How Many Roads?

How many roads must a van drive down before it is ready for the Dempster Highway?

Well for our van and for us maybe we went down too many on the way there. After all since my last post re the Northwest Territories and our waterfalls tour we’ve been on a lot of roads.

Lori at Alexandra Falls, NWT - Click for larger

We’ve driven every day - sometimes very long distances and we’ve rarely stayed more than one night in the same spot. With trying to catch the good morning and/or evening light up here in the Land of the Midnight Sun that makes for very long days.

We’ve been through BC’s northern rockies camping at Stone Mountain,

Summit Lake Campground - Click for larger

Muncho Lake

Stone Sheep - Click for larger

and Liard Hotsprings Provincial Parks.

Entering the Yukon we found the sign we posted in the Signpost Forest in Watson Lake back in 2006. It has faded considerably since then (as have we).

This time we didn’t stay in Teslin but did stop to take some pics of the Nisutlin Bay Bridge.

Nisutlin Bay Bridge - Click for larger

Kluane National Park and Reserve in the Yukon was as beautiful as before

Quill Creek, Kluane - Click for larger

although what was the interesting Slim's River Bridge has been replaced with something nondescript.

In Haines, Alaska we found a couple of grizzlies and some bald eagles at Chilkoot Lake State Recreation Site without our having to become one of the paparazzi that will descend in October to photograph those subjects when the salmon are really running. Even out of season there was still a mob looking for the grizzlies.

Grizzly Bear - Click for larger

Bald Eagle - Click for larger

After Haines we went back north to Kluane and spent our 28th wedding anniversary camped at Kluane Lake in the rain, passing the time by playing cards in our dining tent, having a French Picnic (replacing the French bread with crackers and nacho chips) and napping in our van hoping to get caught up on some sleep so we could get up the next morning to shoot the Lake and Sheep Mountain if there was light.

Kluane Lake - Click for larger

From Kluane we intended to go north on the Alaska highway to Anchorage, take the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City, Yukon and then go up the Dempster Highway to the Arctic circle in the Northwest Territories. But we were told at Kluane that there were washouts and road closures in Alaska as well in the Yukon/NWT on the Dempster Highway north of Eagle Plains. Imagine washouts & floods while there are so many wildfires in BC! So we regrouped and went back to Whitehorse and stayed at the same hotel as we did before Kluane and even did our laundry for just the 2nd time this trip (sorry to anyone within smelling range of us prior).

From Whitehorse we took the Klondike Highway north – heading to Dawson city and stopped to tour the Yukon Wildlife Preserve

Muskox - Click for larger

Arctic Fox - Click for larger

and camp for a couple of nights at Lake Laberge. It was hard to get a good landscape shot there – we kept hoping but the hills were always hazy – probably from those BC wildfires and some in the Yukon too (and not still from the cremation of Sam McGee).

Lake Laberge, Yukon - Click for larger

In Dawson City we visited both the Yukon and the Northwest Territories Info Centres and were told the Dempster Highway was open and that there were even a couple of hundred barren land caribou (the Porcupine herd) crossing the highway at the territories’ border/Arctic Circle. We wanted to see those caribou.

The Dempster Highway is gravel and dirt and somewhat rough but not too bad to Tombstone Territorial Park. It’s well worth the trip that far as the scenery is spectacular. You seem to always be surrounded by mountains. But what is not to love about all the scenery in the Yukon? It is a fabulous place. And north of Tombstone is no exception.

Tombstone Park Wetlands - Click for larger

Indeed we had driven a long way just to “do the Dempster Highway”. 13,185 kms to be exact, when we filled up in Dawson City. So could we be blamed then for turning around after a truck driver told us we should somewhere around Kilometre 300? We had already white-knuckled it up the Seven Mile Hill past the Ogilvie-Peel viewpoint. Of course it had started to rain again just as we got near the hill. These dirt roads can turn into something like lard it seems. But that wasn’t the only reason the hill was scary – going up sometimes you feel like you could drop straight off the side. The greasy mud seems to want to drag the car there. It didn’t help that the road was in the process of being graded and the grader had left a wall of greasy, gravelly mud in the middle - meaning we had to stick to our side. Just before the lookout and at the very top of the hill, we met the grader coming back down in the middle of the road. So Ron veered the car through the wall and took our chances on the left side hoping for no oncoming traffic and luckily – there was none.

