Sunday July 5, 1998 - Lake Laberge

Lineup for Fox Lake fire convoy

Lake Laberge - windy, sunny and hot

It was cool, cloudy and smoky at the Yukon river campground and I couldn't sleep. I was up at 5 am and feeling like Yohan was doomed and I couldn't bear to be alone without him. but he got up and walked around, peed and ate some which cheered me up; maybe he'll make it after all. Ray came by and helped me get Yohan into the truck and I left around 7.30 am without saying goodbye to anyone.

At the Dawson Visitor Centre they said that there was a fire on the Dempster which is where all the smoke was coming from, and that the road to Whitehorse (the Klondike highway) was open. Once I passed the junction with the Dempster the smoke cleared.

Bear by the side of the road

I had put Yohan on the front bench seat instead of behind where he usually sat. Sometime after we passed Pelly Crossing he was struggling to change position so I reached over to help him. In doing so I swerved the truck into the steep-sided ditch on the side of the highway. There was no shoulder on the side of the highway, just a 4-5 foot embankmenty down to the ditch, overgrown with 2-3 foot high bushes. I thought for sure the truck would flip over and Yohan would be killed but amazingly I just ended up driving along the ditch because I never took my foot of the gas pedal. Which I did now.

I came to a stop and looked around. The ditch was about one car-width wide and the embankment was too steep to drive back up onto the road. Also it was deep enough that anyone driving past on the road would never see me. I decided that my only hope was to keep driving along the ditch in hopes of finding a spot where the embankment wasn't too steep for me to drive back up onto the road. I drove slowly along the ditch, hoping there wouldn't be any boulders in the way, which I wouldn't be able to see anyway because of all the bushes. I tried a couple of times to get up the bank but bottomed out each time. Finally I found a spot where I could drive back up onto the road.

As soon as I was out of the ditch I stopped and put the flashers on. I got out of the truck. I was shaking from nerves and Yohan looked bug-eyed scared. I'm sure he thought I was trying to kill him! I checked under the truck to see if I had done any damage but I couldn't see anything obvious. So when I was a little calmer I continued driving until I got to Five Finger Rapids. there was a big mess in the back of the truck from my episode in the ditch, mainly a blackened cast iron frypan that slid around all over my clothes. I checked the oil and the transmission fluid levels and the tires. Everything seemed OK and there hadn't been any suspicious engine noises so I carried on.

Around 4 pm I reached the lineup for the convoy through the forest fire at Fox Lake. It was very long. Apparently they had let a few cars through earlier in the day but things had gotten worse and they were debating whether to let anyone through today at all. I could see thick smoke and trees burning on a ridge west of the highway. Waterbombers circled. They carried containers of water that they dumped on the fire, but it just looked as if they were dumping thimblefuls on a conflagration. The RCMP said that the smoke on the road was too thick and they didn't know when the next convoy could go.

Some people turned around and left the lineup. I looked at the map. There were two other routes to Whitehorse, one involved backtracking to Dawson and heading to Alaska and the other also involved backtracking but not as far. The word was that there were fires on that road too, no one knew if you could get through or not. In any case it meant 2 or 3 days of driving even if the road was clear. Fox Lake is just north of Whitehorse; if I could get through Fox Lake I would be in Whitehorse in an hour or so. It did not seem worthwhile to try another route.

Fiddlers entertain the lineup

So I waited, we all waited. There was a travelling group of child fiddlers in the lineup, they moved slowly up and down the lineup playing their fiddles. They were from Whitehorse, returning from a tour of Yukon towns. I talked to a nurse from Haines Junction and told her about Yohan. She gave me a plastic glove and showed me how to squirt water into Yohan's mouth by snipping a small hole in one finger, filling the glove with water and then twisting it closed and squeezing it. It took two of us, one to hold the glove and the other to hold Yohan's mouth open. He didn't want to drink.

I was wearing my Great Northern Arts Festival T-shirt that I bought in Inuvik and it turned out that the woman who founded that festival was in the lineup. She didn't live in Inuvik anymore but said that seeing me wearing the T-shirt made her proud of what she had done. I also met a guy who was transporting an airplane and a tank full of fish. The airplane had foldup wings and sat on a trailer along with a big plastic tank of fish. Apparently if you stock an otherwise unoccupied lake that does not have native game fish in it, it's yours. So he had a lake picked out and was going to fly in with his tankful of fish to claim his lake. He has lived in the Yukon for 20 years, working construction in the summer and spending his winters in Costa Rica.

After waiting about 4 hours we got the word that they were going to start the convoy through the fire. We had to drive single file and maintain a constant speed close enough to the next vehicle to be able to see it through the thick smoke. Of course you had to keep all your windows closed tight. The smoke was like a very heavy fog and there were blackened tree skeletons and grey ash on the ground. There was no underbrush. Occasionally there were unburnt patches and also plumes of smoke and fire shooting up from the ground. It was like a scene from hell.

A squirrel that had been run over by the vehicle in front of me was still squirming on the road while its mate streaked back to the ashen forest. I couldn't stop. It was just misery everywhere.

I don't know how long it took to drive through, it was just too shocking to see what a forest fire looks like from inside. In any case it was too late to get to the veterinary clinic in Whitehorse so I stopped at the next campground on Lake Laberge, just north of Whitehorse. I would have to take Yohan in next morning. I fed Yohan and cleaned up and went to bed without supper, I was too nerved up to eat.

A helluva day!

