The West Fork Blackstone River has now joined with the East Fork to form the Blackstone River that the road is now traveling beside....
up ahead, another Grizzly crosses the highway.......
and meanders, quite unconcerned, along the side of the road.
Now....a lot of photos in this blog have been cropped to give a closer view of the subject. This photo has not been cropped. This is directly as it came from my camera, albeit I was using a telephoto setting, that I had actually had to back off from in order to get him in the picture. To say I was nervous is a bit of an understatement! We were in the truck. Ernie had his foot hovering over the gas pedal and I had my window only rolled down enough to allow the camera lens access....but still! I'm not sure I ever want to be that close to a Grizzly bear again!
The road now wound up and away from the river, through Windy Pass....another area of tundra and spectacular wildflowers. This was a drier area, although still damp on the knees.
another view of the wildflower garden.....
I think that the above plant is called 'Parrya' - I must admit I am very disappointed with the book I bought on Yukon Wildflowers....it is very difficult to find unknown plants in it and the photographs in it are, for the most part - awful. I'm wondering why on earth I spent good money on it!
There was a lot of White Mountain Heather in flower in this area.....
a closer view of the White Mountain Heather.
more tundra gardens......
and yet more - this one featuring more of those wonderful Lapland Rhododendrons
I have no idea what this pretty little thing is called....it was tiny....I've cropped this photo considerably!
and some more White Mountain Avens....the bits of pink are Bog Rosemary.
and now, for something completely different....a Macoun's Poppy - different from an Iceland Poppy as the Iceland poppy has a nodding head, while the Macoun's is upright.
We're now into the Northern Ogilvie Mountains....a much drier, barren area with interesting rock formations such as this pinnacle.......
closer view of the pinnacle - there are supposed to be Peregrine Falcon nesting here.....
in fact this whole area is supposed to be teeming with birds of prey.........
there is supposed to be a Gyrfalcon nest on this cliff face - we think that is it, in the middle, close to the bottom but we didn't see any Gyrfalcon's - in fact we saw very few birds of prey the whole route!
There were some different wildflowers here, like this 'Showy Loco Weed'......
and these 'Yellow Avens' that carpet hot, dry gravel areas just about everywhere.
So after a full day, but with only 120 km's covered, we pulled into Engineer's Creek campground.
Sorry, a bit out of order here....this shot was taken just down the road from the campground....what made it interesting was the fact that all that 'yellow' on the mountainside were flowers......
back at the campground, Ernie took these pictures of Engineer's Creek.......
another view of Engineers Creek and the backdrop mountain.
Gray Jay's decended on us here....what was unusual about these Gray Jay's was the fact that they were very vocal. We are used to Gray Jay's that are very silent, just sort of appearing as gray ghosts - not these guys!
and one final shot......Ernie took this photo of Bear tracks (that is a Loonie for size comparison), in the dried mud at the campground. We didn't do much wandering around....not just because of the bear tracks - the mosquitoes were a bit thick, and of a pretty hefty size, as well.
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