malls, no place to spend your money.

Truckers and customers stop in to say hi to Chris, call him by name.

LATE MORNING: The word from Chris is, it's not the alternator that's flaky. It's a switch (solid-state or mechanical?) in the charging system. And he sends us off to a specialist in Whitehorse, 300 miles away. And it's Friday and the specialist might not be open tomorrow. And we can't turn off the engine til we get there or the electrical system may collapse.

So we're dashing across southern Yukon with one swerve back into northern Brutish Columbia, heading for Whitehorse, considering our diminished funds, trying to figure out where to go from here, and when. The killer is CANADIAN FUEL COSTS, about 50% more to fill the tank here than in the states. I calculated this trip based on high prices, but not this high. We've spent plenty of money and effort and time just getting here, and we won't be able to drive around and look at anything. But we can camp for free in the WalMart parking lot in Whitehorse, for who knows how long? Until snow threatens, I guess.

Meanwhile the country is pretty enough, not spectacular scenery, but we come over a rise and look across zillions of kilometers of trees, blue mountains further west (the MacDonald range?), and lakes splattered here and there, white clouds splattered across the blue sky, a few more bugs splattered across our windshield. This terrain looks rather like a sparser Colorado, with sparser facilities. Every so many dozen kilometers in these vast precincts of stinkin' forest we'll pass a lodge or resort, which includes fuel pumps and a store, maybe a bakery, and cabins or rooms and RV spaces, possibly a landing strip. Ain't much radio out here either. This is NOT the Far North, where'd we expect even less.

As we approach the Continental Divide we see different, wider conifers tinting the forest different shades of green, growing in steeper valleys, whose bottoms are groves and meadows watered by meandering rivers. Bare blue jagged rocky snowy peaks rise ahead of us. The cloud cover increases. Now most of the other Alaska Highway traffic consists of RVs of medium-size or larger, most of them heading south. Some long-distance bicyclists are also heading south, don't see anyone biking north now. Ah, the Continental Divide on the Alaska Highway is a low flattish pass with taller mountains yet ahead.

TOO FAR TOO FAST: My knees are all scrunched up from too many hours behind the wheel. This fast run to Whitehorse is exactly what I don't want. There's the long distance in a limited duration. We'll go through some beautiful country past splendid sights we won't be able to stop to look at. We have to race along expending money and gas, which we don't have a lot of, to meet a deadline in time, which we would ordinarily have plenty of. Bother.

And I'm otherwise feeling cranky because on our spring trip, my goals were to reach Nicaragua and to spend time in highland villages in Central America. We didn't do that. My goals for this trip were to see Great Slave Lake and the MacKenzie River and the Beaufort Sea, and we're not going to make those. We'll probably get to Skagway and thus nominally touch Alaska, but this has not been a good year for fulfilling goals.

Across the Divide we approach Teslin (on Teslin Lake) and espy a brown bear walking below the road shoulder, nuzzling the bushes. We have photos, we have proof! He didn't pay any attention when I called. Good thing, eh?

Aha, a sign for Mukluk Annie's Salmon Bake, free camping, all-you-can-eat breakfast! But we can't stop. Our agenda includes poking around Teslin (Village and Lake), but we can't stop. Intriguing museums and displays to see here, but we can't stop. Bother.

We have passed Brook's Brook and George's Gorge. We also just passed a Greyhound Scenicruiser towing a Greyhound Freight trailer. There are no railroads around here, so I'm not surprised by that trailer.

After driving past various rivers, lakes, swamps, ponds, bogs, mountains, canyons, subdivisions, et cetera, we finally cross the mighty Yukon River. We're still a ways south of Whitehorse but there it is, winding along below us. A few scattered houses, modulars, old shacks and log cabins, but not many of those.

WHITEHORSE: We pass the Skagway turnoff and reach Whitehorse's distant outskirts, pulling up to the repair shop 45 minutes before the posted closing time. I pound on the locked door and find it's just closed. C'mon in tomorrow morning. We roll a bit further to our first RV Park of this trip, mostly so we can be plugged in to keep the batteries charged. Misty rain falls on us. The promised wireless network doesn't work. But we've stopped for the night.

Correction: the wireless network doesn't work back in the trees where we've parked, but it's OK near the office. So I sit keyboarding away in the camp laundromat whilst Maureen has the little TV plugged in uphill. It's a chilly realm but I'll tolerate it long enough to update the website. The email might even work. Hallelujah! And tomorrow we get power, right?

