January's Clever Clue of the Month

Once again I've narrowed it down to six nominees. Vote today. Check the Clever Clue page tomorrow to see who won.

Loses one's balance? ........................SPENDS
Don't go fast? ..............................EAT
Incapable of littering ......................NEUTERED
Break fluid? ................................TEA
Recovered from a bad stroke, say ............SHOT PAR
Shape shifters? .............................GIRDLES

Sattelite Image

I think it's somewhere in the circled area. Does anyone know what that orange blob might be just south of Stynsberg?

Which One?

Here's a map. Let's race!

The Stynsberg B&B

Let's all go to Sweden! Let's see how many Stynsbergs we can cram into the Stynsberg Bed & Breakfast near Uppsala, Sweden.

So long Hootalinqua

Most of the wildlife we saw was on the Teslin - thereafter it was mostly the ruins of abandoned villages and mining camps. To the right is, I think, Little Salmon.









Above there is a rack for drying salmon, a machine for finding gold and an indian graveyard. The indian graves were above ground. Little houses with windows. Inside you could see things that belonged to the deceased. I remember, for example, seeing moccasins.

Evelyn

On the hill above Hootalinqua we spied what looked like a cabin or something on an island and decided to investigate. We landed and began plowing though the woods. In the middle of the island we came upon this grave marker.






We plowed on and got really excited when we saw this.






And then this.




It was, we discovered, Evelyn - an abandoned Yukon paddlewheeler and we were on Shipyard Island.

Original

This is the original picture I took. The Image Mosaic Generator site uses thousands of images from Flickr to create the mosaic. Cool, huh?

Sunflowers

I decided to do a little more work on this sunflower picture I took a couple years ago. (It's about 680KB). You may want to click on it to get a closer look.

Northern

Fishing was great at Hootalinqua. We were far enough into the trip to realize we hadn't brought enough food for everyone to eat all they wanted, so the fish and the rhubarb were much appreciated.

Asleep at the wheel

The current was fast. We soon learned that we could make time even while resting.

We saw lots of moose on the stretch from Indian River to Hootalinqua, and we passed uneventfully through the Roaring Bull Rapids.

Eventually we arrived at the Yukon and the old paddlewheeler docking station of Hootalinqua.

From this shot on the hills above Hootalinqua you can see the confluence - the Teslin on the left and the Yukon on the right.

White on White

Here are a couple of snow photos for the new white blog. It has warmed up forty degrees to 20 above now.

Layouts

I decided to try a new upgraded layout. They assured me that a backup of our old site would be saved if we need to consult it. The change was a breeze. This layout is only one of many we could choose. If someone has another idea. . .have at it. Check out the new Archive retrival system - that's what I thought was neat.

Rub a dub dub

We hiked back into the mountains searching for Mount Black which we never found, but we did see a wolverine and other animals. Back at camp we washed clothes and cleaned up. We wanted to bathe too, but the rivers were icy cold so we innovated.

I'm not sure who was the genius behind this plan. They filled a canoe with water then dropped red hot rocks into one end.
I'm also not sure how the bathing order was determined, but Tom and I did not want to be the last of 8 to get into that water, so we used hot rocks to create a sauna.

The Indian River

About halfway down the Teslin we stopped at the Indian River for three or four days. We wanted to hike back into the mountains and then have a little R & R to clean up.



The fishing was great. Arctic Grayling. We actually had a contest to see who could cast and reel in without catching a fish. It was hard to do. We ate well. We saw wolves. They were as curious about us as we were about them. They seranaded us to sleep at night- one of the most magical experiences of my life

Home Sweet Home

Almost immediately we started finding abandoned settlements and even whole villages. Notice the rhubarb in the picture to the right. Almost every cabin had some. We put rhubarb sauce on everything.

Anchors Away

Shortly after we took off I started snapping pictures. A little earlier I think I said Steve and Paul were canoe partners, but I was wrong. Richard was Steve's partner. Steve and Paul slept in the same tent. Richard and I had the same tent, but the Yukon is semi-arid and we almost always slept in the open air with an overturned canoe at our head so if it rained we could quickly throw a tarp over us.

photo test

i added a more realistic picture lest you think we have global warming right now. This is 1600 x 1200, 321KB, and -20 degrees F outside. Even the smallest twigs are covered with a layer of snow. Today is the 9th of January...

Holly has a better camera than mine, so this is a test to see what happens when i put her photo on the blog. Her photos are 2112 x2816 px (pixels?) and about 2.5mb. Mine are about 1280 x 960px and 554kb.

Away we go

After years of planning and a lot of driving and a lot of waiting we're within minutes of putting our canoes in the Teslin River and heading out. 120 miles to the Yukon River and over 500 miles to Dawson. We will only intersect with civilisation once when the road to Dawson crosses the Yukon at Carmacks.

The guy to the right of Steve is Dave Duke. The two on the far right are Paul Fink and Phil Lundberg.

Ho Hum

I took this picture and then said, "Come on, show a little excitement!"

And they responded appropriately.

Halsey

We're almost ready to leave. The room is the basement at Halsey. The little child is Dean. The man by the door is Richard Roach's dad.

Days Gone By

The most recent scans of Dad's pictures include a few from the trip down the Yukon River in 1970. Then at Christmas Richard Roach gave me two CD's of all his photos of that trip. (Mine were ruined because of water damage. . .Steve can't find his. . .hey Mark, do you have slides?)

Anyway I thought I'd post a few pictures from that memorable adventure. John took this one. We're all excited and ready to leave.