Monday 19th May 2003, Carmacks to Dawson City

The cafe attached to the hotel was not the best so I decided to get breakfast on the road, not such a good idea as it turned out.  Places were few and far between and I didn't like the look of any of them so I was pretty hungry when I got to Dawson City.

There was more road damage between Carmacks and Dawson City, which was not always flagged here so I had to be pretty vigilant.  Nevertheless, even I couldn't miss what looked to me like a wolf as it loped out of the trees and turned down the road, heading straight for me.  It was a whimsical, meandering sort of lope, unhurried and seemingly without a care in the world.  As I braked he veered off to the other side of the road where he stopped and turned to look at me.  It was as though he was sizing me up, decided I was nothing to worry about and loped away into the trees.  I could have sworn he was laughing at me, it was so funny.  THEN I remembered my camera!!!

The guy in the car behind me saw me in a café further up the road and we discussed it.  He told me it was a coyote, not a wolf;  I bow to his superior knowledge but as I hadn't seen either in the wild before I was thrilled either way.

About an hour or so later I came across a car with it's bonnet up and a woman was flagging me down.

Ok, let's get this over with.  Yes, I KNOW, everyone (apart from George) told me not to stop for anyone, and I HAVE ignored the hitch-hikers; but there was this man working hard at the wheel, two women looking worried and a little boy about 4 years old looking confused, right in the middle of nowhere.  What would YOU have done?  I stopped.

I wasn't much help as I didn't understand which tool they needed but we rooted around in my car anyway.  By the time we decided I didn't have one, two more cars had stopped and one had the necessary.  This was the Klondike in the rush hour - I'd only seen half a dozen cars in the last four hours up 'til then.  No-one passed by - as one lady said, this is the Yukon way!


I didn't stop to make sure they got safely underway, I'm a little ashamed of that but I wasn't comfortable, I suppose ingrained suspicion of strangers is hard to overcome.  However, I did stop, against all advice and there were others there when I left.  I like to think if I'd been the only one around I would have stayed and made sure they were underway or plucked up the courage to offer a lift but I guess I'll never know now.  I was so flustered I automatically drove off on the left hand side of the road and it was about half a mile before I realised and moved over.  Oh well, let's hope that gave them a laugh over the soppy Englishwoman.

The rest of the journey was uneventful until I got near Dawson City.  I saw what I thought was roadkill until it moved.  It was a porcupine - I hadn't realised they were so large!  He didn't care for the look of me, so off he lumbered with a sort of rolling gait and disappeared round a hummock.  I may have just managed to get him on film but I'm not sure.  I could hear him rustling around but couldn't see him so I started off again.  As I did I spotted his sweet little face poking out at me from the other side of the hummock but it quickly disappeared once more when I slowed down.