Al Does The Dempster THE GRAVEL'S ALWAYS SMALLER ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD... Page 1/9 In Memory of Stevie (Aug 28, 2001 - Sept 7, 2001) "It's better to burn out than to go stale." Well of course i had to start off with a pretty picture! First of all, if you're expecting an update full of wacky misadventures, i'm afraid you'll be disappointed. This update is just full of pretty landscapes and flowery-ass commentary. Now, with that disclaimer said... There comes a point in every trip when you find or do something that makes you think THIS is why i took this trip. It's all been leading up to THIS. Kayaking, flightseeing, man-eating marmots, icecaves - yadda yadda, all just fine and great. Somehow there seemed to be something missing from the trip, although i didn't realize that until i came here. While in Alaska, a little old German man named 'Clem' (he had a Westfalia too) told me about the beauty of the Dempster Highway, a 400-mile stretch of gravel road which leads up to the Canadian arctic. Ignoring my instinct to distrust Germans, i decided to give it a try... I'm kidding... I love Krauts... and they make GREAT CAMPER-VANS! I fell in love with the highway as soon as i got on it. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but there was just something about it that was touching me in places that made me feel very comfortable. The hills aren't huge like the Alaskan mountains, but that meant i could actually hike (well, scramble) to the top. These green hills would be brown and snow-dusted when i left just 3 weeks later. This pic is a frame from my latest hobby - time lapse photography using a digital camera. This was the highway really put my van's brakes to the test - not so much because of the potholes, but because i would slam on the brakes every few miles (sometimes every few yards) when one of the countless oddities of this highway would catch my eye. This stream stained everything reddish-orange with either iron or red algae or something... Shallow areas at the side of the river were filled with infinite variations of these weird veiny pattern of algae. keep on truckin'