Dempster Diary Update 11

The Eighth Day - Innuvik


I must admit that the MacKenzie Hotel (named after Sir Alexander Mackenzie who visited the site where Inuvik now exists on July 19, 1789 on his historic trip down the Mackenzie River) was quite nice: a businessman's hotel, no doubt, certainly light years removed from the rather homey (and occasionally shabby) accommodations I had both patronized and passed by during this trip.  The rooms were clean, the halls and lobby and facilities had that scrubbed looking appearance that comes from being both new and maintained.  On the other hand, I noted with some amusement that the tables in the dining room (which were supported by had a center pillar resting on a wide pad) were liberally streaked with mud from the people staying here, which no-one had bothered to clean.  I make no further comment except to snicker a little.


All this aside, the plan for today was to figure out what to do.  I started calling around early (which was no great chore, since the sun made its appearance around five this far north, even this late in the year) to get myself on a flight to "Tuk".  This proved to be a little more challenging than I had anticipated because the listed agent no longer did the tour, and the number he gave me for a replacement operator was not answering.  I swore and went for breakfast, then headed out, camera in hand, to check out the Visitor Info Center, which was within spitting distance of the Mac.  I passed my car on the way, and ruefully noted how bespattered and absolutely filthy it was...washing this baby was going to be a chore. 

The visitor's center was an interesting architectural construction (see my pic above).  I spent a fair bit admiring the statue that fronted it.  Once inside I drifted around looking at the handicraft, the stuffed animal exhibits and found myself engaged in a fascinating discussion on the matter of the land settlement claims and agreements that the First Nations had signed with the Government, and what the curator, a handsome middle aged Innu lady of extreme dignity, had felt, both then and now. To my surprise, a lot of bands and peoples had come to their own agreements with the government, separate from the great land claim that created Nunavut, and split the (rather ill-defined) NWT into two massive pieces.  Many bands fought for their own patches and traditional grounds, separate from each other, because they felt that a central provincial government in Yellowknife (let alone Iqaluit) could not possibly understand or represent their own localized interests. Her opinions had swung in the opposite directions since, she told me, but that was more because she had come to believe greater power came through combined effort than the "each to his own" approach.


We discussed the town, the different dialects of languages spoken, hunting and wildlife, and, of course, how to get to Tuk.  My plans started to look bad because the only agency currently operating a tour, operating out of the Nova Inn, noted there were seven seats left that morning, but when two campers dropped in to the visitor's centre and we talked about it, they said I should hustle because there were only two places left.  Well, I hustled, but it was all moot, because $385 for the trip or not (my wallet groaned), the weather had closed Tuktoyaktuk. They tentatively said to check back at 6pm, but shrugged and admitted that they held no hope of things clearing.  Wrong time of year. Bad weather.  Shit happens.


Well, this was a blow, no doubt.  I'm not saying that Tuk was the great hope of my trip -- I had always intended to wrap things up at Innuvik -- but I had wanted to stretch things, obeying the same impulse such as I had had in Alaska, where I had looked with such longing at the sign pointing to Fairbanks and Anchorage, and this had looked like something easy to do.  Because the weather had been so fine on this side of the Richardson Mountains, I figured....well, what the hell.  I figured wrong.


This is where Plan B came in (I'm a great proponent of both Plan B and, where possible, Plan C).  It drives my family nuts the way I plan multiple scenarios and "what ifs".  Me, I think them indispensable. I'd rather do my worrying and thinking and planning in the quiet confines of a peaceful state of mind, rather than under the pressure of a major crisis (which is usually when you need them most).  So, as usual, I just turned 90 degrees and did Plan B, whcih was to run around Innuvik.  And there was no shortage of things to do, not least because I also wanted to buy my gifts here (yeah, I'm a tourist...despise the breed m'self, but here I had no options, really) and simply photograph the place.  Fortunately, the town being so small, it's fairly easy to walk around, though later, to get to the edges and the more residential areas (often ignored by us camera totin' snappers) and fuel up, I did take Petunia as well.




It turned out to be a lot of fun, in its own way.  I'm not the most affable individual in the world, as many have noted, but something about being out of my element brings out what little of my gregarious nature as exists, and I struck up conversations left right and centre in the stores I patronized, or the people I bumped into.  "Hey, nice tattoo...where'd you get it? Is there a place around here?" or "How do I get to.." or "Where is...?"  or "Where can I find...?" or even that old chestnut "May I take a picture?"  The last caused me most difficulty, not least because I dislike asking such a question.  But I did, on one or two occasions.  Of course, having a heavy chunk of iron like my Nikon in my hand did help me be taken "seriously" since it was clear I could brain them with it as easily as take thewir picture.  It was fun, though.

