Dawson City has been fixed up in the twenty years since I was last there; some of the roads are actually paved.  It is like a working ghost town, with old building falling down among restored restaurants, shops and hotels.  It's the place where we bought some last minute provisions before the trip to Inuvik,, hardest to find were the round plastic headlight covers to stop the rocks from cracking the very difficult to find glass headlight lenses for the Tatra.  We couldn't find them in Dawson so we headed to the gas station at the corner of Highway 2 and the Dempster Highway.  You must fill up at this gas station before going up the Dempster since it's 370 km to the next gas station at Eagle Plains. It was at this gas station we found a very old set of yellowed headlight covers that were actually too small for the very large lenses on the Tatra 87.  Out of the tool box came the sealant that was carried for leaking windows and we just glued them on.  The last thing to do was to go to the restaurant and enjoy some of the great raspberry and rhubarb pie that they specialize in.

"...stunningly beautiful 736 km long gravel road..."

The Dempster Highway is a stunningly beautiful 736 km long gravel road that leads from Dawson City to Inuvik on the Arctic coast.  The first stop was at Tombstone Mountain  Campground which has a great little museum and interpretive center. The kids really enjoyed looking at all the animal bones and skins.  From there we drove over the continental divide twice before we got to Eagle Plains hotel, which is halfway up the Dempster.  Eagle Plains was built in this place because this is the only non permafrost area on the Dempster and so construction costs were relatively inexpensive.  Eagle Plains consists of a hotel, bar, restaurant, gas station, garage and RV Camping.  The Tatra gas tank is not too large so we brought extra gas since 370 km was at the limit of the range of the tank.  We made it into Eagle Plains on just on one tank but I was convinced that if Eagle Plains had of been another kilometer further on we would have run out of gas.  It was raining and the parking lot was one huge mud bath.  Every hotel guest takes off their shoes and leaves them in a small room and walks around the hotel in their socks.  Good thing as the mud was an inch thick on the bottom of our shoes.

"... recommends two spare tires."

The gravel road of the Dempster Highway is made up of a sharp shale rock that can easily cut the side of your tires. The Highways Department recommends that you bring two spare tires with you.  The garage in Eagle Plains does a booming business in tire repairs and keeps quite a stock of new tires, nothing of course in 16 inches that would fit the Tatra. We brought two spare tires which we carried on the roof rack.  We also read that if you travel slowly the shale will not cut the side of your tires and you'll be OK.  Slow means traveling at 70-80 kmph which was OK with me.  A number of cars passed us on the way up at 100 - 110 kmph but most of them we slowly passed as they were changing their tires.  The last advice was to slow down below 20 kmph and pull way off to the side of the road when being passed in either direction.  We also followed this advice as the rocks spitting up behind the larger trucks can really do damage to a car's paint job.   This pulling over really doesn't slow you up too much as not that many cars or trucks drive on the Dempster.    During one photography session, we parked the car in the middle of the road for about 45 minutes and not one car passed us.  You really are alone.

The next day we headed off to Inuvik,, we crossed the Arctic circle about an hour after Eagle Plains and then crossed into the Northwest Territories just 60 kilometers down the road.  The weather was brisk, snow was in little patches here and there but the sun was out gloriously.  Just a little past the Yukon/NWT border we got to the first ferry ride, this one across the Peel River.  The ferry is pulled across by a cable and since the river constantly eats away at the landing place, bulldozers are on each side to push the sand and dirt out in the river so that the ferry can land.  Needless to say it's very muddy.  The ferry only runs from June until mid October. From mid October to the end of November the highway is closed and then the crossing is possible over the ice bridge.  What is an ice bridge?   Well, as the river freezes up the Highways Department drills holes on each side of the crossing and pumps water up on top and lets it freeze.  They continue this until  the crossing is solid enough to take large trucks over it. This works well until the end of April when it becomes too thin to cross. May is closed for breakup and in June the ferry runs again.  On the far shore I could see the winches that pull the ferry up onto the land to store it over the long winter.

 
After the ferry ride we drove into Fort MacPherson to gas up.  It's a small village of about 1000 people.  The only place we could find to eat was the local curling rink that has a small takeout so we ate burgers and chips.  From Fort McPherson we drove 60 kilometers to the second ferry across the Mackenzie River where the Arctic Red River joins it.  The ferry is much larger and has diesel engines to counteract the quite strong flow of the Mackenzie River.

"...brought back the ferry just to load us on"

We drove up to the dock just as the ferry was leaving but the captain saw us and brought the ferry back just to load us on.  Now there is northern hospitality!  We climbed up to the pilot house to talk a bit with the captain and get a great view of the river.  On the south side you can see the small town of Tsiigehchic (Arctic Red River) with the spire of the Roman Catholic Mission clearly visible.  The Mackenzie River is huge, draining one fifth of Canada, and is exceeded in the western hemisphere only by the Mississippi and the Amazon. The Mackenzie delta is the largest in Canada and the tenth largest in the world as well as being one of the most remote.

