Cooler Weather....But Heavy Forest Fire Smoke.

The view above is taken from my campsite at Twin Lakes Govt. Park on Sunday.As you can see,lot's of smoke,in fact sunrise yesterday morning was just a round orange ball that you could directly look at.
I got an early start on a cool 4 degree morning and with the filtered sun no heat,so in a way a welcome change from the past days of driving in +30 temps.
Heading further north on the Klondike Highway toward Dawson City.
Below is one of my little rest stops.

And those are the rapids through the smoke...No its not my camera!In fact the original picture made it look worse like it really was...But Picasa's "feeling lucky" option,made it look less smoky.I'm hoping that on the return leg of this trip,the smoke will be gone and I can see some countryside.The whole day yesterday was devoid of any long distance view.I didn't know if there were any mountains out there or just high plateau.

I took my lunch break here at one of the many little service stops along the way.

This is probably the only moose I'm going to see on the whole trip.

In the early afternoon and getting low on gas,I arrived at the junction of the Dempster Highway,which is just 40k's short of Dawson City.......Do I want to take a ride on this 456 mile dirt and gravel/dust and mud adventure,that crosses the Arctic Circle and ends at Inuvik,NWT........well?......Oh what the heck,I can take a little drive and see what its like.I can always turn around.So I gassed up and what a bargain...only $1.40 a liter.That is the worst so far in this whole trip....I thought $1.19 was bad as this seemed to be the average up the Cassiar and on the Alaska,with the exception of Whitehorse,where it was $1.00 a liter,best since leaving the Kamloops area.

WHOOPS! I WAS WARNED......I JUST DELETED A PICTURE OF THE DEMPSTER SIGNPOST....Cant re insert it now.

So to end my day yesterday,I travelled to the first campground,Tombstone Territorial Park at the 71.5k/44.4mi. mark,and in that short drive,found a surprisingly smooth gravel road,but wow, the dust!I have to get used to it if I want to travel any distance.About 1/2 way along,I came to my first road grading crew....You guessed it...mud...they use lots of water.The picture below doesn't really show how bad it was caked on the trailer in particular,but its probably going to get worse.

GUESS WHAT?I JUST DELETED ANOTHER PHOTO.....its time to call a time out and just finish this off and hope its not a sign of a bad day coming up.

There! I just drew the last pic up without losing it,this is a scene from the back of the campsite.This location is at just over 3000ft and as you can see the tree line is just getting down to this altitude and the Tundra wants to take over,as I guess we are getting into the perma-frost area.

This area really looks interesting and according to the mile by mile write up in the "Milepost"book,should be an interesting ride........Stay tuned.