Second Last Day

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Hello from Whitehorse, the last night of our holidays, we are a day behind oz so it's Tuesday night at 8.20pm. We leave Wednesday at 11.55pm and arrive back in Sydney on Friday morning. Our last travel blog left us at Raspberry Island and we were supposed to do a half day bear view via sea plane in Katmai National Park, home to over 2,000 brown bears and at 3.00am that morning the wind shook our cabin and continued to do so until we we left at 10.00am. Unfortunately we did not get to do our bear view and this was probably the one thing I was really looking forward to doing out of all the trip, I had planned the trip around going to Kodiak Island for bear viewing, little to say we were both very upset. We couldn't even get our sea plane back to Kodiak, we had to go via Gemini in 4 mtr swells which was a little unsettling on the old tummy, it was a cold, wet an miserable day so not a nice end to our visit in Raspberry Island. I still wasn't feeling 100% from being in the constant cold and Tiffany from Raspberry Island who is a nurse was concerned with my cough and suggested I see a Doctor at the Kodiak Clinic. So I went to the clinic just to get a script of amoxylin and the doctor said the nurse will be in shortly to give you a needle, can't I have one bloody holiday without a needle in the butt!!!! Mark was quite amused, but that shot fixed me up pretty good.

We stayed overnight in Anchorage and flew to Whitehorse the next day, we got off the plane and felt the warmth at last, we were met by Mar & Ned from the Cathers company who we would spend the next 6 days with in a remote lodge. Having come from a remote lodge in Raspberry Island which was great we thought ahhh another nice family lodge. We had a 30 minute drive to the boat dock then another 30 minute boat ride across lake laberge as the lodge is only accessible via boat, the scenery was stunning, snow capped mountains and lots of lush wilderness. We got to our cosy little cabin where we were met by Jeninne who is the daughter of Ned and Mar who run the family business, she showed us the cabin and said "there's a basin and fresh water and soap and the outhouse is down the back", I thought hmm outhouse, you mean toilet, and then I asked where the shower was, Mark said the look on my face was priceless when she said "we don't have showers, we sponge bathe" oh I said, that should be interesting considering Mark thought our previous tour being a "princess" tour was an appropriate name for me. I knew we were camping for three days but I thought we would come home to a nice hot shower. So after seeing the 'outhouse' nearly throwing up and coming to terms with no shower for the next 6 days, we went up to meet some of the 95 dogs they have in their home. Some of these dogs are not used to seeing people on a constant basis and you could quickly tell which ones wanted a pat and which ones were like who the hell are you booooooooowwwwwwrrrrroooooo!!! It was interesting to see how they named a litter, the current litter was from biscuit and her puppies were named after breakfast, so they had muffin, bran and bannock (which we call damper). They were gorgeous but weary of us and came round in the end for a play and cuddle. Our first night in the cabin if one of the dogs howled, this was followed by most of the dogs and they would all start howling at various times and then would all stop in unison, it was pretty cool even for 3.00am in the morning.

We headed out the next day with Ned and a pack of 6 dogs for a full day hike to a gorgeous waterfall. We went out with Comstock, Ceasar, Jack, Phife, Quartz and Prospector and had a nice lunch shared with at least a thousand mozzies who love the scent of aeroguard and seems to attract them more so than deter them so that was nice for us. We stayed overnight in the cabin and set of the next day for our three day hike with the same pack dogs. When you go to pick 6 dogs from the quarters out of 95 you have 89 dogs howling "take me take me". The walk was okay bit hard in some places, I managed to stuff as much of my stuff in Mark's backpack so mine was lighter and the dogs were kind enough to carry out tent and food for us. About 40 minutes into our hike the dogs spotted a porcupine and decided to play tug-a-war with it and three out of the six dogs ended up with quills stuck in their mouths, none moreso than Ceasar, he had at least 100 in his mouth, tongue, cheeks everywhere, he was covered in them, it was so bad we had to turn back to the lodge to take them out, it took about an hour to get them out and he was pretty calm when having them removed, it was awful the poor thing, lets hope he learned his lesson, the other two dogs weren't as bad. So I'm thinking crap we just spent 40 minutes climbing up those bloody hills with backpacks and we need to do it again, but we had a jump start and hooked up the 6 dogs to the 5 wheeler and rode up the spot we turned back and then unhooked the dogs and we were on our way and Jeninne rode the 5 wheeler back to the lodge. Even with just 6 dogs hooked up to the five wheeler it had to be tied to a tree otherwise the strenght of the dogs would pull it without the motor running. These dogs are definetly bred to work and want to work......

Once we got to our campsite we thought yep the walk was totally worth it, it wasn't great views all the way throughout the walk and we did bushbash a fair bit through swamps and just a bit of quicksand. We arrived at a lake that looked like Lake MacKenzie that is in Fraser Island. Ned is an excellent guide, he was very laid back and has done the Yukon Quest numerous times and has come 8th out of 50 contenders, they say the Yukon Quest is the toughest dog sled race in the world, ever harder than the Iditarod which is in Alaska. The Yukon Quest is 1000 mile race from Whitehorse, Yukon to Fairbanks ,Alaska, Jeninne also has competed in the Yukon Quest and her very first time when she was only 18. This race is gruelling, all the family love hiking and dog sledding and that has been their business for the past 25 years, Mark is eager to go back in the winter to do the dog sledding. The weather was quite cold at camp but lovely once the fire was going, we had yummy food even if it was from a tin. The, sleeping bag and mat weren't the most comfortable thing to sleep on as we managed to set up our tent on every bump, finally after going to bed the first night at 1.00am we woke up to a woof woof which wasn't one of our dogs it was a coyote about 60 metres from camp, but all was okay Ned clapped to scare it away, the dogs didn't even stir, next morning ned said Coyotes are fine it's the wolves you have to worry about but they don't like humans so will stay away from camp. On our day walks from the camp site we came across many moose tracks and a few bear tracks but we were unlikely to come across any moose as our four legged friends would warn them long before we approached.

We were feeling pretty grotty from all the walking and the smoke from the camp fire that the crystal blue water of bigfoot lake looked very inviting, maybe not so at just below freezing but knowing a hot shower was not waiting for us on arrival back to the lodge we both took the plunge and it felt like razor blades all over our body, Mark gave the howling coyotes a run for their money as he was first one in and soon jumped out and took all my courage to jump in and out, it was so cold in the water but okay once you got out, we were nice and refreshed though. On day three we headed back to the lodge and we met Jeninne at the half way point with another couple of hikers who were going out with Ned again, he seems to like being away from home and in the camp, so Jeninne took her six dogs with all new food etc and swapped ruck-sacks with the dogs and it was all very well organised. They really looked after you with food and being very welcoming, if only they had a hot shower. We changed plans and ended up leaving Lake Laberge on the Tuesday and are staying overnight in Whitehorse before flying out the next day so we could look around Whitehorse and of course have a nice hot shower and be refreshed before hoping on the plane and of course for Mark he craved an ice cold coke as coke was not on the menu nor was a vanilla latte. After a lovely six days we travelled back to Whitehorse and are ready to come home. To anyone who misses us, we will be home on Friday morning and if anyone from work is missing me, I will be back on Wednesday :o).

Love Laura and Mark

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