Saturday July 4, 1998 - Dawson

Yohan isn't moving. He drank some water yesterday but won't take it today. I did manage to get him to eat a little rice and milk at breakfast. I thought maybe I would walk into town and buy some canned dogfood for him. The camp operator came by to collect the fee and she said that there was indeed a veterinarian in town and gave me his name. She and her boyfriend operate the campground in the summer and then spend the winter at their cabin the bush mushing dogs. There are so many dogs in town, every night you hear barking and howling from across the river.

Ray and Laurena are at the site across the road from mine, I asked them to keep an eye on Yohan while I walked into town. It would be faster that way if there were lineups for the ferry. At the Visitor Centre I asked about the vet. He has a pager but no phone number, so they paged him and I left a message for when he called back. I bought the dogfood and checked again at the Visitor Centre for a message from the vet but there was nothing so I returned to camp. I stopped to talk to Ray and Laurena briefly and then returned to my site, where there was a man looking at Yohan, who had moved himself from the tent where I left him over to the truck. It was the vet! I was impressed that he arrived at my campsite before I did!

When he saw me he said, "This must be the patient."

The vet, John, examined Yohan and took lots of notes. He listed all the bad things that might be wrong with Yohan, but without labwork or X-rays he couldn't tell for sure. The nearest X-ray machine was in Whitehorse, over 500 km away. But he said that it was amazing that Yohan survived the shock and that gave him hope for Yohan's survival. he recommended that I get him to Whitehorse as soon as possible for X-rays, and to keep him hydrated. Also, he said I should go to the Copper Road Veterinary clinic in Whitehorse; he said there were two clinics and Copper Road was run by a woman who was very good. He said Yohan's best hope was her.

He was very kind but he left me feeling quite depressed about outcomes. I had supper with Penny and James and prepared to leave first thing in the morning. In the news they said there was a forest fire at Fox Lake which is on the way to Whitehorse. In the evening we could smell smoke which I thought was from the Fox Lake fire, I hoped that wasn't going to be a problem. I wanted to get to Whitehorse in time to get Yohan into the vet clinic before it closed for the day, and I hoped that if I left early in the morning I could make it.

Friday July 3, 1998 - Dawson

Downtown Dawson

Yukon River - sunny

I am enjoying just doing nothing, "another day in paradise". But my plan is to leave for Edmonton tomorrow morning. I regret leaving the north, the long days, the wilderness. Laurene said that they may call Alaska "the last frontier" but there's hardly any wilderness left there. There's an awful lot of RV drivers who just want to talk about road conditions, like their whole trip is about the road conditions. And there's a woman in site 20 who sells paperbacks and tapes to bored RV'ers.

I took the ferry across the river and drove into town to do some shopping for my trip tomorrow. Ice and a few other things. Then I got in line for the return ferry trip across the river, hoping to spend the rest of the day just hanging out at the campground. It was a long lineup because a lot of people want to go to Alaska for July 4th, mostly Germans and very big RVs. A lot of us were just standing around chatting while waiting for our turn on the ferry crossing, Yohan crawled under a van to get out of the sun. Then the ferry arrived and started boarding, the lineup of vehicles started moving forward.

Suddenly I heard Yohan yelping, he was scrambling out from under the van that had just run over him. The woman driving had not seen him there, she was very upset when she realized what had happened. I didn't know what to do so I tried to get him back to the truck, he was obviously in a lot of pain and limping badly, he could walk but I had to lift him into the truck. I didn't know whether I should stay in the line to get onto the ferry or get out of the line and see if there was a veterinarian clinic in town. The man in the truck behind me had a local phonebook, he looked for a veterinarian listing but there was none. So I decided to stay in the line and get back to the campground, it took another 30 minutes to get there (I'd already been in the lineup for 90 minutes).

Yohan could walk a bit, his eyes were bugging out of his head and his tongue and gums were really white. Penny, who is a nurse, took a look at him and said he was in shock. I had a tent that so far I had never needed but I dug it out of the back of the truck and spent a half hour trying to figure out how to set it up. I thought it was the only way to get Yohan out of the sun.

My plans are now changed. I will stay on here in hopes that Yohan improves, but I don't think moving him is a good idea. I bought beer while I was in town, I'm glad I did because now I really need one.

Thursday July 2, 1998 - Dawson

View from Top of the World Highway

Yukon River - sunny and hot.

In the morning I baked some bannock over the fire, one plain loaf and one vegetable loaf. That took until noon. Since Gert and Helga had left the campground and they had a nicer site than I did, I then moved over to their now-empty site. After setting up I left to drive the Top of the World Highway. I did not want to go to Alaska so my intention was to just drive to the border and back.

A little ways down the road was some construction and Nona stopped me. She didn't recognize me at first but when I said her name then she did. She called Charlotte over to talk while I waited. They said they were at the same campground as I was but they would be working tonight.

I continued driving, with a couple of side trips up some rough tracks just to see whatever there was to see. Just before I reached the Alaska border I saw Ray and Laurena. Were they ever surprised to see me! They were coming from Alaska and headed to Dawson City. I told them about my trip up the Dempster and staying in Inuvik, and they told me about their trip through Alaska. Ray is still wheezing but he had medication for it.

Ray, Laurena and Sparky on the Top of the World Highway

I turned around then and headed back to Dawson. This is a chip seal road running along a high ridge so you're looking down into valleys on either side and can see mountain peaks off into the distance. this is why they call it the Top of the World, you're looking across at the peaks not up. The views are better heading east than west (in my opinion), but still not as great as the Dempster. I think it is more impressive to be looking up at the mountains not across.

