Tombstone Territorial Park

Last week we took a break from the river and went up to Tombstone Territorial Park in Yukon Territory, Canada. We got to the visitor center and got a photo copied map of the trail we were going to take which also happened to be the only full trail in the entire park. The trail "followed" Grizzly Creek up to Grizzly Lake (wonderful place to go camping in especially minus "Ol Bangy"). So the hike up turns out to be a lot harder than planned rising 2000 feet in under 2 miles over every sort of terrain you can imagine but after 7 miles we eventually end up in our camping spot. The next day we lazed around nearly the whole day but as evening approached I decided that I should get some exploring done and set off at 9:00 pm to explore the lake and surrounding areas. The next 4 hours can only be described with such cheesiness as "complete bliss..." please don't make me finish. I ran up big rock piles, jumped streams, drank straight from the flowing water, took some "action shots" of my wanderings, almost died or caused myself major injuries (a big rock fell on my hand and I immediately repented of all the bad things I ever said about Aron Ralston) and topped off the whole evening by finding a natural water slide coming off a glacier a ways up. Natural water slides are not things easily passed up so I took a look around, stripped naked, and ran to the top and slid down. After I was able to breathe again I quickly dressed and ran back to the tent before my fellow backpackers came looking for my corpse. I got back 45 minutes before they had decided to go looking for me and received only a mild tongue lashing for my thoughtlessness of telling no one where I was going. Sometimes, however, you have to run up to the mountains with out letting the cavalry know and just accept your fate that if you get killed you died doing something you loved.

P.s. I took a video of my water slide and probably am gonna post it on Facebook, the edited version of course.

Real Canadian

Real conversation heard by me while walking past a hotel.

Carla-"We are travelling through and would like a shower, how much would it cost to use your hotel to shower?"

Canadian-(Imagine in your best Canadian/Minnesota accent) "Oh jeez, uh, I don't know eh, uh, you should, uh, probably come back tomorrow and talk to the manager about it eh?"

I know the full beauty of the moment could never be fully captured in text but I figured I'd give it a shot.

Dawson, Tombstone and Banjos

There is nothing better than when you are miles of civilization and seeing signs of a fresh meal that you don't have to prepare. We were floating down the river and saw a sign sure to get our attention, "Bakery and Campground." As we strolled up the grassy knoll, I couldn't help but hear the telltale sounds of the Deliverance banjo ringing through my head. To most, that is a clear sign to immediately abort, but when you've been on the river, your judgement is hazy (did you see Deliverance?) at the prospect of a tasty "meal". As we walked up, it was already too late. We had already been sucked in by the tractor beam suggesting that we HAD to purchase something at this point, be it a $7 loaf of bread, or a $5 "jumbo hot dog". (Not so jumbo, or hot for that matter.) After narrowly escaping this backwoods plot, we travelled successfully to Dawson City, where the real adventure began. I will probably live in Dawson at some point in my life.

Carmacks

So the trip up has been pretty great so far. We drove from Portland to Whitehorse in 3 days. Anyway we were happy to get there. Soo on our way up we saw a bunch of bear but since we have been on the river we have pretty much only seen fish, moose (giving birth to another moose, I might post the picture later), beaver, and tons of birds. The river has been great and the weather has been pretty good too. We put in on the river at 10:45 at night because guess what it never gets dark here. I had always heard people talk about how it is light here always, but you don't really understand until you experience it. So our basic day goes like this wake up, eat, row, eat, row, eat, sleep. Sometimes we mix it up and skip one of the eats and just row. Right now we are in the thriving metropolis of Carmacks, Yukon Territory and are looking at putting into the river any time now. Our next stop will be Dawson hopefully in 5-7 days.