25 June. The drive back from the Arctic Circle.

Believe it or not, there is a hotel just 25 miles south of the Arctic Circle at Eagle Plains, Yukon.  It has seen better days to be sure, but it was there.  It sports a restaurant, gasoline, a small store and a lot of friendly people.  Mary and I had agreed to haul a box of food to Eagle Plains for a cyclist from Belgium "Denis" who was riding the full 450 miles to Inuvik near the Arctic Ocean. He has started at Edmonton, Alberta. This guy was a stud.  After 4 months, he plans to have ridden about 30,000 miles across much of NW Canada, Alaska and back to Seattle through British Columbia.  Take a look on a map. It will make you tired just thinking about this feat.  On the way up we saw Denis 62 miles (100KM) from Eagle Plains.  We stopped and talked for a while. He was relieved to know someone had his back, and his food.  For this portion of the trip we took his heaviest pannier pack to Eagle Plains as well.  We offered him and energy bar and a Coke. He took the Coke.  I regret not taking a photo.  

You might imagine I was birding all the way up and on the way back. I had some target birds, but only found two of the half-dozen I wanted to see.  A Yukon birder had provided me some intelligence on where we might have luck seeing the rare Gyrfalcon at KM158 in a cliff face off the highway.  He said Gyrfalcons use this nest annually, though no one had eyes on in in 2016.  Armed with this information, Mary and I were able to easily spot the nest and, EUREKA!!! there were three chicks resident.  While only two are in this photo, one is hiding.  We had good looks on the way up the day prior, but I was not able to get my binoculars on one of the adults whom I could hear screaming from the other side of a ridgeline.  On the return trip I did see the adult. I missed a quick visit to the nest with my camera, but did get good looks with my scope.