The product known as “Wavegarden”, can be installed in new or existing lakes and ponds in an environmentally safe and friendly way that involves wave generation technology being hidden, either underground or underwater. The entire dealio just looks dead set cool and presents an exciting opportunity for inland communities to have access to waves in an economically viable way.

To find out more about the concept, check out the official “Wavegarden” website and check out the promotional video below.

I spent a good couple of hours today reading right through his initial posts and thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. The theme and content of his Blog is pretty similar to what I present, so if you find my content at all entertaining or interesting in any way, make sure you add Joe’s site to your RSS reader or weekly “must-visit” list.

If for no other reason, keep an eye on HugeAwesome.com to be among the first to see Joe’s incredible travel images. The man certainly knows how to take stunning images, and he’s managed just in the past 12 months to snap a number of images (a couple of teasers below) that I could only dream of capturing!

Awesome work mate – congratulations on a fantastic release!

In a slight change from our first Yukon Rush back in 2007, this year we incorporated a river trip, fishing trip, and short exploration of a sleepy lakeside town that took us through 3 different provinces and states across two countries.

Rather than wade through copious ramblings covering the 11-day trip day by day, I’ve prepared a photo gallery which more than adequately covers our adventures and misadventures experienced while paddling for three days down the Yukon’s “Stewart River”; travelling through the stunning Kluane National Park and fishing for three days in Haines, Alaska; and making a quick trip down into British Columbia to sample the charming little gold town Atlin, on the shores of the impressive Atlin Lake.

I’ve spent some time adding captions to all the photos, thereby telling a bit of a story as the gallery unfolds. To get started, click here or on the screen shot above.

I hope you enjoy the shots and encourage you to share with your friends and family via Twitter (post using this link: http://su.pr/2bMZIO) or by any other social media site like Facebook or Stumbleupon. Oh yeah, and if you’d like to leave any comments, you can do so in the comments section below.

There will be associated Blog entries for each day we were on the river, in Dawson and in the mountains coming soon. I will probably have to leave those for a couple of weeks – wait till I’m home in Brisbane and I can sit on a sunny white-sand beach somewhere and type those little babies out.

In the meantime please enjoy the gallery, send the URL off to friends and family who may be interested in the amazing scenery from stunning part of the world that is the Yukon.

Food was needed in our bellies, so it was off to the River West Bistro for brunch. I scoffed down my meal and madly ran around town snapping off a few frames to document my mad 24 hours in Dawson City. With that all out of the way, I joined the lads to purchase some groceries, fuel and the odd souvenir. Being a historical gold rush town, we popped in and out of a few gold stores including one where we had the chance to hold a $16K nugget. I think there’s a photo somewhere in the gallery I’ll post where Duke has the rather pricey yellow rock in his mitt.

With a tick placed in the ‘Dawson City’ box, we hit the road again and headed for the Tombstone Interpretive Centre, an hour out of town, to get permits and bear barrels for the food we were planning to carry on our hike into the wilderness. Following, it was back to the Tombstone National Park trail head where we organised our packs for the hike ahead of us, and secured the truck with all of our un-required possessions stowed away.

Minutes before setting off, we chatted to some German fella who was coming off the trail brandishing a huge .45 calibre Magnum sidearm and claiming he was a guide. Chad questioned the guy’s story, citing that no Canadian citizen can legally carry such a weapon either concealed or unconcealed, but he stuck to his unlikely story

Around 4pm, quite a lot later than we planned, we finally got on the trail with an estimated 6-7 hour hike ahead of us to get to the proposed camp site at the base of the Tombstone Mountain Range. The opening section of the hike we managed to conquere without too much trouble. It’s a mildly tough climb into the mountains, but it’s so beautiful you kind of forget about how strenuous it is.

