Let's see...where was I???

Ah yes....the last time I blogged with photo's, we were leaving Yellowknife and are now a world away from there.  We are in Fairbanks, Alaska and it has been quite the journey.

One story about our time in Yellowknife that I forgot to report on and take a photo of, was when we were taking pics of the houseboats.  As we left the beachfront, we saw what looked like a very short road, about 50 feet long, that went right to the waters edge.  Barricades blocked access to it and the signs said "Road Closed".  We really didn't twig until we drove away, that this was the ice road that is used during the winter.  Our plan had been to return to the downtown location the next morning to take a photo then forgot.  One young guide in Inuvik told us that he is annoyed that the show Ice Pilots would indicate that driving on ice roads is incredibly dangerous.  He said "my 90 year old grandma drives the ice roads all through the winter and it's no different than driving on pavement (not that Inuvik has any pavement!).

While in Yellowknife, we asked several people whether or not we should take the Liard Track southbound to the BC border and were given differing opinions, from maybe to don't do it with your rig.  The Liard had been closed due to heavy rains and then reopened just as we left so we decided to try it.  It's all dirt and at times, the track was soft.  Large trucks coming the other way left us in clouds of dust and we soon learned that no vehicle is dust-proof inside.  We made it to Fort Liard in time to camp in a little free campground by the river....a very pretty site.  Two trucks from Holland were camped there and we noticed the owners spraying the outside of their trucks.  Bob stepped outside the van and learned quickly, why they sprayed....the place was full of squadrons of hungry mosquitoes.  At least 50 got into the van in the short time it took for him to open and close the door and they continued to find their way in throughout the night.  The worst night we'd spent on the entire trip!  I (being the attractive one for mozzies) was covered in bites by morning and spent most of my non-driving time the next day, scratching and applying Afterbite.  We had a taste of what the NWT and Yukon can be like in a normal year.

Rushing river along the Liard Track

Dirty WALUT at the end of the track

Dusty Dutch rigs and fellow
Liard Track travellers, enjoying their
night  in mosquito headquarters,
the Fort Liard Campground

Sign on one side of the road

Sign on the other side of the road

Anxious to leave the insects, we raced into BC and fog

Beautiful wooden bridge

Very cute sight at a grocery store

Entering the BC northern mountains, we see snow (!!) by
the side of the road

Stone Mountain

Stone sheep licking minerals from the road

The most beautiful views!

Hot springs at the Liard River Campground.  Hottest
pool  75C; this pool 65C

The mosquito net we didn't have to use in
Africa but did have to use in Canada

Bear snorfling for grub

Into the Yukon

Watson Lake Campground.  How small do we look
between the big boys?

The Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, began in 1942 when a homesick man, working on the Alaska Highway, created a sign with the name of his home town in the U.S. and nailed it to a tree.  He returned to Watson Lake in 1992 and thought he would see if his sign was still there.  Imagine his overwhelming emotional reaction (see story below) when he saw that thousands of signs had been added to his since then.  Today, there are over 72,000 signs in the forest.  (Note to Marny:  I even saw one for Sanibel-Captiva and didn't have my camera at the time.  Do you think I could find it again?)

Leaving Watson Lake to venture up yet another dirt road, The Robert Campbell "Highway", we stopped at a beautiful river rest area where Bob made his traditional Saturday fry-up brunch before we left pavement.

Rest area

Hard at work

Grateful for a full belly, we left pavement and almost immediately
found a road crew, repairing the highway.  Flagman stopped us
and this grader turned about and flattened the road so we
could get through the soft soil

Not a great sight ....seeing an ambulance sitting alongside
every road crew.  For the workers or the travellers??

This fine fellow took a bit of an interest in us as we passed

Finally, back on pavement.

What a sight!  A bear sow and her 3 cubs.

Wildflowers everywhere

Another gorge and rushing rivers

Truck loaded with burls

Late arrival at our camp..it was a long day

A friendly greeting

We were right at the waters edge

Our friend came even closer

The next morning, on pavement, and a road that seems to
disappear, we head for the Dempster
Highway and Inuvik, the most northerly city in Canada, on a
supposedly driveable "highway" (aka "dirt road")

The Dempster Highway starts in NWT, ends in Yukon, and is built on top of perma-frost requiring constant work.  Gravel is laid on top of natural shale (which cuts up tires) and graders grade the highway for the entire summer.  We were told by a few people, that we should have 2 spare tires for this route, then another couple of people told us that since the shale is now covered in gravel, it's not the hazard it used to be.  We took it easy with only one spare and stopped half way along the 700+km route for the night, doing the trip in two long and equal pieces.

The scenery was incredible as we moved along from boreal forests
to tundra

The water is full of wonderful minerals and Dall sheep come
down from the mountains to drink this healthy (for them) water.
We saw a few way up-river, too far to get a good photo

A fire came through the day before we arrived.  The trees are
small because their root system is shallow due to the underlying
permafrost.

Arrival at Eagle Plains Camp and the "fake" Arctic Circle celebration

We were curious about this young man travelling the Dempster
on his bicycle.  He is from Montreal and has a job that allows him
long periods of time off.  He has travelled Canada east to west
and is now headed from the top of Canada (Inuvik) to Cape Horn
If you wonder why he's rugged up and Bob's not...it's the insects from Hell!

Thanks Margaret...it's a grey jay

11:00 p.m.

Next day, more burnt forest

Onto the tundra and we are surrounded by
gorgeous flowers

Celebrating the REAL Arctic Circle

Look closely and you will see that these loo's are attached
to each other and into the ground by cable, to avoid
being blown away by the high winds of winter AND summer

Snow grass up close

And it does indeed look like snow

Of course, in spite of 22C temps, there is still snow!