Sat 27 August 2005 - DOTH WHITEHORSE SUCK?
_{In & Around Whitehorse, Yukon (1)}

MORNING: Up early again, use as much as possible of Pioneer RV Park's resources (power, shower, internet), then over to the repair shop. Hmmm, maybe that switch is faulty and maybe not, but replace it anyway. (Only later do we find another loose connection. What *IS* the root of these problems?)

Then on through the rain and overcast into downtown Whitehorse, where nothing external is visible. Past forests and sideroads, thence to the roundabout that marks the edge of downtown. Many newish buildings in oldish styles. It looks rather like a California north coast city (Ft Bragg or Eureka) with better maintenance.

NOONISH: In Whitehorse, our goal today is to see what we can, drop into a few shops, absorb the ambience. First stop, a used bookstore. But turning into its parking lot, we are hit right behind the driver's (my) door by an older (90s) Buick sedan. Wrecked his headlight, wrecked the area where our generator would be if we had one. The other driver, a sullen young guy, had tried to pass us as we turned in a narrow road. Dummy. He'd borrowed the car; the owner won't be happy. We exchanged words. He: "What's this, then?" Me: "This sucks."

A young, lanky, balding, well-armed Mountie (RCMP constable) arrived to survey the scene, wearing a pistol on his belt, a machine pistol hanging lower on his thigh, various other hardware. A helpful witness told her story. Nobody hurt, no excitement, just go on with life with our stress levels uplifted. Buy some used books, dammit.

Then followed a few hours of low comedy as we returned our week-old RV batteries to WalMart, then found that no deep-cycle batteries were available to replace them. (Sorry, the delivery truck didn't arrive.) We were pointed to a couple other possible sources, who either had nothing appropriate or very expensive no-name batteries. Back to WalMart for a last try, and VOILA! What we needed were now on the rack. Still horribly expensive, of course.

EVENING: A bit of food restocking; then it's after hours and time to write a statement of the traffic mishap to hand over to the Mountie. He didn't have our accident report ready, he'd been working on domestic abuse cases. Are we staying in Whitehorse for a couple days? Could we come back Monday? We guess so. We'll have plenty of time to look around this dreary city set in supposedly splendid country that's been hidden by clouds since we got here.

We pull into a nearby public campground as dusk settles. I build a campfire in the rain, whacking oversize logs with my small but safe axe. (It's solid steel, too little for major cutting but the handle can't break nor the head fly off. "It's nearly impossible to accidentally cut off one's phalanges", he types with three fingers. Ha ha, just joking.) Hitting wood with an axe is therapeutic. Setting wood on fire is therapeutic. I'd cook something tasty over that fire but the RV power goes out. I poke around, find the aforementioned loose connection, or one end of it anyway. Tomorrow I get to crawl in the mud to find the other. Fun. Meanwhile, don't walk near the back door or the power will go out again.

SUMMARY: Thursday we drove nearly 300 miles across wild country to seek electrical repairs. Friday, ditto. Today, we're damaged and stressed, and maybe the electrical problems are nearly done with, or maybe not. I'd better not think of a theme song for today. We have not exactly been having a splendid time recently. Too far, too fast, too furious. When do things get better?

Sunday 27 August 2005 - THE CAMPGROUND AIN'T BAD
_{Layover at Wolf Creek, Whitehorse, Yukon}

LAYOVER: Enough of travel already. Enough of moving around. We've dug into Wolf Creek Campground a ways south of Whitehorse and we won't be dislodged until tomorrow. Maureen sleeps. I keyboard. The usual. It's a pretty day and I was even outside — I had to be, while she slept. Light filters green through the trees, bounces wet from the creek and leaves. The screaming girls are gone from the playground area, as they are gone from the cold shores of Watson Lake and Nameless Pond. The neighboring campers converse in French with a park warden.

Yukon differs from Chiapas and Guatemala somewhat. Park restrooms here have toilet seats, unlike many south-of-the-border hotels. Fewer dogs run loose. The undeciphered languages swirling around here are French and Tlingit, not Spanish and Mayan. The highways bear as little major traffic. Temperatures drop at lower elevations. Time moves at a similar pace.

I've managed to churn out DON'T WAKE ME UP! Obsolescence of Poetry and Travel and TRAVELING WHILE ASLEEP: A Complete Guide to Journeying During Unconsciousness. What guides would you like to see? And I'll put together another edition of the Ridge Rat News but that may take awhile. Hold your breath, please.