Reaching the approximate half-way point of the journey, we stopped at a pass between two mountains affectionately (and not surprisingly) nicknamed ‘The Saddle’. We stopped here for dinner and had our first encounter with a hiking group of Czech nationals. The Saddle was also where we witnessed some amazing occurrences weather wise. Being a hot and humid day, there were thunderstorms moving all around us including over the top of Mount Tombstone ahead of us, creating a scene not unlike something out of a ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie. There was one picture in particular that I took, nicknamed ‘Mordor’ that illustrates this spectacle fairly well. Check it out in the gallery.

Confident that the stormy weather had passed, we made our way down to Grizzly Lake at the foot of Mount Tombstone with a little light remaining and we set about pitching tents etc around 11:30pm. Not a bad day’s effort on the trail all things considered.

We headed down to the stunning lake to start making our pasta dinner, but were interrupted mid-prep by the need to run back up to the tents to make sure everything was covered as the remnants of one of the earlier storms passed over. Not exactly what 5 pairs of weary legs needed, but it was necessary just the same.

Completely zonked, we called it a night for a well-earned sleep.

UP NEXT: Day Eight »

Nevertheless we were confident that there was going to be no danger in heading down the river, so we threw together a fantastic breakfast of bratwurst, noodles and oranges and set about packing up camp which was all soggy from the heavy overnight rain.

We pushed off and leaving the fog behind us after a few hours of somewhat blind paddling, we were left with a stunning afternoon with which to paddle (and mostly drift) into Dawson City – the end point to our river adventure.

We marked the closing kilometers and completion of our journey down the Yukon River, by smoking some Cuban Cigars donated to us by Chad’s Dad, for this very purpose, before we took off.

It was an amazing experience paddling into Dawson City, a charming Gold Rush town that hasn’t lost any of it’s character from yesteryear. We hit the riverbank around 2pm and took our time loading up the truck up with everything we pulled out of the river.

Heading into the center of town to the “Downtown Hotel” we checked in at around 4pm and crawled into the ‘Sourdough Saloon’ for a celebratory pitcher or two. The guy on the desk told us there was a jacuzzi in our room complex across the road (we didn’t believe him at first), and also about his passion for winning scrabble words (yes, very random I know) – his latest being ‘QOPE’, supposedly the 19th letter of the Hebrew Alphabet???

The boys and I headed up to our rooms and individually indulged in some long overdue showers. All refreshed and smelling more like human beings, we headed up to the local mountain affectionately referred to as ‘The Dome’ to take in some views of the town and take some shots. It was pretty surreal being able to view from high above, the massive river we had just semi-tamed over the past few days.

But we couldn’t be sitting on a mountain all evening. We had some serious partying to do in a northern town that is well-known for its Summer nightlife. Stop number one – “Klondike Kate’s” for a good feed. Having not seen a female for a good few days, I was wrapped that we were graced with the gorgeous Ashley who waited on our table while we had a damn good feed. The restaurant had a massive map on one of the walls that was littered with push pins marking the home towns of visiting patrons. The paper around South East Queensland was surprisingly clear so I obviously did my bit and punctured the Brisbane dot on the map with a shiny yellow-balled pin.

Next stop on our whirlwind Dawson City pub crawl was a swanky little martini bar called “Bombay Peggy’s“. We relieved this neat little watering hole of a quantity of their liquid stock and moved on to ‘The Pit’ – a low-roofed, rustic live music venue that was pretty empty. Marking it down for a return visit later in the evening, we moved on to the crowning jewel of the town – “Diamond Tooth Gerties“.

Here, Chad bought a round of scotches and Duke, Chris and TJ hit the $5 Blackjack tables. Duke lost $40 pretty smartly, as did Chris. TJ, on the other hand, put everything he was tinkering with on his last hand and won… taking away $110. Some people are just born lucky. I couldn’t believe I was getting away with taking photos in the casino. Try that stunt anywhere else (Vegas, Treasury Casino in Brisbane) and you’d be out with a swift kick up the ass by some bouncer’s size 11 boot.