Sign on the northbound lane

Sign on the southbound lane

This appears to be nothing but if you look closely and can
enlarge this image, you will see an Arctic fox in the lower
right corner at the edge of the road.  It ran right in front
of our truck with some little creature in it's mouth and we
were so excited that we couldn't get the shot.  This is the
best we could do under the circumstances

A big rig and the cause of the second stone chip in our
windshield

And leaving us in a cloud of dust

All river ferries in NWT and Yukon are free

Many large trucks had been stuck and towed on the other side
of the river.  The ferry crew took care of us and our van

Inuvik is situated on the East Channel of the Mackenzie Delta.  At 133 43' west longitude, it is 10 degrees farther west than Vancouver.  The community is within the taiga forest, just south of the tree line and west of the open tundra.  The Arctic Ocean is only 97 km north and the Arctic Circle is 200 km south.

Inuvik was conceived by the Canadian government in 1953.  It was intended to replace the hamlet of Aklavik in the Mackenzie Delta, which was subject to flooding and offered limited space for expansion.  The years 1964 to 1970 were a period of adjustment as residents adapted to life in the new community.  Inuvik achieved village status in 1967 and in January 1970 it became a town with an elected mayor and council.  With the completion of the Dempster Highway (although it's never ever completed) in 1979, Inuvik became part of the Canadian highway system.  During the time that multi-national corporations were busy tapping petroleum resources in the Delta, aboriginal organizations were gaining the leverage they needed to settle their land claims with the government.  The Inuvialuit claim was settled in 1984 and the Gwich'in claim in 1992.  Inuvik is home to members and organizations of both groups.  The population is now about 3500 and judging by the people we met, most of the non-aboriginals are from Ontario!

Keeping this plane grounded

Colourful houses and commercial buildings are built on
pilons because they wouldn't survive on the permafrost
if they were directly on the ground.

Sewage and fresh water are moved via above-ground pipes
encased in these units

The Igloo Church

Everyone is a cop

In the late '90's someone with a terrific idea, turned the old
hockey rink into a community garden

Look at this rhubarb!

And this giant sunflower...and it's only June!

Inuvik's first mosque.  I heard about it on CBC a
couple of years ago.

Not afraid to use colour.  This is the hospital

We met a woman who has spent most of her life in Inuvik, told us that she is very concerned that our government and the people of Canada are not interested in the climate change topic and that we should become as nervous as she is.  She is a manager of one of the hotels and said that it used to be incredibly dry in the north.  They have installed dehumidifiers in the hotel rooms and have to empty the buckets every day or two now.  This means that the permafrost is melting and when it does, the entire city will sink.

On our return south on the Dempster, we stopped to help German
visitors we'd met at our Inuvik camp.  Actually, Bob helped while
I stayed in the van, protected from the insects, while calling out
words of encouragement, like "Bravo" and "Good job!"

This is why we were warned about the Dempster Highway.
We met them again in Dawson City and they said that they had had another
flat tire shortly after this one.

The long and winding road

The sign welcoming us to Dawson City, back in Yukon.

My public record that we did 3 of the dirtiest
highways in Canada

Beautiful Dawson City....old fashioned, quaint and friendly

In Yellowknife, John had asked us if we thought we would make it to Dawson City in time for the Whitehorse-Dawson City Canoe race and we thought that we wouldn't.  In typical Bob and Sharon fashion, we arrived on Thursday, the day after the race started in Whitehorse, and the day before the first participants arrived on Friday afternoon.  It was very exciting to watch and the cheering went on through the night, the final participants arriving later in the weekend, after we had left Dawson City.

All the sidewalks are boardwalks

Downunderdogs (Australia), first place winners of the 715 km paddle

2nd place, Canadians and 3rd place was a team of women

One of my highlights was seeing the home that former neighbour, Pierre Berton grew up in.  We couldn't go inside because it is now used by Canadian authors who stay there for a period of time.  The sign read "Please respect the privacy of the resident author".

An unusual summer sight

The next morning with our windshield mended (by the former chief of communications for the federal government (1972 to 2006)....a whole other interesting story, we left Dawson City for Alaska, along the last (we think) dirt road, The Top of the World Highway.  Not the best road and certainly not the worst we've travelled.  Beautiful views!

Last glimpse of the Yukon River over Dawson City from
Top of the World Highway

Canada/USA border - 2 houses for the officers and families,  a stop light
and an office in the middle of nowhere

An addition to my dirt board

Spent the afternoon and night at Chicken.  Originally called
"Ptarmigan" after the local wild guinea fowl, it was discovered that
the gold prospectors didn't know how to pronounce the word "ptarmigan" and so the
name was changed to "Chicken"

We were given a pan, a small vial (like sample perfume comes in)
and out we went to pan for gold.  I told Bob that I suspected
we wouldn't find much gold because of the size of the vial.  No huge
nuggets here.  It was great fun learning how to pan and exciting
when we found tiny flakes in the bottom

Chicken Man, made out of old gold mining equipment,
and in the background, the town of Chicken symbol

The town of Chicken is comprised of a post office and several
buildings and is full of tourists coming to stake a claim and
find their fortune.  Several people we met had returned many,
many times from all over America.

We are now in Fairbanks, Alaska and still having a blast.  Internet connectivity has been dismal for the past 2 weeks and although we have been able to read our first screen of emails, we have no functionality and cannot answer or erase messages, see the other screens nor can we sign out.  I have set up a new gmail account for travelling in Alaska and will email those of you I know have written.

I will update the blog when we get back into BC (briefly) and have better reception.  Then we will be back up to the west side of Alaska until the last week of July, when we'll be heading down to Tofino.

Sending you love and best wishes.