In real time it is such a miserable cold, wet day that escaping back to the tundra is welcome!
We left the Arctic circle and continued on, heading to a spot where we had stayed on our previous trip. This is the view from the camping spot which is really just the remains of a gravel pit, it is well off the highway but with the highway visible so you don’t feel completely isolated.
set up now and enjoying the view…there is the Dempster in the distance…
In the evening Ernie walked along the highway and took this shot looking back at the camping site – I would never attempt this as we’d seen first hand, the previous trip, how a Grizzly Bear can just appear out of no where ….Ernie and Shantz made it without incidence this time…
I stayed much closer to the campsite, with one eye on the surroundings at all times – and will now post a bunch of pictures of the vegetation on the tundra as this is one of the things I find so fascinating…the variety of plant life…. This is Potentilla and you find this hardy shrub all over the place…even up here north of 60…
a profusion of colour…there is Bear Berry, Blue Berry, Cloud Berry, Cranberry, Labrador Tea etc. etc. etc.
another shot…that is Cloud Berry in the lower right hand corner…
this is looking directly down on the tapestry….
a more distant shot of the general terrain…
Ernie took this picture which shows the profusion of Blue Berries – of course it is this wealth of berries that draws the bears…that and the Caribou that we had heard were near the Yukon/N.W.T. border which wasn’t all that far off. Two legged hunters were also attracted to the area, in fact we had a visit from a couple of hunters who thought we were friends they were going to met up with…
I’m going to continue on with foliage pictures – after all this is what we travelled all this way to see and may very well never see again… The bright red is the Bear Berry, the green is the Bog or Creeping Cranberry…
more Bear Berry…also some spent Fireweed.
Bear Berry and Cranberry…
Crow Berry, Blue Berry, and a Cloudberry leaf right in the middle…
Something had been digging here….good reason to be concerned and keeping an ‘eye open’…
There were Mushrooms here too, although not in the numbers there had been in the southern part of Yukon…
and here is a final shot of the colourful tundra. The next day we would reach the most northern point of this particular trip, and start the return journey…
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