I started at the visitor's centre and worked my way down MacKenzie Road.  The Notre Dame church shaped like an igloo was closed so I could not go inside (much to my frustration). The Northern Store (fondly remembered from my days in Kujjuuaq) deserved a visit, not least because I wanted to see their Pizza Hut operation.  A franchise here just tickled me to death, and their pizza wasn't bad at all.  I went into four different arts and crafts stores looking for stuff, and finally found what I wanted in Northern Images (an Innuvik sweater for myself) and another mom-and-pop store whose name I cannot recall, where the small soapstone figurines of an Innukshuk (was there ever a symbol more closely identified with the arctic and the Innu than this?) and a crudely executed (and therefore more appealing) momma and baby polar bear. Yes I would have liked to buy something larger, more "finished", more expertly put together -- the choices were varied and the artistry and workmanship wonderful -- because there were beautiful works on sale. Innu in kayaks out hunting, seals and polar bears and combinations of all these...but facts were facts and I knew that a six hundred dollar price tag for the medium sized pieces and a thousand uip for thew more intricate ones, was simply too much right now. 

I mention one last stop, and that was Boreal Bookstore, which prompted another one of those discussions and conversations that make trips like this so worthwhile.  I browsed the largestr selection of books dedicted to Northern themes I had yet seen -- biographies of explorers, how-tos on survival, small places and their history, photographs both old and new, books on animals and plants and oh, so much else. I spoke at some length to the owners, one of whom had just driven north from Calgary as I had, and explained to me why the Cassiar Highway (the 39) was so crappy, and suggested that the pre-eminent guide to the North West of Canada was a fat tome called the Milepost, which not only listed the roads, the hotels and the greasy spoons, all of them, but the conditions of the highways.  As a one-stop shopping item, it couldn't be beat, and looking through it, I could see why she said so.  We talked about raising kids this far north (theirs were both in Calgary) and what  winter was like, the roads, getting supplies...I admire people like this immensely.  Something about the quality of life they lead makes an excess of lucre pleasant, but not mandatory.  It's a different *kind* of life from that of the cities, as I've remarked previously. Sure TV and video games exist, but there appears to be more of a sense of community in these places which I, not knowing any of my neighbors to the right or left of me in Calgary (they keep changing) occasionally miss.


Anyway, after this I picked up Petunia from the hotel and scouted for fuel, washed the mud off a bit and drove around the town.  Innuvik is in the East Channle of the MacKenize delta, at 68 degrees N Latitude and 133.5 W longitude (Vancouver is ten degrees further east), 200km north of the Arctic Circle and just a whisker south of the treeline. This creates interesting architectural choices: houses are the box shaped prefab units I've seen all over the north, but brightly coloured as anything, and the insulated utilidors that keep water ands sewage from freezing (I haven't seen that since I left Central Asia).  Most houses are on piles to avoid melting the pemafrost.  I just drank all this in and had myself a good time...what can I say.  I won't be back here again for many years, and want to store up as many memories as I can.

And that was pretty much it.  Feeties were hurting from all the walking. I checked with the agency, and yup, Tuk was still socked in, and so that last hope vanished, and there was no point putting off my return to the Mac any longer. Back I went, and, with a somewhat heavy heart, began putting my stuff together for the trip back to Dawson on the morrow.

Dempster Diary Update 10

The Seventh Day - The Dempster at last.

After a year of planning, thinking, printing, dreaming and hoping (yes, hoping -- it wouldn't have taken much to derail me and all my fancy plans, after all), it was difficult to sleep the night before making my crack at the Dempster: I knew it was just a road, and not too difficult, ut I had built it up into something so meaningful, that it was difficult to regard it as something prosaic as, for example, going to Edmonton might be.  It’s not, and can never be, just a blah thing.  Maybe of I were to do it every few days for a year it would fade into something ordinary, but I liked things just as they were: a man needs some magnificence, some eventfulness in his life, and for me, this was one of those.

So full of hope and glory, I set forth one misty morning….ok, sorry.  I’ll stop.  I promised.

