A journey to fill my soul

No, no….I don’t mean that bar….I’m sitting here having a whiskey thinking about a bar but congratulating myself on an achievement that many would say is crazy, dumb, doesn’t make financial sense. What I really mean is the bar that we all set internally within our brain that guides what we consider success.

I believe we all know the bar between work and your personal life are two different things. At work, your bar is controlled, or hindered, by your manager, or employer. In your personal life, the bar is yours to set, yours to achieve, yours to drive towards. I’ve never let the bars in my personal life have guard rails, be limited to what others think. Those guard rails are mine. If I chose to test the boundaries of those rails and fail, that’s on me. That has always been what my personal life has been, testing the limit, sometimes fail, but always attempt to go beyond.

Where are you?

I feel like I’ve achieved a huge accomplishment. Something that I set my site on probably six years ago, and have met. I said I want to see the Arctic Ocean, I asked myself what it would take to make that possible. I built a vehicle to handle the expect load and road conditions, I found, purchased, and built to my specs a structure to reside on that truck. I made a plan and followed it. So, here I sit at the gateway of the Dempster Highway in Canada’s Yukon Territory. I ignored the recent comments that fires will hinder, or impede my goal. I’m sitting at Tombstone Park on the Dempster Highway for a down day preparing for the road ahead.

The last stretch was a doozy

When I left you last time I was at a dispersed campsite just outside Watson Lake, Yukon. I stayed at this spot 3 nights until Saturday morning when the bug hit me to start moving.

Day one I drove 8 hours reaching Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, where I emptied my tanks and filled with water and pressed on. In Whitehorse I got on the Klondike Hwy continuing for a few more hours until I found a wayside, at least that’s what the sign said, and shut down for the night. I say that’s what the sign said cause the stop was pretty sketchy, it consisted of some huge boulders where cars pulled in to use the boulders as an outhouse. Whatever…Sunday morning I was up early and hit the road continuing on the Klondike Hwy for another 9 hours. Reaching the town of Carmacks on the drive was a notable point as this is the first crossing of the great Yukon River.

The Yukon River begins in British Columbia, travels through the Yukon Territory, and on across Alaska where it empties into the Bearing Sea some 2,000 miles later.

Hold onto your hat, and everything in the camper!!

The stretch beyond this point is extremely rough, which would be an understatement. There were stretches where you could drive 55 mph, but you better have your eyes on the road and foot near the brake. I’m sure we all have seen road heaves due to climate conditions. Hot climates have them just as well as cold. Those don’t compare…Imagine a 2 1/2 foot drop in the road and what that could do. And then there were other stretches where it seems they tried to do some road repairs but I’m not sure there was much skill or care involved. And finally the long stretches where they’re rebuilding the road but the stretches are long and very soft and muddy. I’m grateful I have a vehicle that can handle the situation with confidence that it will survive. The amazing things I saw were the cars pulling campers that hit these hazards and sent them flying. I saw highway storage yards that had the results of these catastrophes lined up I’m guessing waiting to be hauled away. Crazy. Total drive in the last two days was 620 miles over 17 hours.

Where are you- Part 2

About 30 miles up the Dempster is a Territorial park named Tombstone Park. This is a remote campground with no services but some really nice camp sites. Within the park are trails to hike, so I took a hike. The beauty of this area is difficult to explain, so I’ll let some photos help.

What’s next?

Tomorrow I’ll head out early and continue the drive north. Only 500 miles to go to reach the ocean. I’m in no rush, not sure how many days this last section will take, but I’m thinking 3-4 days. We’ll see….

Until next time…

As always thank you for your time and likes, appreciate those. I’ll leave you again with a video taken from the high point of my hike today. This is a 360 from this high point, with your volume up you’ll hear the wonderful sounds of the river below and the cold wind ‘blowing hard. Till next time…Peace!