Having so much fun, we realised that time was getting away from us, so we scooted back to the Sourdough Saloon to experience a legendary tourist attraction in Dawson – the infamous “Sourtoe Cocktail”. I don’t even know where to start in explaining what this was all about. Perhaps a little help from the official ‘Sourtoe Cocktail Club‘ website is in order here:

Established in 1973, the Sourtoe Cocktail has become a Dawson City tradition. The original rules were that the toe must be placed in a beer glass full of champagne, and that the toe must touch the drinker’s lips during the consumtion of the alcohol before he or she can claim to be a true Sourtoer.

The rules have changed in the past twenty-seven years. The Sourtoe can be had with any drink now (even ones that aren’t alcoholic), but one rule remains the same. The drinker’s lips must touch the toe. ” You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow – But the lips have gotta touch the toe.”

The Sourtoes are actual human toes that have been dehydrated and preserved in salt. Swallowing one is not suggested.

If you’re game enough to want to know more about this quirky tradition, check out this video which runs through the entire experience from head to TOE. Haha, I kill me!

With this life-altering experience out of the way, it was straight back to Diamond Tooth Gerties to catch the midnight (and supposedly more risque) Cancan show. We were quite the rowdy bunch of lads and got a few laughs from the audience ourselves. Something tells me they won’t soon forget the night the “Yukon Rush” boys came to town!

Ended the night back at “The Pit” which seemed to be the happening spot after hours… in fact it seemed everyone and anyone we had come across in town throughout the night ended up back there…

Oh what a big night in Dawson! Check out the gallery (below) for all the pics.

UP NEXT: Day Seven »

The rain moved in pretty quickly, so we made haste in taking down and packing away our tents, packing everything away into our dry bags and made sure that all our important gear was safely and dryly stowed before the wet stuff started falling.

We needed to make up a little ground today, according to Chad’s careful map calculations, so we aimed for covering an ambitious 100km on the river before calling it a day.

As it turned out, the rain stopped mid-morning. We broke up our ‘harder than usual’ paddling with plenty of good ol’ rafting stints. To keep us on our toes, we were joined by a storm in the evening that tested our abilities to keep the canoes upright as we battled large waves that were being whipped up and forcing us up against cliff faces. That was fun… something different anyway.

In the afternoon we passed the mouth of the White and Stewart Rivers. The White River which, funnily enough, is an off-white in colour to look at, pours tonnes of volcanic sediment into the Yukon River. As a result, the Yukon’s water became murky and thick, rendering it useless as drinking water – a luxury we had become used to up until today. Chad, bless him, warned us to fill our drink bottles with but seconds to spare.

As we eventually hit the desired 100km mark, we pulled up on a sand bank, decided that it really wasn’t suitable, headed down the river a little further and settled for a small beach on the bank of the river. We set up camp and got stuck into some Caribou and Bison smokies with sauerkraut for dinner. I’m still wondering where the hell Chad is pulling all this amazing game meat from each day?!?! Not that I’m complaining… the meals so far have been amazing!

UP NEXT: Day Six »

Chanced our hand at a bit of fishing along the way today… well Chad did anyway. Being in the Kayak, he had the luxury of being able to cast his line and let it trail as he drifted. His efforts eventually paid off, landing a good sized Grayling at a tributary opening.

We pulled onto an island to scale, gut and cook up the Grayling as part of our lunch. While a fish that size didn’t stretch far between the five of us, what we did get each sure tasted good.

The rest of the day involved plenty of paddling, the odd beer here and there and plenty of laughs – just what we were aiming to get out of this trip.

After completing some 73km down the river, we found another suitable island to camp on for the night. We set up camp and set about preparing for dinner – some amazing moose steaks and our prized bottle of Penfold’s Shiraz which we’d brought along on the trip. I’m actually surprised the bottle had made it this far without being smashed over some rocks somewhere already.

As we sat back and enjoyed our meal, the near silent wilderness air was disturbed from time to time by the splashing sound of a resident beaver smacking it’s tail on the surface of the water making sure we knew it was upset that we were in its neighbourhood. Ahhhhh… Canadian wilderness at its best!

To check out the images from today and the past few days on the river, click on the gallery link below.

UP NEXT: Day Five »