fishing – Page 3 – On the road with Jim

Yukon Territories

We’ve arrived in the Yukon and <best pirate voice> least ye be warned mates, pirates in these waters be </pirate voice>. More about that later, but first I want to talk about the trip.

For those of you interested in maps, here’s a fun fact for you. The British Columbia/Yukon border is the 60th parallel. We made the 320 mile trip from Fort Nelson to Watson Lake and we are now in the Yukon Territories. That means we’re less than seven degrees from the Arctic Circle; land of the midnight sun.

The Alaskand Highway — The Alaska – Canada Highway as it passes through the northern Rockies.

Today’s drive was long and complicated by several road construction crews along the way. The worst held us up for over forty-five minutes. I know that the roads have to be repaired, but why couldn’t you have done all of this work last year. Didn’t you know that Queen Anne was touring?

The highway led in a northwest direction and the snow capped peaks of the northern Rockies looming on our distant left, became a maze that the road traversed. It rained, the temperature dropped and that was were the worst construction was. Once we made it through the passes all was well again and the temperature on arrival was in the low 80s.

Stone Sheep On The Road — Stone sheep, a type of Big Horn, find salt and minerals along the roadside.

We saw a lot of game along the road. There were two or three small groups of Stone Sheep (a subset of Big Horns), two black bear, a small brown bear and numerous bison. The bison are so numerous that we don’t even count them anymore. We do slow down when they’re on the road like today.

Wye Lake is across the street from our campsite.

Because the construction put us behind, we got into Watson Lake late, so we haven’t checked the town out yet. We’re going to spend three days here so I’m sure there will be updates.

Oh! The Pirates? That was the news we got at our campgrounds, which I consider the least attractive of our trip so far. It seems that up here, the Internet is considered a novel frill. All RV parks provide free service as part of your stay. In the Yukon, you also get free WiFi . . . for an hour. After that it’s $10.00 (CDN) for each additional half hour. We also get another hour on each day we stay, but have to go to the office to pick up a new user name and password.

I was upset enough that I fruitlessly protested to the inn keeper and for a brief moment thought of moving on. We’re tired however and need the rest. Besides, I have to catch a fish before Fred does.

On to Denali

This Web Site has been evolving since I first published it in 2003, and this month I’m adding more content by starting a blog. The intent of these notes is to keep you informed of what shenanigans we’re up to while we’re out on the road.

As most of my newsletter readers know already, we’ve been planning an Alaska trip for the last year and a half. Our close friends are joining Queen Anne and I in a caravan to photograph the Great Mountain; Denali. The caravan consists of Fred and Deb’s pickup pulling their Casita trailer ‘lil Bit, Sally’s class B motor home named Baby, and our SUV pulling The Ritz; our Casita trailer. The scheduled route will cover over 9,000 miles and take us three months to travel. None of us have taken such a journey before . . . but then, we’ve never been retired until now. We’re all excited, and a bit apprehensive.

The trip is now in it’s final planning stages and we leave the first of June. My intent for this blog is to report on our journey. I hope to share the places we visit, the people we meet, the highs and the challenges we encounter. I plan on using this platform to show pictures, reviews and thoughts we collect along the way. This will be a less formal presentation, so I won’t be using it to show my art. Instead we’ll hang our snapshots. It’s my hope that posts will be frequent . . . if not daily, perhaps at least weekly.

A second advantage of using a blog format is that you can participate with your comments. Perhaps you’ve made this trip already and you’d like to recommend a place to visit, a restaurant to try or something to avoid. I’d like to hear your recommendations. If you have a question that we can answer, use the comment feature to ask any of us. Your participation is the reason for blogging, so any comments you make will encourage us.

If you already follow someone’s blog, you already know how, but for those of you that are uninitiated there are two ways to follow this blog. First, you can visit this page via the link my Web Page daily or on a regular basis. A second method is to use one of the RSS links in the right column and subscribe. The ‘Entrees RSS’ link will alert you when a new post is made and the ‘Comment RSS’ link does the same when new comments are added.

With that background, this months priorities are packing and preparation. Have you been to Alaska during summer? What clothing should we pack? What haven’t we thought to bring? What troubles will we have crossing the boarder? Tell us.