The road crew were on supper break so I did not see Nona and Charlotte on the way back. When I got back to the campground I went looking for Charlotte. Last night I was in site 72 and she was in 84. I actually saw her dog Elsinor and her trailer in the morning but I did not recognize them at the time. When I got to Charlotte's site she had company for supper so I stayed a short while and then went to Ray and Laurena's site for gin and tonics. After that I went back to my site for supper then took a walk along the beach to Penny and James' site. They also had moved, they were now in site 48 right by the river.

On the way along the beach I saw a funny looking dog in the woods. I stopped to look at it and it looked at me and Yohan and then turned to go back into the woods. I then realized it wasn't a dog at all, it was a fox. It was all black with a white-tipped tail and looked like it had a kind of mask on its face like a raccoon. When I told James about it some other campers there said that there was indeed a fox hanging around the campground and it had stolen a potato from their campsite. Then James, Penny and I walked down the beach with the dogs to see the sternwheeler wreck.

Yohan and the sternwheeler wreck

James said it was actually several wrecks piled up together. When they first built the road to Dawson they didn't need the big sternwheelers anymore so they shoved them up into the forest beyond the town. Those sternwheelers burned 4 cord of firewood an hour to go upstream on the Yukon, so there was a pretty busy commerce in cordwood all along the river. The wrecks furthest away from the shore are in better shape because they don't get bashed by the river ice.

I got back to my campsite at midnight and I could still see sunlight on the Midnight Dome overlooking the town. I wanted to move my truck but I forgot that I left a thermos and water bottle in the shade behind the rear wheel. I ran over and broke them. That was 2 litres of drinking water! Oh well.

Wednesday July 1, 1998 - Dawson

Yukon River - clearing, sunny and warm.

I camped overnight by the highway and a creek. There's a large culvert under the highway for the creek, I watched some swallow-like birds swooping over the creek and through the culvert under the road, chasing the numerous mosquitoes. I heard a clucking sound a saw a ptarmigan out on the tundra.

I stopped near Tombstone Moutnain and drove up a microwave tower road with a fabulous view of the head of the North Klondike River and Tombstone Mountain. A little later I stopped at the Tombstone campground (where I had stopped in a picnic shelter on the trip north to Inuvik) and talked to the women at the Nature Centre there. The big purple flowers I have been seeing everywhere are called Willow Herb / Dwarf Fireweed / River Beauty. They often grow on rocky banks of rivers here, hence the name River Beauty, but they are related to the Fireweed, only not as tall. The birds I saw yesterday in the Richardson Mountains were Longtailed Jaegers, and their populations cycle with the ptarmigan (11-12 years). They hit a low in 1995 and are on the rise again now.

I also talked to a woman from Anchorage who is cycling up the Dempster with 3 friends. One drives and the other 2 cycle and they take turns. She said they left Dawson City yesterday morning and plan to cycle 50-80 miles a day. Sounds like a great trip!

I took a little side track down to the North Klondike River. This part of the Dempster follows the North Klondike into the Klondike River proper, which isn't far now. I can see blue sky to the north and grey sky to the south. No sun, too bad.

Yohan won't eat his food. I used to put cheese whiz on it to entice him but I have run out and am using peanut butter which I guess he doesn't like as much.

When I reached the end of the Dempster I stopped at the Klondike Lodge which is at the junction of the Dempster and Klondike highways. I bought ice for my cooler and ran into Jack and Jackie from Chuk Camp in Inuvik.

When I got to Dawson City I also met Gert and Helga and Penny and James at the Visitor Centre. Penny and James and I took our dogs for a walk along the dike. They diked the whole town after a big flood in 1979. The town is right at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers. James said that an Indian resident told him that they moved the whole town and all of its buildings three times in order to mine for gold underneath it.

For Canada Day there was a big town barbecue in a park on the waterfront so we lined up for a salmon dinner. but just as we finally reached the barbecues they ran out of salmon. We got our money back and had salad and buns for free. Later I met someone at the Visitor Centre who told me about Tent City. Across the Yukon River is the provincial campground, and next to it is Tent City where you can camp for free. A lot of young people who work in Dawson City over the summer stay there. To get to the campground (and Tent City) you cross the river in a little ferry; this is also the way to the Top of the World highway to the Alaska border.

The Yukon River ferry at Dawson

I crossed the river with Penny and James and decided to stay at the provincial campground since all the people I knew from Inuvik were staying there. I found a campsite and then went to visit Gert and Helga who were leaving for Alaska the next day. I took a walk along the river on a gravel beach to see the paddlewheeler wreck just upriver from the campground.

Tuesday June 30, 1998 - Dempster Highway

Peel River ferry - sunny and warm

Now I am waiting for the Peel River ferry, the river is a lot calmer than it was the last time. They are grading the approach to the ferry.

This morning I had a cup of coffee with the Gwich'in elder, Robert Alexie Sr, who operates the Nitainlii Camp. He told me stories about the unusually early spring breakup and caribou return.
He said that the guy who ferried us across the Peel River last week was new, only one week on the job, and his boss was pretty mad at him when he heard that he'd gone ahead and ferried us across. It was very dangerous.

Robert offered me a certificate for the Order of Arctic Adventurers, Arctic Circle Chapter. I said I already had one from the Inuvik Visitor Centre and he grinned at me.

"Wouldn't you rather have one signed by a Gwich'in elder?"

I agreed that that would be superior so he signed one and gave it to me. He asked what day I crossed the Arctic Circle and put that date on my certificate.

I went into Fort McPherson to see the Tent and Awning Factory and the Grave of the Lost Patrol. I can see where this would be a very muddy town in the spring!

