Day 21 Yukon River
I came to from drip of sweat running down my face. In the heat of the morning sun my tent had turned into an oven, with the rainfly baking me in the heat.
I clamored out of the tent in search of cool, fresh air. Coffee, some music and oatmeal followed.
The plan today was to hit around twenty five miles and reach Fort Yukon before the local post office closed. Several boxes of food were hopefully waiting for us in the village.
After taking a quick cool down dip in the river we packed up the boat got on our way. The rivers labrinth continued today, forcing us to travel in a zigzagging fashion at every bend in order to stay in the main channel and avoid having to drag the boat through the shallow shoals that often build up outside the main current.
By mid afternoon we had put in our 25 miles and neared Fort Yukon. As we rounded a corner on river right a few buildings came into view. Pulling up to the boat ramp in town we were greeted by a gang of big, mean, husky looking dogs. Most were chained to wooden posts staked into the ground by the nearby bushes. The dogs barked and howled as we unloaded our boat. One large, dark dog came running down the ramp toward us, before stopping and starting from a few yards away.
Jackson began the walk into town to find the post office. We had heard from Jeromah, the ranger at Slavens Roadhouse in the Yukon-Charley Preserve, that it was about a mile and a half walk from the boat ramp to the post office. Four stashes of resupply food, sent in white USPS flat rate boxes, had been shipped to us here from Montana. The food would replenish our supplies and allow us to keep pushing toward the Bering Sea and the mouth of the Yukon.
With Jackson gone into town, as soon as I took five steps away from the boat the big black dog, still lingering in the bushes, started sniffing around our food. That didn’t take long. I pulled the canoe around a rocky point away from the tough looking canines and waited for Jackson to return.
About an hour and half later Jack showed up, empty handed. No food. He had gotten to the post office around 4pm, and despite the hours on the door claiming to be open until 5pm, the place was shut, locked and lights out. A local on a four-wheeler cruised by and shouted “It’s closed, but’ll be open tomorrow!”
A bit defeated, we packed up our gear and paddled a mile or so up river to find camp. We would return tomorrow in hopes of grabbing our resupply. The good news, however, is that we were able to score a twelve pack of Pacifico for $25. Not a terrible price in the bush of Alaska, believe it or not.
We burned a massive bonfire, tipped cold ones and reveled in the amazing place we found ourselves- on an island in the midst of the mighty Yukon River.
...................................
Day 21 of a 70 day expedition canoeing the length of the Yukon River, Source to Sea, Summer of 2018 #buffaloroamer