Another drive up the Dempster to see the fall colours

It looked like we had our wings clipped for the long Labour Day weekend. On Friday afternoon, Jeff drove the truck to the mechanics to book an upcoming appointment to get some massive, subarctic-winter, driving lights mounted on the front of the truck, and when he was there, the starter died on the truck!

Miraculously though, the mechanics found a starter on Saturday morning and were able to restore our wings.. err… driving ability.

We usually head up the Dempster early in the morning, but instead we headed up well after lunch time.

As a result, all the shades were different, the sun was brighter, oh, and the autumn colours were even BOLDER than last weekend (more reds).

Lovely dirty Ford with more than a dozen rock chips in the windshield, and a few thousand bugs immortalized on the front grill.

And then the weirdest thing started happening. I’ve seen maybe TWO jets fly far overhead in the last year. While we were driving on the Dempster, we saw at least TEN!

And I was getting really annoyed at having jets in my photos.

I mean we’re in the middle of nowhere, heading across the tundra, heading north towards the Arctic Ocean, and there are JETS! 

Where were they all going?

We decided to stop and fish for a moment. See this fishy? Little does he know, that he is soon about to get a big hug from Jeff’s manly hands.

First he had to hook him.

But Jeff is a pro. So it took only a few minutes.

And then he set him free to catch him again another day.

No moose to be seen at Two Moose Lake this weekend. We didn’t see any large mammals on this trip, other than fall tourists and hunters, so perhaps it was a good thing all the furry large mammals were hiding. 

I spotted a bunch of swans and ducks though.

And a bunch of jet chemtrail-y jet clouds that lingered for hours.

On the way back we saw this (crazy) guy with a parachute thingy. He had a propeller on his back with a rough lawnmowery sounding motor.

He seemed really skiddish about getting the perfect breeze. For awhile he even sampled the wind in the middle of the road (on a blind curve).

Finally he took off!

And soared right above our heads. Seeing no other imminent excitement, we headed back to town.

Today is Sunday. Jeff’s out on a solo caribou hunt. And I’ve been watching a bunch of girly flicks on the Woman’s Network, recovering from my late night northern lights viewing in the back yard. But now I’m flicked out and going to wander town.