At the factory they just got new embroidery thread so the prices on their embroidered bags has been raised and they don't have any unembroidered stock. Oh well. I saw Liz and Clem's names in the factory guest book, I guess they were in yesterday.

I also went to the cemetery where the Lost Patrol are buried.

In 1910 a party of four RCMP constables set out on the winter solstice from Fort McPherson headed to Dawson, an 800 km trip. Setting out in the dead of winter was a mistake, so was dismissing their Dene guide when they left the Richardson Mountains, and not going back when they first realized they were lost was the last mistake. Their bodies were found the following spring just 40 km out of Fort McPherson, and their diaries told a terrible tale. Three died of starvation and the fourth shot himself. They had eaten their dogs.

Fort McPherson cemetery

The town is fairly typical, dusty with boardwalk sidewalks and large square houses. In the cemetery all of the graves have white picket fences, I've seen that a lot in Haida Gwaii, northern BC and the territories.

Yukon border

The border between the Yukon and the NWT is very bleak. There are no trees and it is very windy. I can hear birdsong but cannot see any birds, they must be in the low bushes. Creeks are tiny but frequent. Muskeg.

I stopped because I saw a hovering bird—hawk-sized, with a white head and a very long narrow tail. I don't know what it is and it flew away when I let Yohan out of the truck. I stopped in the middle of the road, didn't bother to pull over. This could be the end of the world, no radio, no nothing.

Rock Creek

Stopped on Eagle Plains by a creek with the Richardson Mountains on the east. There is less wind here and good sized trees in the creek ravine. Willows too. There were three fish in the creek catching insects in a pond on the downstream side of the culvert under the road. They might be Grayling: 10-12" long, brown-gray very ordinary looking fish.

Ogilvie-Peel Viewpoint

Arctic Circle

Arctic Circle outhouses, held down by cables

I stopped briefly at the Arctic Circle and then passed through the town of Eagle Plains around 2 pm.

The great metropolis of Eagle Plains, pretty much all of it

The girl at the gas station remembered me, she said, "You got through just in time" referring to the last time, because they closed the road the next morning.

Old forest fire

Since then I've been driving through forest, half of it burned. Now I am at the edge of the Ogilvie Mountains after driving a treeless ridge with a great view. I saw none of this on the way up. All I remember about the Ogilvie-Peel Viewpoint on the way up is the driving rain and the outhouses. I never saw the mountains.

Yohan and the Ogilvie Mountains

Well, onward we go. It's 5.15 pm and I don't think I'll make Dawson tonight. There's lots more traffic now: semis, RVs, cars and trucks mostly headed north; a few trucks headed south.

Black spruce, fireweed and foxtail grass along the roadside

North of North Fork Pass

There are washouts and mudslides all the way from the Ogilvie-Peel Viewpoint to here, a little north of the North Fork Pass. Mostly on Engineer Creek.

I think this is where the mudslide I encountered last week was

Debris in the river

There are lots of uprooted trees on the gravel bars in the river, caved-in riverbanks from being undercut by high water and a large section of the road that was originally built right in an old creek bed that is now completely washed out. It is just rough rock now, they haven't finished repairing it.

There are road repair machines and trucks all along this section and a a few men working. The first one I met told me what to expect for the next 20 km or so. He said there was a rock elephant on the mountain skyline a little ways down the road but I couldn't see it.

I saw a black bear by the road and a moose way off in the distance (with my binoculars). At first it just looked like a rock until I looked more closely with the binocs. It was just munching away. It looked up when I started the truck to drive away but didn't appear concerned.

My campsite for the night, Middle-of-Nowhere, Yukon Territory

I stopped around 9 pm in a little pull-out next to the road with a great view of the mountains, a creek, and only a few mosquitoes.

Monday June 29, 1998 - Fort McPherson

On the Arctic Red River ferry

I guess we all decided to leave today. Liz and Clem and I went into one of the Inuvik hotels for a big breakfast of eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast and coffee. We exchanged addresses and said good bye. I did some more email at the Inuvik Research Centre which was very busy today, shopped around for souvenirs and checked at the Visitor Centre for highway news. The highway officially opens at noon tomorrow, so at 2.30 pm I set out for Fort McPherson.

There was a Gwich'in guy at the Arctic Red River ferry looking for radiator stop leak, which kind of scared me. I hope he found some. Somebody told me though that you could use black pepper instead of stop leak, so I thought that might not be so bad.

There is supposed to be a fee for the Nitainlii campground but I have not seen anyone yet. A few trucks drove through but did not stay. The frappe-a-bord are dying down and now there are a few mosquitoes but not many. It's a good campsite.

Sunday June 28, 1998 - Inuvik

Chuk camp

Chuk Camp - windy, warm and sunny

I decided not to go anywhere today, did some mending instead. Margaret suggested that we have a potluck supper in the camp so we walked around to all the campsites inviting everyone. I met the American couple from Texas and a Canadian couple from New Mexico.  The Texans were famous in Chuk camp because they had the biggest RV rig and Liz and Clem were inside it once and reported that they even had a jacuzzi bathtub. They hardly ever emerged because of the bugs. We had fewer bugs than the Happy Valley camp but that doesn't mean we didn't have any. The worst were the bulldog horseflies, or frappe-a-bord as Clem called them. Very large and very aggressive; they make ordinary horseflies in the south seem like harmless house flies in comparison.