Once we got to the other side it was a reasonably quick drive into Inuvik and as a bonus the last 10 km was paved.  We stayed at the Arctic Chalet Bed & Breakfast and as we drove in we could hear and see quite a number of beautiful white Huskies.  In addition to running a Bed & Breakfast they also do dog sledding tours with these amazing animals.  Our host Judy asked if we wanted to take the dogs for a walk, and walk them we did, they nearly pulled Erik over and he had one of the puppies.

Inuvik is a town of about 3500 people dominated by a very interesting Igloo style church. It has a bustling main street with a number of craft stores.  We bought a few things before Helena spied a beautiful Muskrat coat.  Muskrat are trapped in these areas and a small furrier was started in Old Crow that has since shut down.  This coat was made by this furrier and so we thought it was perfect to take home to remind ourselves of the north.  Mind you it gets cold in Toronto too and in the winter Helena wears it quite often to stay warm.

Located on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, at the uppermost edge of Canada, is a small Inuvialuit community called Tuktoyaktuk, or just Tuk.   In the middle of winter you can drive on the ice road to Tuktoyaktuk but since this was summer the only way there was to fly.  We took a small plane there for the afternoon.  Since it was Sunday everything was closed but we did get a flavour of Tuk. First we had to swim in the Arctic Ocean... OK we didn't swim but we did go wading and yes it was cold.

One of the interesting things I found out about Tuk is that it has a gigantic community freezer.  Because it is build on permafrost,  a tunnel was dug down about 20 feet and then a horizontal passage in which each family has a hollowed out room.  Since there is a lot of hunting in the area for seal and caribou this is the perfect large scale freezer for everyone.  There are a number of dog sled teams in Tuk, but these aren't the nice friendly white fluffy Huskies of Inuvik, they are hardened work dogs.  You see each year the hunting guides of Tuk get a limited number of licensees to hunt polar bear.  All hunts must take place by dog sled rather than skidoos.  A big part of the economy is hosting and guiding hunters that flying up to Tuk and hunt from a dog sled.  Just for the record, while the population of polar bears in this area has been increasing each year, my daughter and son think polar bear hunting is "just plain mean".  White fish is caught in the Arctic Ocean and smoked in a number of smokehouses in Tuk.  Smoked white fish is very tasty, reminding me of smoked black cod.

"...we put its front wheel in the Arctic Ocean"

Back in Inuvik there was one last thing to be done before heading south and that was to photograph the Tatra with it's wheel in the Arctic Ocean.  We found Inuvik's only boat launch just outside of town and drove down until the front wheels were just in the salt water of the Arctic Ocean and took the pictures... we had made it!

  Finally Made It - Wheel Dip in Arctic Ocean - John Long & Helena Mitchell with the Muskrat coat made in Old Crow

It was now time to head back south on the Dempster Highway, we drove quickly back to the ferry that crosses the Mackenzie river.  On the leg to the next ferry we heard a disturbing rattling coming from the front wheel.  We pulled over and found that the shock absorber had actually come apart and was just banging around.  The rubber bushing on the bottom of the shock had come out,  I guess from the pounding of the gravel roads.  We took the shock off and tried to fix it along the side of the road with the tools we had.  After a number of tries we couldn't squeeze the rubber bushing back in, so we drove on without a shock on the front wheel.  At the Peel River crossing there was a small workshop that was used to repair machinery for the ferry operation.  We borrowed a vice and managed to force the rubber back in and installed it on the Tatra.

As we did these repairs the wind picked up and they closed the ferry because they told us the waves on the river were too big.  We waited about three hours until they decided that they would make the last trip of the day since the ferry workers lived on the other side.  They would only take a few cars and no truck because of the weight. We were now quite a bit behind schedule to get to the Eagle Plains hotel.  The weather got worse and worse as we climbed the Richardson Mountain to cross the continental divide that is the border between the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. It began to snow and visibility was down to about 15 feet. The gravel road had iced up and now was very very slippery.   We knew that because the ferry was stopped there was no one coming along that could help us.  We had the Tatra's gas heater on full as it was way below zero and the wind was really strong. We stopped at the border to take some pictures of our "summer" vacation.  Going down the other side of the Richardson Mountains was even scarier, I shifted the Tatra into first gear and crept very slowly along until we descended to a point were the snow turned back to rain.  We got into Eagle Plains late that night, the restaurant was closed and so we ate soup and sandwiches in the bar, happy we had found our way to a warm place to stay the night.

 

Coming back along the Dempster was as beautiful as going up, the sun came out and it was actually warm.  When we hit Dawson City we stopped at a $2 coin car wash and spent about $20 washing the Tatra.  I can't believe how thick the dirt and mud was especially in the rear wheel wells behind the rear fenders.

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