North Fork Pass was the last pass on the Dempster. Everything is downhill from here!

Well, we've been out for a week and have met the most amazing people. The stories that we're hearing are phenomenal. Between the stories are many incredible landscapes - the awesome Richardson Mountains that form the divide between the Arctic watersheds and the Pacific, between The Mackenzie and the Yukon.

No bears but lots of bear scat. I'm calming down a little bit.

We'll try to get some pictures uploaded and write some of the wonderful stories we've heard when we get to Dawson.

Today is June 1st, 2006 and we are really doing it, we on our way. After months of prep we are on the road but not on our bikes. We drove to Grand Junction where we will fly out of Grand Junction Airport (Walker Field) in the morning in a Cessnar piloted by Collin Fay and Marisa Fay. Collin and Marisa do this all the time with their business, Parkest Air Tours.

We are flying to Helena, Montana to meet 13 other small planes which will fly us to Inuvik and drop us off with our bikes and all the gear. We will then ride south on the Dempster Highway, a 450-mile gravel road with very limited services. What a great way to see the world.

Wish us luck and good riding weather.

Thanks to Nancy's dear old brother (yes he is older) Dan, for the best gourmet meal this side of Italy and also a chance to see the "gang" again. Dan's building a second home on Goose Pond Road. Your all are welcome to stop by, and have a beer at sunset and watch the day settle into night on the newly contructed deck the "gang" built. It is a great tradition we all should all adopt. Stop what you are doing at sunset, have a seat in a comfortable chair and an watch the sun go down. Also thanks to Tod for giving us a lift 30 miles down the road. It would have been a 90 mile day with a deadline we would not have meet.

Poem:

Chasing the colors up the Connecticut River
Into Vermont and New Hampshire
We weave the state lines.
Searching for the change of colors.
Seaching, seeing, awed, stop.
Get off our bikes
Snapping a another photo
We ride on.

STOP!

Another covered bridge along
the tour-de-covered-bridge.
Our friend and now our tour guide, Brad
guides us skillfully
through the back roads of his northern woods.
Snap, snap
We capture this early Autumn afternoon scene
Clouds racing in and out.
Wait, wait, the clouds are covering the green
the cloud is leaving,
uncovering the greenest of green fields,
it is unreal, nothing is this green
but freshly squeezed oil paint from a tube
of vermillion or forest green
but perhaps five shades lighter
Through the lens we capture
the simmering leaves, the distance hills
Snap, Got it!
ride on, around the next bend
Stop!
A picturesque diary farm with dual silos
having seen better days.
Not much red here
we ride north
looking for the change of colors
we ride on, we ride into Canada.

Well, Nancy kept insisting on finding those colors, so we just kept heading north and more north until we went into Canada. So our original route is nothing like what we've done. We followed up Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont into Quebec, and now will come back down through Vermont to (hopefully) catch our plane in a week.