Monday 29 August 2005 - WHITEHORSE DOTH BITE!
_{Taking Care of More Business (sigh)}

MORNING: Up early, head back over to Fireweed RV (who did the charging-switch work) to get an estimate on repairs. They say, offhand, $3000-$5000 and 2-3 weeks total time, to get materials shipped in. But that's just a rough; come back this afternoon for a thorough workup. They send us around back to Nigel's body shop for a second opinion. Nigel has a forklift sitting in his drive, smoking like crazy. He says his wife poured diesel fuel into the petrol tank over the weekend while he was away, and he's burning it off. He looks at the damage and says it's no problem, a couple days work if he can get the smashed compartment door fabricated by a metal shop in town.

We gingerly re-enter Whitehorse proper, stop at the RCMP (Mounties), get the police report. It doesn't say who's to blame; they don't assign blame here. The constable gave a much lower assessment of our damage, roughly #1500. So, we'll see.

Meanwhile, the weather's lifted a bit. We can see the low surrounding bleak mountains, the fabled river, the boreal forest. We cruise along the chilly blue Yukon River while the CBC plays the warm Blue Danube Waltz. We roll into town as the theme music from Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon. Coincidence, or... ???

NOONISH: The wind is blustery, chilly-brutal. I suppose in dead air the temperature isn't too bad, around 10°C or 50°F, but the air here isn't dead — it's a living, malevolent, biting thing. Anyway, the clouds have lifted and we can see the low humpbacked-reptilian mountains surrounding us. We stopped at the ominous Whitehorse Rapids, where the mighty river has cut a deep narrow channel in immense basalt layers. Here, before a dam was build mere furlongs downstream, were whirlpools and eddies that imperiled all waterborne communications. Great danger! I guess there still is danger here, but mostly on the city streets now.

We step into the territorial information center to learn things, use the restrooms, and mostly to use their free phones to call our insurer. But I digress. Now that the fog and rain have diminished, Whitehorse doesn't look so dreary. A number of excellent murals have been painted around town. If the air was a bit warmer, we'd feel like walking these streets (hopefully the sidewalks are safe) and photographing the wall art. Maybe this afternoon.

Ah, when we're getting repair estimates, talking with the insurer, and weaseling, er wheedling data from the info-booth gals, it's amazing how fast the day just slips on by. Especially on a wind-blown cold day. So cold, that when we stopped to look at that narrow river gorge, we noticed a squirrel climbing a tree one-handed. He had his other paw stuffed into his armpit, trying to keep it warm. (Maureen yells, "He did, too!" See, I have a witness!)

LATER: We see (and photograph) a Yukon auto license: 2COLD.

We go back to Fireweed RV for their formal estimate, around $2200. We ask them to look at the tires, one seems a bit soft. Ah yes, that one is very worn and its yokemate has blown. So the rest of the afternoon is consumed by a search for the tire shop and waiting for them to get to the work. So we left California to escape doing daily maintenance chores in the heat, and now we're in Yukon doing daily maintenance chores in the chill. At least we're not sweating.

Then it's back to Wolf Creek Campground in a not-too-cold drizzle for a night with internal power (finally, after I chemically cleaned the battery cable contacts) and unknown prospects for tomorrow. Every new day is a focking adventure then, eh?

Tuesday 30 August 2005 - AHOY, LAKE LABERGE!
_{To The Marge of Lake Labarge (sic)}

AFTERNOON: Get up late in the now-familiar camp. say goodbye to Wolf Creek. We go to Nigel's for our second estimate — he'll be at it for least two weeks, Fireweed will take at least three. We decide we won't wait around to get the work done here. Thus, onwards. We have a good final session at Pioneer RV Park, shower and laundry and internet. Be sure to do a very nice writeup for the journal.

 * PIONEER RV PARK — 867.668.5944 — www.pioneer-rv-park.com *

 Laundromat, complimentary showers, breakfasts, WiFi (fast
 wireless Internet), fuel discount for customers, supplies
 store, mechanic — the usual parking lot on the flats near
 the road, really nice park units uphill in the trees —
 they also do bus tours to nearby sites and Skaguay and
 et cetera — reasonable rates, $16-24 / night.

We depart in pounding rain, take our last drive into Whitehorse. Just as we reach town the rain lets up and we decide it doesn't look too bad. Why don't we see what's on the other side of the river? And it's... a town. Looks like many North American town except that many of the houses are partially built into the ground; large sheltered basements here.

FISHWAY: We arrive at the Whitehorse Fishway which is the world's largest wooden fish ladder, to help the chinook salmon make it up the Yukon over this little dam and up to their spawning grounds. We look into the holding tanks where piscine passersby are sexed and tagged. Workers are fishing out debris, including a fresh life unopened can of Budweiser beer. It's a lively can that nearly escapes. Let me tell you about the one that got away...

