Beautiful views hiking in Tombstone Territorial Park...

This is the second post today. We were without internet for 4 days in a row, so we're just getting caught up. Go here to click on the first post if you missed it...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2018/06/our-first-taste-of-dempster-highway.html

Monday, June 25

My older sister's birthday. Happy Birthday Elaine... we did remember, but of course had no way to communicate our birthday wishes. Hope you had a good day!

We had planned on doing a long day hike on the Grizzly Lake Trail, but the day started off windy and overcast. It's supposed to be a spectacular hike, but we would like to do it with blue skies. So we have put it off until our return to the area on the way back south. However, we still managed to do two hikes that totaled 14.8 kms (9.2 miles)!

In the morning, we set off on the easy 5.3 kms (3.1 miles) round trip North Klondike River Trail. It follows the river upstream to an ice flow that is almost a glacier.

Ruth, at the trailhead of the North Klondike River Trail in Tombstone National Park.

The North Klondike River is fast moving... and ice cold!

Red squirrel.

Scenery along the way.

Beautiful scenery, even without a blue sky!

Lots of wildflowers.

Almost a glacier!

In order to be a glacier, the ice has to remain year round. In this situation, the ice does disappear, but it's usually towards the end of August... and then it starts to freeze up again in September!

Interesting rock.

Ruth, watching for wildlife.

Starting to look like the arctic.

The ground has lots of lichen that the caribou feed on.

A female yellow warbler.

In the afternoon, we just hung around Sherman. There were some light rain showers on and off, as well as some breaks with sunshine. I between the rain, I replaced Sherman's exhaust clamps. Everything is nice and tight now! While I was doing that, Ruth was going through all of the information pamphlets and guides that we have collected about our drive over the next two weeks.

At 6:30pm they were doing a guided hike on the other side of the highway on Goldensides Trail. But the trailhead starts about 3 kms (1.7 miles) from the campground, and they were driving up. They usually find others to carpool with, but this time nobody doing the hike had a vehicle, and the guides could only take two other people. There were 6 people wanting to go, so the first two to arrive set off with the guides, and Ruth and I said we would just walk on our own.

So we set out walking, and after about 10 minutes a car stopped with the other two guys who had wanted to go. They had hitched a ride with someone so they stopped to pick us up as well.

Scenery along the way.

In the center in the distance is Tombstone Mountain, the one we flew a circle around when we did the Tombstone Mountains Scenic Flight

Looking down on the campground and Visitors Centre.

So, all 8 of us did the hike on Goldensides. There were two park interpretive guides. One is originally from Quebec doing his third summer working here. He is also a Sunwing flight attendent in the winter, so he manages to spend a fair bit of time in the winter in Mexico. The other guide was a younger girl from Whitehorse doing her first summer here. Then, there was a young couple from Switzerland who now live in Ottawa! Small world sometimes. And, two young single hitchhiker guys who met in Dawson City just the other day... one from Australia, and one from Germany.

Another shot looking back towards the campground. 

Some of our group at the lookout!

It started to rain right then, so we couldn't get a shot of us at the lookout. We will have to go up again when we return in two weeks or so! Fantastic scenery, even with the less than ideal weather conditions. Hopefully when we return we will have some blue sky and sunshine. But, we still had a great day and got in a little bit of exercise. Turns out that second hike that we did after dinner was 9.5 kms (6 miles) and it was 10:00pm when we got back to Sherman!

Male willow ptarmigan.

He was chasing the female!

Rainbow back at the campground!

Time to move on... we are headed further up the Dempster Highway on Tuesday!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice price drop on the Coleman Classic Steel Belted Cooler. Black color only at this price... (ignore the shipping date... in my experience when it says 1 to 3 months, it usually means 1 to 2 weeks!

Coleman Classic Steel Belted Cooler