I thought after leaving the Dalton Highway and Alaska's (finally visible) snowy peaks, I would have seen all the best, and homeward bound for Colorado would be sort of ‘ho-hum'. I was wrong! The Top of the World Highway, from the Alaska/Yukon border east to Dawson, is beautifully scenic, running high along ridges with distant views to big mountains and with lovely valleys below. Dawson struck me as the most charming town I've seen, looking pretty much as it might have 105 years ago, except now probably painted and spiffed up better than then. Although a tourist center, it hasn't been Disney-fied, and at least this time of the year, seemed pretty laid back. Dawson was the fourth place I've seen the ‘mighty Yukon' River, after Whitehorse, Eagle, and on the Dalton Highway, and I'll see it a final time tomorrow near Carmacks. Dawson arose at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers when gold was discovered (1896) on a tributary of the Klondike, and it was a bit of a thrill to be in the actual spot giving rise to all the romantic lore of the Klondike. There is still some placer mining in the area, and many of the buildings in Dawson have signs supporting the Klondike Placer Miner's' Association. I drove along the Klondike River and passed by the turnoff to the north for the Dempster Highway, camping soon thereafter in the golden aspens. The Dempster is the Yukon Territory's analog to Alaska's Dalton Highway, both being gravel roads around 450 miles long and ending at the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean). It seemed too late in the season and the south was pulling, and I'd decided to give it a miss. But when the next morning was yet another day with a crystal clear sunny sky (17 degrees F, at dawn!), I couldn't resist and backtracked a few miles to at least give it a try. I'm sure glad I did — it was the best yet. The terrain very soon passes through several mountain ranges, very varied and scenic, and is mostly ‘taiga', very open with low brush cover, with areas of aspen and spruce along the rivers and drainages to provide variety. Many lakes and rivers, and with the aspens gold and the underbrush reddish-brown, really beautiful. Among the very slight traffic, I saw a highway maintenance truck pulled off on the shoulder, and stopped to confirm that I'd be able to get diesel fuel at Eagle Plains, 260 miles ahead, which I was assured would indeed be ok. As I was about to pull away I noticed the man peering at something across the river on the shoulder of the mountain, and walked back to ask what he was looking at. He thought the black speck around 1/3 mile away was a grizzly or a moose, so I set up my 20-60X spotting scope, and there was beautiful clear view of a very large grizzly, busily foraging in the brush. I haven't gotten the technique of ‘digiscoping' down pat yet, only 5 of the 140 pictures I shot were any good at all, and none were as good as I'd hoped for --but a few were acceptable and better than none. I need to do some technical experimenting to find what combination of settings enables the autofocus to work reliably. Seeing the huge bear in that wild setting was a real thrill — and about the right distance away. And it was only a few minutes later that I came upon a moose cow and calf very close to the road, foraging in a bit of marsh. What with all this, and the gorgeous weather and scenery, I was feeling pretty happy. After 160 miles, my conservative point of no return for either turning around or committing to go another 100 miles to refuel, I found a super place to camp atop a ridge looking across the river valley to the mountains, with a view nearly all the way around the horizon. Surprise, I woke the next morning in fog — I was 1200 feet above the valley and cloudbase was 1000 feet. A sudden end to the spell of beautiful clear skies. With the overcast obscuring the mountains and dulling all the colors, I decided to head back for this year, very thankful that I'd seen what I had the day before. Over the past week I've been heading south and east across the Yukon Territory, and have just started into British Columbia. I took the more northern gravel Campbell Highway alternative to the paved Alaskan Highway, and traffic was on the order of one vehicle every few hours. It's been beautiful, with autumn colors in hilly and sometimes mountainous terrain. In the last 5 days, before Fort Nelson, I've been through only one small town, this part of the Yukon and BC is really on the edge. There are only a few scattered tiny settlements, like Pelly Crossing that I got a nice picture of, mostly settled by Indians (called ‘First Nation' in Canada). The sunshine has mostly disappeared, with much light rain and overcast, and a few snow showers, until today. At the moment I am holed up at a wayside rest stop in a snowstorm: a travel advisory at Fort Nelson recommended emergency-only travel starting 2 hours south of Fort Nelson, and after an hour the roads started getting slushy, right at the freezing point, and that was enough for me. Cars and trucks coming from the south are pulling in to clear off piled up snow and kick built up frozen slush out of their fender wells, not a happy sign. There are still huge trucks and a few RVs blasting by on the Alaska Highway at 65 mph, but I'm not tempted to join them. Yesterday, back on the Alaska Highway, I passed through very beautiful and undeveloped Muncho Lake Provincial Park, and it was a real ‘wild kingdom' day. The morning started with around 1500 Sandhill Cranes migrating south, flying over the camper and talking back and forth, different clusters joining and separating. A really beautiful sight. A few miles down the road, a huge juvenile Crane jumped up from the shoulder of the road and flapped into the air, a very strange place to find such a water- and flock-oriented bird. (Its coloration looked even more like a Whooping Crane, but since there are only 200 Whoopers existing in the wild, this seemed most unlikely). Later in the morning I passed a small herd of bison, all lying down in the tall grass just off the road, and completely unconcerned when I stopped to look at them. (No chance for good photos). A few miles farther, several Stone Sheep ewes (a variety of Dall Sheep) who nearly brushed against the side of the truck after I pulled off the pavement and stopped. Then shortly thereafter, a very long-legged cow moose on the opposite shoulder — she was not quite sure whether or not to be concerned about the truck stopping. And then 4 or 5 groups of caribou, also very tame, spread out along the road over the next dozen miles. And hiking the next morning, a very clear wolf track in the road. Well, it's all over. Alaska, the Yukon, and BC, have come and gone, at least for this year. Although there is nothing especially difficult about ‘going to Alaska', just a lot of miles, it nonetheless feels like a real adventure, one of the best I've ever had. And such a wonderful sense of space and unpopulated wildness, so different from ‘the lower 48'. So much varied and beautiful country, mountains and rivers and lakes, trees and flowers and wildlife, it just seems to go on and on forever. It was a real shock to return to lush southern BC, after the sparse arctic it seemed almost jungly, with flowers blooming that I hadn't seen for 6 weeks or more. And 70+ degree days rather than 40-50. I'm getting to go through autumn all over again. And what a shock to go in only one day from near wilderness in central BC to I-5 through Seattle/Tacoma at rush-hour with 12 lanes of traffic bumper- to-bumper at 70 mph. I literally felt revolted, that this is what much of our culture considers the ultimate! And very lucky I don't have to spend much of my time that way. E.V. and I had a great one night campout near Mt. Hood, with beautiful yellow, gold, and red autumn colors against the green conifers, and Mt. Hood looking gorgeous in the clear air. The address for the slideshow is as before: http://www.firestardesign.com/johna. Click on 04YT2.exe, and if using Internet Explorer you can either choose OPEN to view the show once, of choose SAVE TO DISK if you want to have it your hard disk for future re-viewing. Right-Click or Spacebar will advance to the next picture Left-Click will return to the previous picture Pause will pause the show Esc will end the show at any time; use Esc when you reach the last image (Mt. Hood) if the show does not close automatically Regards, John Armitage