I enjoyed spending time with a couple from Austria just down the hill from my campsite, Gert and Helga Pader. They were outrageously funny. Very dry wit and a constant stream of funny remarks. Not very good English, but what they knew they used well. Gert is a software engineer. Like many Europeans they get long vacation times every year and they are using theirs to explore North America. They fly to some major city on the continent, buy an old car and then travel for several weeks before selling the car and flying home. this year they are doing the North. 

They were anxious to get out of here to sell their car and fly home, so when the girl in the camp office reported today that the Peel River ferry was now open they were packed and gone within fifteen minutes. I inherited all their kindling, a dozen eggs and 2 litres of milk. Another couple from Whitehorse and fellow who was travelling with his Dad also packed up and left. The father-son duo had a tiny pickup truck like mine and they never came out of it because of the frappe-a-bord. I don't know how they could stand being cooped up in their little truck all day every day.

In spite of all the departures the potluck was a success. The Texans did not come but everyone else who had not left for the ferry did come. Margaret made deer meat stew, Liz did the fish, bannock and spotted dick pudding, Jack and Jackie (the New Mexico Canadians) made cookies and so did the young couple with two dogs. They also brought scalloped potatoes and onions done in foil. I'll have to try that.

Vern, the camp operator, has been giving me a deal on the camp fee but tonight the girl is collecting so I am paying full fee for the first time. Vern gave me Saturday for free and charged $10 for the other nights. $12 is the regular fee.

Saturday June 27, 1998 - Inuvik

Hanging out at Liz and Clem's campsite

Chuk Camp - cloudy, cool and windy

The people from Vancouver Island decided to try their luck and leave for the Dempster. Clem and Liz told me about their trip to Tuk and fed me a big breakfast of eggs, pancakes and coffee.

They said that Tuktoyaktuk consisted of a bunch of shacks, an expensive craft shop, a few government offices, and a caribou soup meal. As the trucker at the Peel River ferry said, "I'd as soon cook my runners as eat caribou soup". What the locals there have to say about native life is nothing more than I know already. Do I sound cynical? Life in most northern towns is pretty much reduced to tourism when the primary resource industries are gone. It used to be oil and gas exploration here and mining in the Yukon, but that's pretty much gone now. The Indians and Eskimo (so far all the native people I've talked to refer to themselves as "Indian" or "Eskimo") hunt, fish and trap and whatever else comes their way. Liz said she was shocked by how bad the kids' teeth were there. A lot of pop and chips; as the trucker at the Peel River ferry said, it's an essential service there.

I told Liz and Clem I'd share whatever fish I caught on my big fishing trip and left to meet my guide Alvin.

Alvin is a 39 year old Inuvialuit man who sets a net on Airport Lake for white fish, but as it turns out knows nothing at all about rod fishing for trout or pike. He put snare wire on my fishing line as a leader in case I caught a pike. We tried several places: in a creek, at a creek mouth, on the lake. I tangled my line several times but gradually got the hang of casting, which after three hours you'd think so. Alvin showed me an eagle's nest on a cliff and told me about the eagle chick in it. He walks along the top of the cliff and climbs down to the nesst to see the chick every day. He leaves fish for it. While I was casting, he was cleaning the white fish he took from his net that morning. He said if I didn't catch anything he'd give me some.

While we were out in the lake floating around in his boat, we chatted. Alvin asked me questions about my travels and told me he once lived in Hay River. I asked him what he was doing there. Long pause, then he said, "I was a bad boy." Later he said they fished and hunted and had satellite TV, "it hardly seemed like jail at all." He liked Hay River. I was there once and hated it; I guess I should have known that the Hay River jail was the place to be. Didn't ask what he did to go to jail, alone in a boat with him I didn't really want to know.

Alvin spent a lot of time untangling my fishing line; he said he would like to just cut off the tangles and keep them as souvenirs of me.

We went to Moe's cabin for a lunch of instant rice, smoked white fish, bannock and tea. Alvin lives in Moe's cabin. He's actually not allowed to be here, this is Gwichin territory and he is Inuvialuit. He should be fishing further north but he says it's too far to go so Moe lets him stay here and turns a blind eye. The sun was up and it was getting pretty hot, I was worried about Yohan shut up in the truck so I wanted to go back. Alvin gave me some bannock and white fish fillets, and smoked white fish for Yohan. I didn't much like the smoked white fish so I was going to give it to the dog, but it turned out Yohan didn't like it either. Alvin smoked it himself so I didn't tell him I didn't like it and was planning to give it to Yohan.

Liz cooked the white fish for me, we had white fish, rice, cabbage and custard for supper. There was lots of fish left over but we ate all of the bannock. We stayed up well past midnight talking. I love there camping van, if I ever bought an RV or camping van I'd like to get one like theirs. They have hookups so they can cook inside or outside under an awning, so cooking smelly fish doesn't stink up the inside sleeping area. The van is wide enough for their bed to be crosswise instead of lengthwise and there is a raised roof for headroom. They also have a vertical windbreak that attaches to the awning making a second wall.

Friday June 26, 1998 - Inuvik

Chuk Camp - sunny and hot

Liz and Clem went to Tuk with Margaret and George, the couple from Saskatchewan. I took my laundery into town. I went back to Moe's Stationery to make arrangements for a fishing trip. Moe had a guide lined up for me, I was to meet Alvin at Airport Lake at 11 am on Saturday, for $50.

I went to the Inuvik Research Centre to do some email, it turns out you can get unlimited access for free there. On the way I met Gert and Helga, an Austrian couple at Chuk Camp, and told them about the free access so Gert came along too. The librarian there helped him setup a Hotmail account. She asked him how long he was staying in town and he grinned and said, "Bad joke!" None of us know and none of us are happy about it! When the librarian wasn't there someone came in wanting to buy a poster. Gert offered to sell it to him, and said he'd split the profit with me. The guy said "I heard that!" and left.