And I'm wondering, ah, the fish ladder, that's nice. Help them get up and down the stream. But how do they *find* the fish ladder? (It turns out that baffles below the spillway push fish over to this east side of the river, towards the entrance to the Fishway.) And of course, many of them don't. And most fish don't make it this far anyway. This is a *LONG* way in from the Bering Sea and the mouth of the Yukon River, 3000 km (1800 miles). Visitors come from all over the world to watch fish climb this ladder. There must be an appropriate smartass remark to accompany that fact but I can't think of one just now.

Meanwhile the floatplanes zoom overheat. This Lake Schwatka serves as the wet airstrip here. Yesterday we passed the dry airport, drove right past the DC3 mounted on a pylon that turns with the wind. We didn't play with it.

NOTE: Search the web for BANNOCK RECIPES - bannock is a slow fry bread.

We wander around Main Street, downtown Whitehorse, looking into a number of gift shops which remarkably are all filled with mostly the same assortment of mass-produced crud, er I mean gift items. We fuel up and we're finally heading out of Whitehorse, the fifth day since our arrival here. We aim north and see that mountains actually exist to the northeast. Maureen looks eastward and shouts, "Termination dust!" A little light sprinkle of snow on the mountains, the first snow of the winter, marking the termination of summer. We done layed around and stayed around this old town too long. Summer's almost gone, yes, winter's coming on.

ESCAPE: We swoop through large valleys filled with color as far as the eye beholds. The birches and beeches and poplars and aspens or whatever are turning to yellow and orange from shades of light green, occasional dark-green conifers sticking up like punctuation. We roll around some hills and farms and find ourselves on the marge of Lake Labarge (sic) where they cremated Sam McGee, and we might cremate some marshmallows.

Lake Laberge is another of those long thin drowned valleys near the Yukon and Teslin Rivers, rimmed by craggy limestone peaks. Topo maps of Yukon show what look like some rift valleys trending southeast-to-north­west. Laberge is in such a rift. We look into little spurts of droplets, not really rain, and there's a nice rainbow off to the southeast. This is one of the few lakes we've seen in the North that actually has boats in it — there's a small sailboat all white against the dark blue mountains and bright green lower hills; there were some motorboats and canoes earlier. It's very peaceful, the crystal-clear water lapping against fractured black basalt, a volcanic lake basin. It's a good time and place to chop firewood, start a campfire, and cook up another lentil stew.

A few small outboard metal skiffs, fisherfolk bundled up as if for snow-skiing. But it's not that cold here and won't be, according to forecasts. Except out on the lake with the wind-chill, maybe. Elevation of Lake Laberge is maybe 2100 feet or 660 meters, not too high, but this is indeed a mountain lake. All rocks exposed to moisture that we've seen in the North are all crusted with lichens of many colors, orange to red to blue to dark green to black. Many grasses, some with blades only a couple inches long, others up to almost a foot. Some berry shrubs, sans berries. Other shrubs and herbs that look like they just came off the Mojave Desert — something that looks much like larrea, another is much like artemisia.

Wed 31 August 2005 - LAYOVER, LAKE LABERGE!
_{On The Marge of Lake Labarge (sic)}

I'm looking for the Lake Laberge Monster, I guess that'd be Labessie. We checked our mileage today. We have come precisely 3450 from our Sierra Nevada home to here. We're nearly out of food money; Maureen needs to start fishing right away. Or maybe I can fake some photos of Labessie to sell to credulous tourists. ?Quien sabe?

We lie about. I write NO GUILT TRIPS: Traveling Without Liberal Anxiety, and a piece on the legacies of Harry Oliver, don't ask why — OK, it's because a writer asked me and I feel obligated to be serious. We sit outside this warm day; then the wind blows and it's no longer warm; then it's still and warm again. Such is late summer here.

A young-old thin fellow is poking around as I'm taking infrared photos. We exchange HI's. I later try to chop some wood with my tonka-toy axe; he fetches a light but powerful Fiskers (Finnish) splitting axe and whacks a few for us. We need one of those! He's Kristof from Germany, a professor of theology, a Catholic priest. He comes to the Yukon every year for a month to get away from people, has done so for 10 years. He brings the axe with him. He's driven the Dempster Highway to the Arctic Ocean ten times. We ask, what's your favorite place in the Yukon? Right where we've parked, he replies. Well, we're leaving tomorrow so he can have it then.

The views here really are splendid. The rocky mountains, the placid-to-wind-ruffled lake, the colorful forests, the ever-changing clouds and moisture and light, the sparkling clear air. Wowee zowee. We'd stay longer but it's time to move on.

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