when i read yesterday that today, two red panda cubs would be presented to the public, i decided to pay calgary zoo another visit. here are some impressions of the really cute two little ones:

after that, i decided to pay the dinosaur section another visit, since i heard that it was heavily updated. indeed, things changed. there were a lot new dinosaur models, looking much better, which were even animated – they move and roar.

even though, there are still some artifacts from the past available, and artifacts due to low water:

anyway. i guess i’ve seen enough of the dinosaur section. there are other, more interesting parts of the zoo to see :)

my last leg of the yukon trip led me to mayo, “the coldest and hottest place in the yukon”. (the lowest temperature ever measured was -62 degrees celsius.)

in mayo i had my first bear encounter. when driving in the direction of keno, i saw a bear near the street, and stopped to take some pictures. the bear was far away (around 100 m), but i still managed to get at least some good shots (at least, after extracting a small portion of the photos).

this was the first and last bear encounter i had. strangely, since i would have expected to see more bears. i already saw more near to banff and jasper. on the first full day, i drove up to keno, and tried one of mike’s pizzas in the keno city snack bar. if you are in the area, you should do the same, his pizzas are really good! (after all, he is italian.) from keno, i drove up to the famous signpost, and then continued to mayo lake and minto lake.

the next day, i again drove up to keno, after paying the mcquesten river a short visit. unfortunately, mike wasn’t around, so i couldn’t eat more pizza. but i drove to hansson lake and mcquesten lake instead, and was awarded with more beautiful sights.

on the third day, the weather turned bad. it was pretty cloudy most of the day, so i decided to visit the binet house interpretive center and just relax. the binet house features some nice stuffed animals:

after spending two full days in haines junction, i continued to dawson, the northernmost point of my journey. (i originally thought about driving up the dempster highway to inuvik, but this is not an easy drive, and besides that, most rental car contracts do not allow you to drive on that highway.) i did this drive in two legs. the first leg was to drive up to carmacks.

i slept in carmacks and continued to dawson on the next day.

arriving in dawson, i quickly found my lodge, the dawson city bed’n breakfast. one of the best places i ever stayed at! if you ever go to dawson, you should consider staying there! on the first evening, i saw signs of another aurora, and drove out of town to get an unobstructed view.

on the first full day in dawson, i decided to drive up the top of the world highway to the us border. this highway goes along the ridges of mountains and makes you feel to be up pretty high, so to speak “at the top of the world”. this highway is one of the not so easy ones, since it is not paved for most parts. but nonetheless, the view is worth it.

after returning, i drove up the midnight dome and took a shot of the ss keno.

on the next day, i decided to do some of the parks canada historical tours; after all, it was the last day of such tours for this year. i started with a tour of the dredge no. 4, a gold mining dredge.

its interiour features many interesting things to photograph:

after visiting the dredge, i drove to the discovery claim and walked around a bit.

following that, i attended a tour through the historic part of the city.

finally, i roamed aboard the ss keno.

on my last full day in dawson, i decided to drive in the mining area. there’s still a lot of active mining going on; it’s really interesting to see the landscape, changing between the typical beautiful yukon landscape and more moon-like landscapes, making you feel rather alien.

unfortunately, i had to leave dawson the next day, heading to mayo. unfortunately, since my lodge was really one of the best places i ever stayed at. (i can’t stop repeating that, sorry.) the good thing is, i got two uncle scrooge comics playing in yukon as a souvenir.

after leaving whitehorse, i traveled to the small town of haines junction, located near to the kluane national park. the trip to haines junction already presented beautiful scenery.

in haines junction, i stayed in a small but very nice cabin. if you’re interested in visiting haines junction and staying in a small cabin, featuring pretty much everything you need (except a bathroom, for which you have to leave the cabin and which you share), you might want to contact paddle wheel adventures.

my first trip starting in haines junction was north to the kluane lake, a rather large lake. here is a panoramic view:

this trip also resulted in a variety of beautiful shots:

on the trip back, i encountered the following lake, which i tried to catch in another panorama:

at the evening of that day, i noticed an aurora. unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy over haines junction, so i drove out of town. after a few kilometers, i got a much better sight.

the next day, i wanted to do some flightseeing of the kluane national park, as hiking is not really an option to do alone. at the airport, i was told to come back later, so i spend the time exploring the area south of haines junction.

finally, i drove back to the airport, and encountered a group of tourists which also wanted to do flightseeing. so we ended up filling two cessnas and flying over the mountains and glaciers:

this was really magnificent.

the last two weeks, i traveled the yukon, canadas smallest northern territory. my trip began and ended in whitehorse, yukon’s capital and now largest city. hundret years ago, during the klondike gold rush, dawson, my third destination, was the largest city and capital of the yukon.

my first stay in whitehorse began with a bit of rain and continued with beautiful weather.

returning to whitehorse at the end of my trip, the beautiful weather was exchanged with snow and rain.

today, i went hiking with a friend. our destination were cirque lake and cephren lake, located at the icefields parkway. the trip went pretty smooth, and we decided to first go to cirque lake. there was a bit of rain in the beginning, a few drops during the hike, but nothing serious, and soon the sun came out and presented everything in its full beauty. the hike turned out to be harder than expected, whence we decided to skip cephren lake, but we were rewarded with a really gorgeous view on cirque lake. here are some impressions of the hike to the lake, and the lake itself:

(note that the first photo was taken somewhere between calgary and banff, and not anywhere near to cirque lake. the first photo in the second row is a view of the upper waterfowl lake, if i’m not mistaken.)
unfortunately, while resting at the lake, it started dripping again, and when heading back the drops turned into water turned into graupel. not that much fun. we got pretty wet, and the trail continued and continued and didn’t want to end, until it stopped raining. only after that we left the forest and returned to the car, too exhausted to do anything more, so we returned home.

while watching tng, i noticed fireworks out in the sky, for the chinatown 100 fireworks grand celebration. (there will be some more fireworks soon, due to a fireworks festival.) i grabbed my camera as well as my tripod, and started taking pictures.

fireworks.

here are some impressions from the fireworks. shot with iso 6400.

some night shots.

when the fireworks were over, i played around a bit more. here are two nice shots.