Well, it’s a week from the time I posted my last blog and I’m babysitting a couple of my grandkids! They are fast asleep now, so it’s a good time to check in and write a few words about my upcoming trip.

I must say that I’m really looking forward to this journey, as I’ll be back out on Alaska’s rivers’ for the first time in a couple of years. Two years ago I drove  and camped for about three weeks, over a distance of nearly 2,000 miles from Fairbanks to the Yukon Territories (Dawson City, Whitehorse), down through northern British Columbia to Skagway on the Chilkoot Inlet, over to Haines and Haines junction, and then back to Fairbanks. Along the way, as you can imagine, I drove through some pretty incredible scenery. In fact, the spectacular mountains that you see at the top of this page are the Kluane range, which tower, at that point, over a little town called Haines Junction.

Last year my pilot friend, John Norris of Anchorage, flew me into the Tongass National Forest, a rain forest on the edge of the glaciers, where I spent a week in a rustic, isolated cabin surrounded by towering pines. Much as I enjoyed the diversity of these two trips, I found myself missing the rhythms of river canoeing.

So, at the end of August, I’ll be headed for the North Fork of the Koyukuk River in arctic Alaska for a two-week canoe journey that will start in the Brooks Range, one of the world’s northernmost moutain ranges. I’ll be canoeing a bit over a hundred miles in some of the most remote wilderness of North America.

Right now my daughter and her husband have walked through the door and my babysitting chores are over, so I’ll have to continue my description in my next blog.

Until then, happy AdVentures!

Take care,

Dick