YAOGBB

It was drizzly and cold as I left Ross River in the early AM. The dreary weather continued for most of the day.  From Ross River to the Klondike highway is another approximately 400 km, but about 80 km along the way is Faro.    Faro was the location of a huge open pit lead-zinc mine.  They have turned one of the old ore carrying monster trucks into one of those statue display things that small towns like put up. Faro is about the same size as Ross River, but quite a contrast.  Martha Stewart has no fan base in Ross River.  Faro has paved roads, and many houses that would not look out of place in lower suburbia.  To be fair, Faro  was until recently a prosperous mining town and had a population in the 1,000s.  There are also a lot of empty houses in Faro, the population having shrunk to about 400.  The Faro-ese are going after the eco tourism trade.  There is a population of Dall sheep on the edge of town.  There is a blind a ...

The arctic circle is the point where the sun does not go set in summer or come up in winter, for at least one day...   I used to think that it was 6 months of daylight and 6 months of darkness, but you have to go to the north pole for that.   At the Arctic circle you will have one 24 hour period with no sunset, on June 21, the summer solstice. The arctic circle would be my destination as I left Edmonton in late June, 2009.  To get there I would travel up the Alaska highway to the Yukon, and from there to Dawson City, where the great gold rush of the 1890's happened, and then up the Dempster highway to the arctic circle. I had been up the Alaska highway and to Dawson on a motorcycle before, so I knew the way :-)  My first trip was on a street oriented sport touring bike, a Yamaha FJ100.  It was fine most of the time, but definitely out of its element when going got rough.  The AK highway and the highway to Dawson can be travelled on just about...