it’s the same feelings, same situation, different circumstances for me, every single time a trip ends. i come home so fulfilled and willingly hanging around in the best moments from weeks, nights, or just a day on the road. as we hit the arctic circle, and especially as we left dawson city up north and began driving south, slowly, the thought of that inevitableness of coming back to a usual life had well been growing within me and i didn’t want it yet.

i’d miss all the setting up tents at midnight in the middle of no where, the heavenly ten minute stops at gas stations, otherwise known as towns, to fill up with gas & ice cream, and give our legs a well deserved stretch. it would be hard leaving behind the absolute vastness of such a country, of just one territory and all the wildlife along the way. how would i explain how hard we, well i, had to work every morning to pack everything back into the trunk and backseat of our car, and the way we’d have to set the alarm fifteen minutes earlier to allot for that. how on earth would we ever justify ourselves laughing out loud on public transit back home while we replayed inside jokes from the trip in our mind. i guess we wouldn’t, and the missing of those things is a part of life now – but they’re definitely never gone, or too far away to pull back and talk about, share about.

on a lighter note, those of you on twitter know i’ve been cookin’ up a little something extraordinary the past few days, and those of you not on twitter have no idea, unless you’re stalking me on twitter without following me, which is approved as well. i shot a little video on our trip, enough to inspire a desire to knock together my very first imovie! i’m really proud of me, and now wish i’d shot more video but – skip all the photos, scroll down to the bottom and have a look! enjoy!

the yukon – pushing north from sean norman on vimeo.

“ohh, it’s just… too late in the season now, you won’t be able to see it until winter. you’re just a few weeks too late. they’ve even stopped updating the forecast site.” and i just didn’t understand. maybe i was being stubborn but i felt like i knew better and this trip, i was going to see aurora again. because as far as i knew, if it was dark enough under clear skies, and the sun was still in existence, which as i watched the sunset, it appeared it was – then i should be able to see the lights. and i did. i had to wait ’til just before 2am for twilight to reach it’s tail end, but she was out and dancing just as magnificent as always.

i’ve been wanting to feel more to tune into my intuition, and i don’t find anything more satisfying than really knowing, and without question – i just knew to wait up for a dark sky that night.
i know i speak for all four of us when i say that faro is an extraordinary place with an easy & abundantly flowing magic. as we were rolling into town on another gravel highway (ha, and we thought we’d smooth sailing after the dempster!), we noticed a strange trend coming to life. we were being waved at. a lot. in fact, there weren’t any exceptions. every car we passed on the outskirts of town & in town waved.

faro is amazing like that. mel, thank goodness for that girl, had gained some incredible insight and guided us toward this town of a few hundred people for their crane & sheep festival, which in other words said – you’re unconditionally welcomed to our community and all that we have. we were already riding highs from amazing people we’d bumped into earlier when our neighbours to the right at our campsite offered us two chairs for the girls in front of the blazin’ fire we had going, and not before we could accept those, our neighbours to the left came to us with two more chairs for josh and myself. all before a local family of four pulled up in their pickup truck and unloaded the biggest stash of firewood you’d ever seen at a campsite. the whole thing was becoming surreal, and before we knew it, there i was yelling down at the three of them from a small hill because, to top everything off, the northern lights came out to play as well.

and because blog posts are better with honesty, the next morning after enjoying a free/donation breakfast for the grad class of 2010, josh & i hit the links and played a round of golf, now get this, in just three holes – snow, rain, hail, sunshine and what must’ve been gail force winds on a course that toured their entire town. what a blast we had! josh and i, of course, were easily the best golfers on the course that day. just don’t ask how many others we saw playing, or how many balls we lost.

heiheihei! no no, not you, not you… YOU! yes, you are the one. hang tight a second and promise you’ll try to enjoy a few of these words before skipping over the images – because if you don’t, you’ll end up back here anyway waiting for a few of them to load. i just couldn’t help myself – dawson city was on the brink of two blog posts, but i decided to flood this single post with 35 images instead, so give me an extra second up here!

a few days earlier while we were in adorable little keno, which by the way, was named after the gambling game, a few locals told us to try and push dawson city back toward the end of the week as far as we could. because things just… weren’t open yet, it was spring thaw and we were in the tail end of it. we arrived on wednesday, and the bakery opened thursday. the ice cream shop was training new staff for the real tourist season we were ahead of. the ice bridge to the other side of town had just melted, and the ferry didn’t go in ’til saturday, or take the first campground we rolled into… “we’re… open, if you like, but our toilets & showers are still frozen”. mmm, yeah – problematic isn’t it. we did find one campground just outside of town where we were able to pitch our tents for three nights straight, which may not seem like a big deal, but after days and days of driving and throwing our tents together & apart in darkness on frozen tundra – it was the biggest treat of our trip.

dawson was like that for us, we had just knocked out the dempster highway, and here we were ready to settle down for a few days to really enjoy a slower pace, throwin’ rocks at icebergs, complete meals (nutella WITH bread), hours of hiking, sunsets from the top of the world, and even ice cream in the sunshine. that’s the great thing about dawson city, there are dozens of things you know you wanted to come for, and about another dozen that you didn’t even know existed but are ready for you too. like gold panning!
dawson city, i’ll see you again this winter!

nom nom nom! best ice cream of the trip! haha, i love you guys!

where else can you just walk the streets and find moose so friendly in the centre of town?! yeah, dawson rocks.

and then jen goes and kills the moose, makes a hat, stuffs it into her backpack and laughs about it… I KNNNOOOWWW!

chuckin’ rocks! more photos from jen!

faves. and yep, shot at 21mm :)