Later when I got back to camp the two couples from Vancouver Island invited me for beer and chips and we talked about their travels to Haida Gwaii and also Newfoundland. It seemed like the two couples were going to all the same places. Liz and Clem got back from Tuk but I was busy getting supper and then it started to rain and so everyone went to bed early. One of the returnees from town said that they had heard that the Arctic Red River ferry had reopened and we wondered if the highway would open early too.

Thursday June 25, 1998 - Inuvik

Igloo Church in Inuvik

Chuk Camp - sunny and hot

Yohan seems better; he ate the chicken I saved for him and is walking around.  But even though it's a bright sunny day and Yohan is better, and I'm having all these adventures, I'm having a 'blonde day' (Liz's term; she apparently does not think highly of blondes). Clem and Liz play cribbage (they have a cribbage sticker on their van) so I might suggest a game to them tonight.

Liz is also having kind of a blonde day because they had signed up for a tour of Tuk today, but they got bumped from the flight. Liz is pissed off. They are going tomorrow, if the tour people don't screw it up. We went up the Chuk viewing tower to look at the Mackenzie Delta. We could see the Richardson Mountains, but not Aklavik.

Liz at the Viewing Tower

I went into town to send some more email, wrote to one friend about how discouraged and lonely I was feeling. Then I went to the Visitor Centre to enquire about fishing, and the guy there sent me to Moe's Stationery next to the Cafe Gallery. He also told me the latest news about the Dempster; it will be closed until July 2nd, a week from now. They will be escorting people out of Eagle Plains tomorrow, but you can't get there from here because the Arctic Red River ferry is shut down due to debris in the river coming from the south.

The Utilidor connecting Inuvik homes

This will be the longest I have stayed anywhere, and not by choice!

Ran into "Greasy Stick" and a German woman at Moe's and we chatted for awhile. His real name is Joel and she is Judith. I gather they hooked up at the dinner theatre last night. He said he was going to Alaska in his van. He plays fiddle and says he hopes he is retired.

After talking to Moe about a possible fishing trip I went back to camp. Liz invited me to have a beer and later supper, it was nice. A guy who came up the Dempster after it was closed down dripped by to show us photos of the washouts. Pretty incredible, the road is definitely shot to hell. Someone said it was on the CBC news today.

Looks like I'll have to do a laundery, I am running out of clean clothes. I'm not real happy about being stuck here but really it is an opportunity to catch up on things I meant to do but haven't done.

Wednesday June 24, 1998 - Inuvik

Sign on the road into Inuvik

Chuk Camp - cloudy and cold

I slept in, had a nice hot shower in the camp washroom and a late breakfast of oatmeal. I paid for a second night (still $10!) and drove into town in the afternoon. At the Inuvik Visitor Centre I learned that the Dempster Highway was closed until at least Saturday or Sunday, maybe longer. I visited the Cafe Gallery and the Library where I sent a bunch of "Stranded in Inuvik" emails to friends in the south. At the front door of the library was a sign asking you to take your shoes off before entering. Apparently so many people track in gravel stuck in the treads of their boots or runners that it was making a mess of the floor. You get one hour free per day of internet time, but it was a slack time so the librarian seemed amenable to bending the rules. I could stay on the computer until someone showed up wanting to get on.

There are two campgrounds in Inuvik, Chuk Camp on a hill overlooking the town and Happy Valley camp right in the town. I was told that I picked the right camp because Happy Valley is very buggy, Like Caribou Camp that I visited yesterday. Because Chuk Camp is on a hill it catches the breeze and that keeps the bugs down.

Yohan is unwell. He doesn't want to eat and just doesn't look healthy. I left him in the truck all day. When I returned to camp I spoke to Liz and Clem about Yohan, Clem wanted to examine him. Clem is a retired gastro-enterological surgical assistant (GSA) with, as he puts it, a 'psycho' knack, which among other things apparently means he understands sick animals (and humans). I brought Yohan to their campsite (I drove over) and Clem 'examined' Yohan. He was extremely gentle, Yohan appeared to pour his heart out to him and said that Yohan was very sad, very anxious, but the worst thing wrong with him was his age. Clem's wife Liz thinks Yohan is just having a bad arthritis day. Clem thought that as long as Yohan was drinking water he would probably be okay.

As a consolation to all of us who are "stranded" in Inuvik, the town invited us to a special dinner theatre production. The play was called East Three, it was about the history of Inuvik which was originally called East Three. Inuvik was created to replace Aklavik which was prone to flooding. Engineers surveyed six potential townsites, three on the west side of the Mackenzie delta and three on the east side. East Three was the final choice. Kind of symbolic because this area is the meeting place of three races: Indian (Gwich'in), Inuit (Inuvialuit) and European-descent.

I went to it with Liz and Clem, there were people there from both campgrounds. The play was very good and there was also a skit using members of the audience as the characters in the skit.  Liz got to play "Pearl", the man in the next campsite to me played "Bubbles" and a guy from San Diego played "Greasy Stick".

Liz hammed it up something fierce. In fact at one point she took the story line in the opposite direction than was intended, leaving the narrator speechless. Had everyone in hysterics. "Bubbles" told me later that he was going on a 2-week canoe trip with several other people who were in the audience that night, and that he was probably stuck with that name for the duration.

Dinner included caribou meat balls, roast musk ox, white fish and arctic char, I saved a bit of chicken for Yohan. All in all a great evening of local culture and meeting people.

