September 13, 2010
This morning I said that my wish for the trip would be that we laugh a lot. We headed out of Eagle Trail Campground after an early cup of coffee. About three miles out, I saw a tractor by the road that I had seen yesterday. Oops, wrong way! Turn around!
Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge had a visitor center with a wonderful pond diorama showing a muskrat and a trumpeter swan. We saw some huge trumpeter swans today. Best of all was meeting Jim and Dorothy Cook at Koidern River Lodge. They bounced jabs back and forth, keeping us laughing. Dorothy sat beside a wood fired stove in a lawn recliner wearing a gold cap with some of the large gold sequins missing. She has had lung cancer. Jim sat at the table where he makes northern scenes on railroad spikes, but he has spent a lot of time visiting the Vancouver cancer hospital lately. The room is full of rocks and gems, trilobites and crystals. Dorothy doesn’t serve meals to travelers any more, but she dishes out quirky wisdom. Jim warns that the restroom is around past the woodpile, “but the last guy who used it said there was a polar bear in there.”
I named our truck Tagish Charlie because it is finding gold. The land is rich with foliage hues of yellow, orange, and shining gold set against the dark black spruce greens and gray freshly snow-dusted mountains.