Travels With Carol and Ned

2012 in Review

August and September, 2012

Yukon River paddle and Southeast Alaska

It seems we can not get enough of the far North! We left home on August first and drove west through Montana and entered Canada and drove the Ice Fields Highway to the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse, Yukon. On the way we spent a few days in Hyder, Alaska viewing Brown bears feeding on a Salmon run and then a few days in Skagway.

We met the Road Scholar group in Whitehorse and geared up and put in for 12 days of paddling canoes and camping along the historic river. We spent 3 days on Lake LeBarge before we entered the Thirty Mile section of the Yukon River. Lake LeBarge, made famous in Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" :
"The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
          But the queerest they ever did see,
          Was that night on the marge of Lake LeBarge
          I cremated Sam McGee".

The Yukon River is gin clear with a very fast current. We could easily travel 30 or more miles a day, and spend some time rafted together and still make progress. We stopped and often camped at historic Klondike Gold Rush related sites, small ghost towns, paddle wheel boat repair yards, abandoned boats and trading posts. Parks Canada is stabilizing and restoring some of the old log buildings. We paddled almost 200 miles on the river and took out at the town of Carmacks, along the Klondike Highway.