We are all signing up for various tours and activities, a favourite at Chuk is the trip to Tuktoyaktuk. I would have liked to go but you have to fly in and I didn't want to leave Yohan at the camp that long. Instead I asked around about getting a guide to take me fishing on the Mackenzie. You have to have a guide because it is a huge delta with many channels and you can very easily get lost. I figured leaving Yohan for a couple of hours would be okay, just not all day. He could sleep in the truck.

Tuesday June 23, 1998 - Dempster Highway

Richardson Mountains

It was a windy clear day when I woke up in the gravel pit, and cold. The wind was so strong that a raven just floated over my truck. The view was fantastic, the Richardson Mountain Range lay to the north of me. The highway goes through a broad pass that has never been glaciated.

Snow!

I set out right after breakfast and thought I would be in Inuvik in the late afternoon, I was making good time. The highway crosses treeless mountains and valleys to the NWT border, and you don't start seeing trees again until you approach the Mackenzie Delta. There's a time zone change at the Yukon/NWT border.

There are two ferry crossings, Peel River and Arctic Red River, before Inuvik and when I got to the first one, Peel River, there was a long line-up of vehicles waiting to cross. It is a cable ferry and both the wind and the current in the river are very strong today so they did not want to chance a crossing until the wind died. The river flows north and many of the trees that came down in the rain the day before were floating down the river, driven by the strong current.

The semi truck that I met the day before was in the line-up a ways ahead of me. I greeted the driver as someone I knew and we chatted. His name is Norm and he told me that he drove the route between Edmonton to Inuvik on a regular basis.

I asked what he was carrying in his truck and he said, "Oh, I'm an essential service in the North. Chips and pop."

He said the highway washed out and was closed just south of Eagle Plains this morning. It was still raining down there. So we were all stuck between the Peel River ferry and Eagle Plains, no one could go south, no one could go north.

I waited all afternoon, there were about twenty vehicles in the line-up and I met people from Montana, Saskatchewan, Vancouver Island, and Alaska in the line-up. The wind would probably not die before evening.

I tried to take a look at the river but you couldn't get close to it because of the sand in the wind. There are sandy cliffs up river and the wind is blowing the sand down. It stings the skin and you have to keep your eyes closed. There is a tiny native village here. I talked to a ten year old boy who doesn't go to school but hunts moose and wolf and fishes too. There are a few native cabins, and one entrepreneurial type who sold hotdogs, chips and coke from a tent.  One cabin has a komatik in front of it.

There are no bugs thanks to the wind, except if you have to go into the woods to pee. It is mostly treeless taiga tundra here. I picked some really bright blue Arctic Forget-Me-Nots on a hillock. All kinds of tufts of tiny flowers, white, yellow and blue.

Around 6 pm the shift changed on the Peel River ferry and the new skipper decided to cross. Around 6.30 he started ferrying people across and I crossed around 6.45 pm. I drove straight through to the next ferry at Fort MacPherson, only stopping once to feed Yohan. 

The Arctic Red River ferry does a 3-point route: from the Fort McPherson side to the Inuvik side to Arctic Red River and back to Fort McPherson. There was a hitchhiker at Fort McPherson who was picked up by the car behind me, a white station wagon with four guys in it. He was from New York and was kayaking across the country. His kayak was at the ferry landing. While we waited for the ferry he set up his tent there.

After getting off the ferry I drove to Inuvik. I stopped just before Inuvik to look at a campsite, Caribou Creek, which appeared to be bug-free but there was no one there. I continued to Chuk Camp, on a hill 5 km before the town, arriving around 11.30 pm. This was the campground recommended by Al and Mick. The owner was nice, I talked to him for a while debating whether to stay there or at Caribou Creek. Caribou Creek was free, Chuk Camp was not. Regardless of what I decided the owner said I could have a shower at Chuk. 

A couple I met at the Peel River ferry, Clem and Liz, they had a Wild Rose camper. Clem said something I kind of liked while we were waiting for the ferry. We were talking about Yohan's breed. Clem thought he was a collie, I told him that I always thought so but some people where I worked thought he was a Nova Scotia Duck Toller, and that after all he was from Nova Scotia. Clem said, No he was definitely a collie, so he called him a 'Cajun Collie'. So I think that's what I'm going to tell people from now on, he's a Cajun Collie.

I decided to go to Caribou Creek but discovered that it was now very buggy so around 1 am I returned to Chuk Camp and registered. The owner only charged me $10 even though the fee was supposed to be $12.

The clock time means nothing, this far north the sun does not set but just goes round and round, so it never gets dark at all. There are no stars and no moon, just the sun. I picked out a site and went to bed.

Monday June 22, 1998 - Dempster Highway

The Arctic Circle - rain

It rained all night and didn't stop in the morning. I got breakfast ready, packed up and ate in the truck cab on my way into Dawson. I stopped at both the Dawson and NWT visitor centres for water and information. At the NWT centre they gave me information about driving the Dempster and where to buy gas. My plan had been to stay in the Dawson area, drive the Top of the World Highway to the Alaska border and then start the Dempster the next day. But with the rain I thought there would be no point in driving the Top of the World as I would be unable to see the view, so I may as well go straight to the Dempster. And there was a rain warning for the Dempster too---50 mm---rain all day.

View of Dawson City from the Midnight Dome

But first I drove around Dawson up to the Midnight Dome and down to Bonanza Creek. On the summer solstice you can see the midnight sun from the Dome, you cannot see it down at the town level.

