12 July — It’s almost midnight here and the sky looks like the sun only set half an hour ago. On the horizon there are patches of orange showing through the clouds and the rest of the sky is a weak pale blue.

I have finally arrived. I am in Yellowknife, in the Great North. And beside me is a half-full bottle of Yukon Red Amber Ale. The apartment I am staying at is quiet now, it’s typical inhabitants asleep, and I now have a few minutes to recollect the last couple days.

It began in Cold Lake, Alberta, five o’clock in the morning yesterday when I crawled out from under my sleeping bag. I could just see the pink line of daylight across the water. It was time to go.

I had decided the day before I would try my best to make the drive from Alberta’s eastern border all the way to Northwest Territories. Even though I had been putting in long days behind the wheel already, this would be the longest yet.

So in half in hour, I broke down my tent, packed my air mattress away and threw my sleeping bag into the back seat of the car, and got ready to go. It was just in time too. The rain was just beginning.

By the time I passed La Corey, I saw my first flash of blue in the sky behind and to the left of me. The lightning was far off, but the rain turned heavy around me.

It would be several hours before I’d escape the dark cloud overhead, meanwhile my plan for the day was to hit towns every three to four hundred kilometres for gas, and keep all other stops to a minimum. Lunch would be granola bars and chocolate chip cookies, washed down by warm water flavoured with juice crystals.

The first gas stop was Slave Lake and over the course of the day I’d stop at Peace River, High Level and Fort Providence for gas before finally arriving in Yellowknife just after 10 p.m. The weather would go from thunder and heavy rain to brilliant sunshine and back and forth several times before finally settling to patchy skies past the 60th Parallel.

The road was long and lonely, and the landscape changed from prairies with bright yellow canola fields to rocky taiga with stunted, midget trees.

But it was worth it to stop for the first time at the 60th Parallel for a photo amid the buzzing horse flies, then roar to the ferry that crosses the Mackenzie River, and finally arrive at the big city in the North.

My initial reaction was happiness. Not so much arriving in the North, but arriving at a place where friends resided. I was back in society again, and had a bed to sleep on to boot.

Then I finally acknowledged how tired I was. The road and almost 70 days sleeping in a tent and car in campsites, or beds and couches here and there, had finally taken its toll. The idea of more kilometres to cover just became too much to bear.

That was last night, and tonight I’ve decided that the other territory, the Yukon, will have to wait for another trip. It is a tough decision because I have always wanted to visited the Yukon since first learning about it.

I have always been captivated by the idea of a land where the sun never sets then night holds sway for months on end while the sky dances with lights. Where people live on a land as white as the sky, in houses of ice and travel by sleds pulled by savage dogs. And where the last great and mad gold rush took place.

It is a land of dreams, and for now I’d have to surrender it back to mine. That has been the hardest to do after having a summer to fulfill so many other dreams and plans. But to see home again, sleep under a familiar roof and know I don’t have to clear out before noon is a fine thing to strive for too.

So, for now, I’m leaving the Yukon for another time.