Y is for...

We’re at the letter Y.  What place that begins with a Y could I add to my bucket list of places to visit?  I would like to visit Yemen, the one country with a Y according to the State Department’s list.  A decade ago, a friend of mine visited there with his family when he sailed around the world, but things are a lot less stable today. 

So I’ll push Yemen off the list and be content watching “Salmon Fishing in Yemen” on Netflix (it’s a good movie).

One place I wouldn’t mind visiting is Yellowknife, the largest city in Canada’s Northwest Territory (at only about 20,000 residents).  The city is on the north side of the Great Slave Lake and a wonderful place to enjoy the Northern Lights.  The Great Slave Lake is also the beginning of the MacKenzie River, which flows out through the Arctic Ocean.

But, another place I would like to go and this makes my bucket list is the Yukon River.  At one time, I thought I might paddle the entire length of the river that starts in British Columbia, Canada, not far from the Pacific, but then paddles northward into the Yukon Territory and then across Alaska before emptying out in the Bering Sea.  I doubt I'll ever be able to do that, but there's no reason why I can't paddle a portion of the river which has only four bridges along it's entire length.  The Yukon River is mostly fast flowing (often 5-8 miles per hour) and the long days of summer means that one can paddle lots of miles a day (but then, with 2300 miles, one has to make a lot of miles each day). 

Canoeing the Yukon

Tomorrow, we’ll end with the letter Z (and there’s a couple of choices in Africa).