I’ve been to that Canadian Territory the size of Spain called ‘The Yukon’ on at least 10 different visits.

The remoteness of this pristine wilderness where there are twice as many moose as inhabitants and one grizzly bear for every six people fuels a feeling that no one could ever find me up there.

A great place to go hide indeed. The Yukon’s lingering daylight in summer and long dark Aurora Borealis-infested winters add to the intrigue of this place that makes me proud to be Canadian.

The tagline on Yukon Tourism’s marketing information ‘Yukon: Larger than Life’ says it all.

Even Air North, Yukon’s Airline, proudly displays their patronage to this geographical prize with a bright orange tail that simply says YUKON, along with perhaps the best food in the airline business.

This summer I had the privilege of visiting The Yukon three times culminating in a 10-day stay, primarily in the capital of Whitehorse and Dawson, that gem of the Klondike gold boom where the streets are not paved, you can drink a Sour Toe Cocktail and the dancers at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s can kick up their legs as well as the ladies from 110 years ago when Dawson was the largest city between Winnipeg and Seattle.

Hide up there for sure, and just try to keep it all a secret.

But last week my theory of isolation was shattered when I moseyed along the wooden sidewalk in front of Dawson’s Eldorado Hotel and ran into Jerry Hines, organizer of the Alcan 5000 Rally.

I had run the grueling but oh-so-fun 5,000-mile event twice in the 1980s and had not seen Jerry since.

I was thinking about the crack in my ‘hide in the Yukon’ theory as I left Dawson for the 550-kilometre drive along the Klondike Highway south to Whitehorse when I spotted three hitchhikers.

They looked harmless enough, fresh-faced, one with a bright red head of hair and beard.

Wow. It was Patrick Doyle, son of a business associate and friend.

I had recently written a column about him and his three tree-planter friends and their go-for-broke road trip from Calgary to Alaska in a free 1998 Chevy Cavalier.

I pulled over to chat realizing I couldn’t put them in the cargo bed of the GMC Sierra pick-up I was driving.

Hey, the Yukon may be remote but the authorities would still not want to see them back there.

“Where’s the Cavalier?” I asked Patrick.

“We killed it in a campground. Put a rock through the oil pan and it died a miserable death.”

As I pulled away, knowing that they wouldn’t be waiting long on this friendly road, I thought my Yukon sanctuary was busted.

Two chance encounters with folks I have written stories about within a few hours.

One of the things I love about the six-hour drive between Dawson and Whitehorse is the lack of cellular phone service.

Escape that gnawing feeling to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and to call all those people that just need to hear from me at every delicious photo op and highway pull-off.

When I reached Whitehorse, I was told that someone driving a Toyota registered in India was looking around my hotel for me.

It could only be Tushar Agarwal and his road team, Sanjay Madan and D Prasad. The team is driving around the world to raise money for a senior’s home in New Delhi.

I’ve been communicating with Tushar for five years about his motoring activities that have included driving from London, England to India as well as a number of high-altitude driving programs.

Our meeting was brief the next morning. The Great Indian World Trip team is on a mission headed to Alaska. I travelled with them for an hour.

Tushar let me drive and it didn’t take long to get that old feeling of the open road from my global expeditions.

Before we said goodbye, I promised to join the team later at the end of the North American leg of their 50-country, 70,000-kilometre adventure.

As I left, I bestowed upon Tushar the red jacket the folks at Yukon Tourism had given me. It looked better on him and I liked the idea of him wearing a jacket on the rest of his journey with a logo that reads ‘Yukon: Larger Than Life.’