Back to the Dempster 2011 – Part 15b

Today I’ll finish up our last day at Tombstone Territorial park, and hence on the Dempster highway, with miscellaneous pictures taken that day, which would have been August 28th, 2011

Here is another Mountain, or Alpine Harebell picture – this one taken by Ernie – his little old Panasonic camera does take great macro shots!

This is the start of the Klondike trail…you can branch off and do a loop which is what I’m going to do, or you can walk about as far as you want to back up into the mountains…

all the bushes were absolutely alive with birds…but photographing them was another thing!  Here was an Orange-crowned Warbler on the left and a Boreal Chickadee on the right…

Shantz was still with us…blending into the fall colours very nicely…

while April preferred to blend into the bed – we’re still dealing with eye issues here…

Speaking of blending in….here is another of those Orange-crowned Warblers…

this one, a pretty obvious ‘Ruby crowned Kinglet’ – you can even see the ‘ruby’

another Orange-crowned Warbler – there were lots!!!

a slate coloured Dark-eyed Junco – not being terribly co-operative…in fact none of the birds were terribly co-operative…too busy preparing to migrate I imagine…

a Wilson Warbler here…

and up over the ridge – another type of ‘bird’ entirely! – Yup they have those things up here too.

back to the real birds – Yellow-rump Warblers…

and another attempt at a Boreal Chickadee…

Evening…and Ernie is preparing to head out for a walk with Shantz…

not much later a little shower moved in…

next a down pour!

ending with a rainbow!  And of course they got soaked.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading to Dawson City and then starting south…

Back to the Dempster 2011 – Part 15a

Seems like getting this trip posted is taking almost as long as the trip itself!  Here goes some more…we would spend this day at the Tombstone Territorial Campground…

In the morning we walked the trail from the campground to the new visitor’s center…

this is quite a remarkable ‘off the grid’ building…this sign explains some of it’s features…

from the south end of the parking lot at the visitor center there is a very easy ‘Beaver Pond Trail’ – Ernie had done it the night before, but this morning I got to come along…

the entrance to the trail cautions that there is a ‘bear in area’….

and not too much further along – you find the ‘bear’ – this is a Willow sculpture by a Yukon artist and is very lifelike, and life size…

there were some very pretty areas along the trail….

and more great explanatory signage…

and here is the Beaver Pond…

and another Willow sculpture – this time it is a Beaver lodge…

the viewing platform at the pond has ‘beaver tracks’ leading from the pond to the ‘lodge’…

this picture sort of displays the whole area…

one area along the trail sported this ‘Cotton grass’

and the track theme continued with Caribou here….

and here some little tiny guy’s…possibly Lemming?

heading back, there is the visitor center in the distance.

and I’ll just finish this section with this picture that Ernie took of a little Inukshuk someone built on one of the posts at the visitor center….

Back to the Dempster 2011 – Part 10

This would be the 23rd day of August.  We woke up to rain, but it stopped shortly after getting up.  We had decided that now we were here, we would just stay put for the day and enjoy – by the way, this time of year we encountered no bugs of any sort.

 

I mean who wouldn’t want to just soak in scenery like this!

there is a very easy trail that winds around in the area behind the campground and that is where I headed – that is the Dempster Highway there, cutting across the landscape..

One of the first finds was this Mountain Harebell.  I’d only ever seen these little flowers once, years before, when we hiked up into the alpine meadows at Mt. Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park.

The pen is for size comparison.

and there is the usual tapestry of plant life on the ground…a couple of types of fungi, lichen, bog cranberry, Bear Berry, Crow Berry and on and on its goes…

Here is a close up of Crowberry….you can see where it got it’s name…the berries are black as crows..

a branch of the trail goes along side the Klondike River…it is more forested here…there were Twin Flowers still in flower – these are a spring flower down home.

These are ‘Gem-studded Puffballs’ – I think the ones back at Kiniskan might have been the same type since my book says they turn brown with age.

Bear Berry – complete with ‘berry’

We wandered over to the new Visitor’s Center…we’ll explore this completely ‘off the grid’ and very green building more on our return…

In the afternoon Ernie went on an interpretive walk with one of the park rangers …there are walks daily at Tombstone, also all sorts of other activities..  This is the Klondike River

think Ernie was most impressed with this old hitch that was laying in the bush…a relic of by gone days.

While Ernie was on his walk I amused myself with looking for birds…here a Song Sparrow – this is the Aleutian variety..

there is another look..

lots of White Crowned Sparrows – this one a juvenile..

Warblers, including Wilson’s

and Orange Crowned…also Yellow-rumps but didn’t get a picture worth keeping of them..

 

Shantz had been left behind too so pouted under the bushes…

Bees were busy in the Fireweed

back from the walk…

we made April come out for a while too…

While Ernie took Shantz for her evening walk, I did the dishes.  This pot was a bit much so I put it out for Shantz to do a prelim clean up….she never got a chance….the Gray Jays descended

there was nothing left by the time Shantz got back…

and thus ended another day in paradise.