We woke up early this morning to grab breakfast at the café in Eagle, Alaska, a small town of about 800 people on the banks of the Yukon. After loading the boat Jack and I ferried across the river and walked up a set of steep metal stairs that took us over the local levee toward the hotel/ café. Fresh homemade biscuits and gravy with a side of bacon was topped off perfectly with a delicious slice of homemade blueberry pie. We must have given off the sense that we needed coffee, as our waitress left us with an entire pot at the table. We drank it.

After breakfast we headed down a short dirt road to the Yukon-Charlie National Preserve ranger station in hopes of learning about the park we were about to enter. We picked the Rangers brain for a bit before setting off on our way.

A few showers put us in rain gear for much of the afternoon.

By evening we reached our goal for the day, an old abandoned cabin built and inhibited in the 1920s by an old Alaskan trapper. Now the cabin is used by the park visitors as a shelter to sleep, cook and rest in while traveling the Bush. Because the cabin was set back into the woods the mosquitos were absolutely horrendous. We decided to camp on a sandbar mid-river instead.

The eveing passed as we toook turns sipping what whiskey was left over from our resupply in Dawson City. Around 1am we crawled into our tents. Just as I laid down, Jackson yelled out to me from his tent ten yards away.

“Do hear that motor? Someone is coming to the Island.”

Jackson hopped out of the tent and walked to the water's edge. Two fellas looking to be in their mid 50s pulled up in a small v-shaped, motor boat.

“Mind if we crash with you guys?!? We haven’t found a campsite in miles!”

Scott and Jere hopped off as we helped unload much of the gear from their boat. We passed the bottle of whiskey to ‘em and got a fire going.

Both military veterans, the boys were packing some serious heat for bear protection...(Post 1/2)
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Day 15 of a 70 day expedition canoeing the length of the Yukon River, Source to Sea, Summer of 2018 #BuffaloRoamer