Tombstone Territorial Park - Click for larger

Turning around at that point wasn’t an easy decision either. We wanted to see those caribou. And we were about 100kms short of the Eagle Plains Hotel and its gas station. We were counting on the roads to there being passable - counting on refueling. But we shouldn’t have. We turned around and hoped that the van’s computer was correct with its forecast that we could travel 100kms further than what we needed to get back to the Klondike Highway junction. At about 7pm we pulled back into the Tombstone campground (km 71.5) with the low-fuel alarm sounding and a warning to check the front left tire. The computer was wrong on all counts. The back right tire was slack (which Ron changed) and this morning proved we could have gone another 30 kms past the junction (but not 100).

How many roads? Well that is enough for now. We are now back in Dawson City and tomorrow we will point the car towards home. But next time (and there will be a next time) that we try to do the Dempster we’ll have to somehow figure out how to store 20 litres of extra gas along with the two spare tires we are already toting under the bed.

Do the Dempster - Click for larger

Getting Started with a Dream

Last night I went to bed mulling over this blog. I was stewing over the technical problems of switching from blogging at http://www.ronerwin.blogspot.com to our own server at http://www.ronerwin.com . But I was also wondering how on earth I would even start writing again after a hiatus of over a year, many weeks of traveling, and thousands of images later when the idea of the blog was to document our photographic journeys. Do I go back and pick-up where I left off and make the postings sequential by date or post randomly? Or, do I skip the last year that took us through the western provinces and north to the Yukon,

(Kluane National Park, YT)

and more recently to the east coast including Newfoundland and Labrador? (Labrador iceberg right) That was my dilemma. So this is where my dream comes in. When I visualize the word “dream” I see it in wavy lines like italics. It’s the same for the actual images of my dreams. In my head they are all wavy or misty like this image taken last Thanksgiving of the sun rising over the St. Lawrence River in Brockville, Ontario. But I digress… The first image I recall from last night’s dream is of me and this grumpy bald guy I once worked with walking on the gravel road past the wildflower filled forest (like this one at Sandbanks Provincial Park below) towards the dairy farm where I was raised. Mr. Bald & Grumpy suddenly had long chin-length dark hair and I thought to myself that Ron would find it really funny that his hair had improved both Mr. B&G’s looks AND his disposition. So the Reformed B&G and I arrive at the farm and go into the barn for some sort of photography class (possibly given by Ron). But the barn is now more of a huge industrial building or warehouse. There were people from my past lives – some I worked with and others I grew up with (cousins actually), milling around in the milking area of the former stable. But the stanchions and gutters were gone. I wandered about taking note of all the differences in the stable and getting in trouble with IT guys for opening doors and peering into weird and oddly placed cupboards and exposing network wiring. We were each to give some sort of photographic presentation on farms. I was dreading giving my presentation as I didn’t know what to present. As I listened to one European immigrant city woman give her presentation on “farming today” I looked about marvelling over the differences in the barn compared to when I was a kid – such as the staircase that now descended from the hay mow above the stable through the feed hole that was formerly used to drop hay or straw bails below. Then it suddenly hit me! I would do my presentation on the farm of my childhood – how I once jumped through that very feedhole/now staircase onto a soft pile of straw below and lived to tell the tale. In the farm of my childhood, we kids (and there were many of us especially when you add in the neighbours and/or cousins) played in corn fields with stalks so high that we couldn’t see over them but yet we didn’t get lost. Today’s corn fields are being encroached on by new subdivisions like this one in Markham, Ontario, (below) where you wouldn’t let your small kids play outside alone let alone in corn fields. So I would do my presentation on the farm of my childhood – the one with a well treed hill with many mighty oaks and birch trees for climbing. Everyone’s favourite was a paper birch tree into which someone (possibly an older brother?) had inserted an old tractor’s steering wheel. As the tree grew it absorbed the steering wheel into its limbs as if it was really a part of it and turned the tree into our airplane and a perfect place to let our childish imaginations soar. I was smiling as I recalled these real memories in my dream, and this is when I woke up - still smiling, for I now knew what to do. I would just write this blog about anything at all – memories, movies, our travels – wherever the day, the road, my dreams or life takes me. But each post will of course feature images and/or photographs by Ron, my partner in life and in Ron Erwin Photography. I hope that I’ve made you curious as this fox (above) on the Alaska Highway in BC, and that from time to time you’ll visit me here at Lori’s Log to see what’s going on – in the past, the present or just my head! And please, leave some sign that you've visited.

Labrador Innukshuk ->