Giant dredge used to mine the gold, seen from on top of a huge pile of dredge tailings

Dawson is about the size of Whitehorse but most of the buildings are original. The roads are dirt because of the permafrost. I passed Jack London's cabin but didn't see Robert Service's place. On the road to Dawson are miles of tailings—long gravel worms spit up by the huge dredges they used to dredge the local creeks for gold.

Bonanza Creek

Prospector's cabin and antique dredge

I saw one old dredge at Bonanza Creek and of course the spot on the creek where gold was first discovered. Boy did those guys lay waste to the territory! I had this weird feeling abou the Gold Rush hype and now I know why. The history of the BC coast, the First Nations and later European settlements was interesting, but this is a history of wanton destruction.

After getting gas at a cardlock facility I set out on the Dempster. Even in the rain it is spectacular. Almost immediately trees disappear and you are surrounded by bare mountains and valleys. This is the Ogilvie Mountain Range

My truck at the base of the mountains

Ogilvie Mountains

I stopped at the Tombstone campground (named for Tombstone Mountain, which I could not see due to rain and fog) for lunch in a picnic shelter, where a group of German tourists were being guided by a German woman from Nelson. She said they come here for 3 weeks of hiking and canoeing in the wilderness. Tons of Germans come here; they live in a crowded country, have 6 weeks of paid vacation and a yearning for wilderness. Every week a flight of 300 Germans arrives in Whitehorse. Not a few end up settling here, the German guide was one who came as a tourist and stayed to become a guide. All the German tourists crowded to one end of the picnic shelter and I was at the other end alone, until the guide came over and struck up a conversation.

I drove on.

I saw this sign that said "scenic view", so I pulled in at the next turnoff, but all there was was a camper. It was pouring rain, and there were two grizzled heads at the door of the camper. I got out of the truck to ask them if they knew where the heck this "scenic view" was. They didn't have a clue, but one of them said "maybe it's us" and then invited me in for coffee. Seemed like a good idea, since there was too much rain for viewing scenes anyway. Mick and Al, and their dog Rosy. Mick is a teacher from Oregon (grades 6-8) due to retire in 6-7 years and Al is a geology prof from Tacoma Washington. They were on their way home from 5 days fishing in Inuvik.
Had a nice time chatting about all sorts of things. They recommended a campsite in Inuvik, and told me about a gravel pit just north of the Arctic Circle which was relatively bug-free for overnight camping and recommended a particular type of bug bite salve available only in Inuvik. I finally left there around 6 pm. They said I should be sure to stay in Inuvik till it got sunny again so that I could see the south part of the highway in its true glory. I finally dragged myself away from there and headed north on the Dempster.

At the Maintenance Camp I let a semi pass me, I didn't like having his big truck looming in my rearview mirror. A while later I passed Engineer Creek camp and the road by this time was extremely muddy from all the rain. Almost immediately I saw the semi with its flashers on parked on the side of the road. I pulled up behind it and walked forward. There was a huge mud slide with whole trees embedded in it across the road. The mud and rocks were still coming down the slope on the left side of the road, I think the mud slide was 2-3 feet deep and very wide on the road. There was a camper stopped in the road on the other side of the mudslide. The driver of the camper had a chainsaw and was trying to cut some of the trees, then the semi truck driver was chaining the trees to the camper and the camper guy was backing his camper away from the mud, pulling the trees out.

The semi, the camper, and the mudslide

Then the camper guy came across the mud and said to me, "Looking for adventure?"

After pulling the trees out the mud subsided a bit but was still pretty deep. The semi driver said he'd drive through first to make tracks and then the camper should go and finally me. The semi drove through and stopped on the other side, then the camper came through and continued south and finally I drove through. The mud was about a foot thick now but the mud in the semi's tracks was not as deep. I hit some stuff in the mud, probably tree debris, but no harm done. The semi truck driver told me to go ahead of him. I think he waited about a quarter of an hour before he set out, I never actually his truck but it was nice to know that it was there in case anything went wrong.

It was hard to see anything. The road was bad and I had to really concentrate but there was no visibility to speak of. At one point there was blowing snow. I stopped at a view point to use the outhouse, but there was no view. I passed through miles of burned trees in what appeared to be muskeg. Around 10 pm I began to see breaks in the clouds to the north. The coffee with Mick and Al was keeping me going, not to mention not wanting to stop due to the rain and mosquitoes.

Around 11 pm I pulled into Eagle Plains, the halfway point on the Dempster. There's a motel, a bar and a gas station. I got gas and then drove around behind the motel to park and feed Yohan. There was no rain but swarms of huge mosquitoes. When Yohan got out of the truck to eat the mosquitoes swarmed his eyes, there were dozens of them right in his eyes. I rubbed some bug dope on him and while I waited for him to eat I tried to put some netting up inside the back of the truck.

Shortly after leaving Eagle Plains I saw a pull-out and a sign for the Arctic Circle crossing. However I did not want to stop due to the mosquitoes. Mick and Al had recommended that just past the Arctic Circle there was a gravel pit that was good to camp in because it was very windy which kept the bugs down, so I was keeping an eye out for that. They said it was on the side of a hill, you have to drive off the highway and around the hill before you see it. I got there just before midnight. I could pull in and park out of sight of the road, up on a ledge with a view of the surrounding land. I could see the Richardson mountains in the distance, and it was very windy and relatively bug-free.

I wrote for a bit and didn't go to bed until almost 4 am. It is now daylight all day and all night so I have lost all sense of the time of day. I think I lost track of what day it is some time ago as well, so I feel quite disconnected from the usual measurement of time passing.