I woke up in the dark at Dawson, and did the usual and slipped downstairs to have a decidedly mediocre breakfast (but next to Fast Eddie’s in Tok, they really would have had to excel to get me to write anything else) and checked out.  I told the girl I wasn’t sure when I would be back, in two days or three, but she assured me that there would be rooms, as the next week did not look busy.  Since I still had to photograph Dawson City itself (at least, the touristy section of it), I knew I would be back, and maybe so did she.

I poked my head out the door and groaned.  I was far to the north and even in this light, so early, I could see the clouds were low, it was drizzling, and it looked like one nasty nasty day, with no chances for decent pictures.  However, I moderated my whining: this was the reason I advanced my departure for Innuvik, so why the complaining?  I’d be back anyway.  And so off I went.

A little history: the Dempster Highway begins at Dempster Corner, about 30km east of Dawson City.  It is 732 km long, and depending on the season, it can be made in 12-16 hours by driving straight through, which was my intention, since I saw no advantage to staying overnight in Eagle Plain and had not the time to camp out and go hiking in pretty areas (although one day….).  The highway was commissioned in 1958, when the government of Canada decided to build a road through the Arctic wilderness, at a time when oil and gas exploration was coming and it looked like a pipeline could be built next to the road, offshore northern deposits were in the offing, and the whole north could be opened up.  It was officially opened twenty years later, in 1979.  The Canadian Forces engineers built bridges over the Ogilvy and Eagle rivers, and ferries handled the wider rivers at Fort MacPherson and Arctic Red River.

The highway sits on top of a gravel berm that varies between four to eight feed high, and whose purpose is to insulate the permafrost in the soil beneath, otherwise the road would sink ninto the ground.  The highway is named after RCMP Inspector William Duncan John Dempster, once known as “The Iron man” foir his legendary dogsled journeys from Dawson City to Fort MacPherson, sometimes in -40 C weather.  Nowadays, the highway roughly follows Dempster’s dogsled trail, which he himself learned of from the Gwitchen Indians in the area: it was always, historically, the main transport link between the Yukon and Peel river systems.

It is considered by many to be one of the great drives left on earth.  Now for my money, if there was one contender for the number one spot, it was Anchorage (or Innuvik, I’m not fussy) to Patagonia and then to Buenos Aires…the Pan-American highway.  But as something I could do, in less than three weeks, this was by far the prize winner.  I was not Che, with a motorcycle, no dependents and unlimited chutzpah.  This would have to do.

I filled up a thimble or two of fuel at Dempster’s Corner and took the obligatory photo-op at the sign (thank the Lord for remote controls) and there was no messing about with this baby, no gradually deteriorating road or any such nonsense: the gravel section started immediately, and you were on it from the get-go.

The sky was low and threatening, the drizzle constant and it was tough to maintain speed, but I had no complaints, because the quality of the road was excellent the first kilometers. That said, there was no mucking about by this lad, none of this “keep in your left lane” nonsense by me – I took dead centre of the road, gunned the engine, and moved. I trusted my experience on the roads this last week, and I trusted my car and I trusted my (rather expensive) tyres: and oh my Lord, did they ever perform for me.  The heavy tyres which made so much noise on the highways up to this point, now came into their own, because even at over 100km per hour, they gripped the road as firmly as a starving baby at Angelina Jolie’s…well you get the picture.  I went zen and simply drove, and drove hard.  I had 800km to make today, over rough ground, and nothing I had heard or been told suggested this would be a cakewalk to get through.

There was no point in taking any pictures the first miles.  The trees were too tall for me to see anything except a crappy gray sky.  This was the price I paid for coming at the tail end of the season, just when everything was getting iffy and the weather fickle, the conditions marginal.  But at 8:15 am, I burst through the trees and felt like a blind man suddenly given sight: the explosion of colours was so vivid, so intense even in spite of the soft drizzle that muted everything, that I just had to laugh in sheer delight.  Those deep rich reds and browns and yellows mized with greens and low white clouds….great mountains on the left and some to the right, capped with ice and snow…I had just crossed the North Fork Klondike river and was in the land between the Yukon and McKenzie systems, with full tundra in all directions.  Trees just vanished, it seemed.

And the road would up and around and up some ore until I was at the topo of the North Fork pass.  By this time the rather anaemic sun had come out, but it was strong enough to burn off some of the clouds that previously obscured my vision.  The splendour of the tundra and starkness of the mountains was so great that I kept jumping out of the car to take pictures.  I crossed the Ogilvie River at km 240, somewhere around 10:40, at which point once again the road climbed. About fifty km further n it really began to get crappy; muddy, bumpy, treacherous and I had to slow right down.  Visibility was getting all crappy again and I couldn’t be sure of seeing anything – already, on three occasions I had had to slow to about 30 and switch my lights on because I wasn’t just in fog, I was actually in the clouds themselves, and couldn’t see a damned thing ahead of me.

