Yukon Episode Five: All Good Things Come to an End

Mary and I hitch from Fairbanks to Eagle, float a canoe to Circle, then hitch back to Fairbanks. 

This is the fifth and final episode. Read the first, second, third, and fourth episodes.

August 2013 - Yukon River

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On the fifth day we woke to wander the grounds of Slaven Roadhouse until the mosquitoes made us tire of our explorations in bloodletting. Tidied up camp on the hill then packed the canoe by the river. I couldn't resist a dip in the cold, clear Coal Creek, flowing into the Yukon just upriver. I walked a short ways to a hole deep enough to disappear in - eureka! A fine chilling dip, dried by the sun, bliss. Afterwards, returned to the lady who disdained this cold creek and steered our craft back out into the constant flow.

Yukon Episode Three: An End To Walking; Welcomed Flotation

Mary and I hitch from Fairbanks to Eagle, float a canoe to Circle, then hitch back to Fairbanks. 
This is episode three. Read the first and second episodes.

August 2013 - Yukon River

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After the meek Pio and effusive Gabrielle disappeared from Jack Wade's Junction in a cloud of gravel dust, we cinched our packs and headed up the road towards Eagle, 67 miles onward at the terminus of this high gravel route. Two miles in we stopped to have a seat and appreciate the expansive view to the east of the Canadian border. Despite an unseemly amount of scanning the horizon, that swath of hewn trees marking the boundary between Canada and the USA did not show. We wondered if the practice of clearcutting along the 49th parallel is not perpetuated at the Alaska - Canada border, where we were observing, along the 141st meridian west.

Yukon Episode Two: Handy Hitchers Head Hither

Mary and I hitch from Fairbanks to Eagle, float a canoe to Circle, then hitch back to Fairbanks. 
This is episode two. Read the first episode.
August 2013 - Yukon River
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Our next lift shot past at the five mile marker, then turned around to make the retrieval. He had just roared down the highway, rocketing past a string of motorcycles and our raised ride hooks. Twenty years old and on the run from the law, our driver said he had picked us up hoping to accrue good karma. He told of his current heartache, and the tempest he was now caught up in, of rotten luck and worse associations. 

Yukon Episode One: A Tale of Two Trotting Taters

Mary and I hitch from Fairbanks to Eagle, float a canoe to Circle, then hitch back to Fairbanks. 
This is episode one of five.

August 2013 - Yukon River

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It seemed like we started talking of floating the Yukon within 15 minutes of first meeting each other.  Maybe a bit later, but certainly a point of mutual attraction that winter of 2012, that we both wished to set out on the big river with all we would need for a week of slipping down the slippery spine of the last frontier, rolling downhill on this ancient highway. 

People  looking for home came up this self-same river long ago, in small groups, but only so far at first. Years later, on the eastern terminus, across a great swelling of lakes backing up to tree-pitched mountains, a different sort of prospector started down the river, en masse, a rowdy herd.