50 miles to go and the trees practically disappear from sight. Early in the morning the river seems to vanish into the grey sky miles ahead and the hills above Mountain Village are all you can see behind us. We are running almost due north and almost in a straight line and even though the river is over a mile wide here we are hemmed in by sandbars on either side for much of the day. On the shore is mostly a flat grassy plain and at one point we stop the boat to climb up the 25 foot bank to look over endless flat tundra with swans nesting in pools in the distance and blueberry bushes everywhere on the mossy spongy ground. There are arctic terns and long tailed jaegers, we see tundra geese and black turnstones. By five we have past through the Head of Passes and have arrived at the bustling village of Emmonak (or Emo as it is called), our last village of the trip but we are not done until we make the final ten mile run to the Bering Sea and back. Past all the fishing shacks along the beach, past the salmon drying on racks under tin roofing and blue tarps and past the guys pulled up on the shore just chilling out on the bank, the river makes a last turn and opens to the sea. The grassy banks turn to tidal flats, a navigation marker stands on posts facing the open sea and we throw out an anchor.
After a long time in preparing and work (mostly by Jeff I have to say) and a lot of organizing and work along the way (also mostly by Jeff) we have made it. Our tent boat with it's vintage motor have gone close to 2000 miles along the entire watercourse of the Yukon and we have seen a country so vast it is impossible to convey. We have put aside a couple beers to celebrate with out here where fresh water meets the salt and take the time to congratulate ourselves in a journey completed. Now it is the ten miles back upstream to Emo and try to sell all our things so that we can hop a flight to Anchorage.
Out on the Bering Sea