I stopped at Eagle Plain, just around the halfway mark (km 370) where there is a garage, gas station and hotel.  Since it was only 12:20, I shrugged, filled up, bummed a smoke from the attendant (what can I say?  The journey was stressful and I was drinking too much coffee to stay alert).  The road continued to stay bad for the next miles (actually, it deteriorated even further), and rain started and stopped without rhyme or reason.  Not a good way to do this, I thought.  By the time I got to the Arctic Circle at 13:00 and stopped to try and take another picture – this was not one to miss, I judged – the temperatures were below freezing, it was sleeting, and the wind was a bitter nasty slicer that cut through clothes.

Ahead I could see the flats leading up to the Richardson Mountains, all snow capped and looking good, which acted as the boundary between the Yukon and the NWT.  Once I got there and through the passes, I would be out of the Yukon and into the MacKenzie river delta system.  What I didn’t expect was how bloody cold it would get, how snow would start to fall, and yet, how utterly magnificent it all was. 

I was alone in a performing car mounted on tyres that could rape a Honda Civic, that stank of gas in the back and with (at best) meager trail rations for sustenance, driving hell for leather with total concentration in the extreme remote north of Canada while winds howled and sleet swirled all ‘round, and yet, this could not take away from my appreciation of the scenery or the occasion.  It was wild, beautiful, colourful, harsh and primeval landscape.  Man had barely visited here.  The Dempster Highway looked like an insignificant, barely visible line drawn childishly across an enormous canvas.  Was it worth it, to drive a week to see this?

Hell yes.  It was worth every penny, every minute.

I kept climbing to get to George’s Gap, and to my absolute delight, saw a small herd of caribou.  I screamed to a stop, switched out lenses to the bazooka, and I shot as much as I could before they disappeared into the snow on the next rise over.  No bear this time, maybe, but this was good enough for me.

I then came out of the Whiley Pass and saw the NWT “border”.  And to my amazement, on that side of the mountains, it was all sunlight and blue skies and puffy white clouds. I mean, my jaw just dropped open.  I was delighted, and drove right into it, but my elation was short lived, as a few miles further on, construction and repair work was going on, which meant that the going was tough and nasty and rough and very very dirty.  I soon could not see out of the back window at all. But after a further twenty km or so, this became better and I was able to make better time.

I reached the first of the two ferries, the Peel River crossing, at about three, and my luck was in because the ferry was right there, so Just drove on and was over in fifteen minutes.  I bypassed Fort MacPherson as I didn’t need gas (I had more than half a tank and less than 200 km to go).  Here the road was more of a clay mixture instead of gravel, and of excellent quality, if occasionally bumpy – the shocks got more than one surprise today, that’s for sure – and I climbed back out to 120 km/hr as I boomed north to the Tsiigehnjik  River crossing (otherwise known as the Arctic Red River) and the second ferry.  I got there an hour later and had to wait about twenty minutes.  I spent my time bumming yet another smoke and trading stories with a native guy who had just cadged a lift with the car behind me: he was going to Innuvik to see his “old lady” who was studying business admin in the University.

I didn’t know and didn’t ask his name 9and he didn’t ask me mine) but it was around here I stopped seeing the Dempster in my own one-dimensional view and saw it as more of a commercial highway.  To whit, I had considered it ore of a touristy thing than anything serving any kind of serious purpose (which of course is wrong), but north of Peel, the traffic on the road was almost 100% local, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the vagrants like me who were just passing through.  Miners, trappers, hunters, professionals, all of whom lived in these small communities, were all linked by this one road into the small villages where they lived their lives.  Odd that it had never struck me like this before.

Once the ferry got me over, I gunned the engine and really started making tracks.  It was 4:30 om and I had 130 km to go, and the road was clay and smooth and had no problems.  I touched 150km/hr once before calling myself back to reason, but it felt good to not have to be careful of every turn and bend.  The road ran straight as an arrow for miles, turned slightly, and then just as straight for another set of miles.  I was happy.  Need I say that the sun was out and shining brightly, and the temperature was a balmy fifteen or so?  My decision to come had been vindicated, in spades, though I must say I wondered what the weather on te other side of the mountains was just now.

I pulled into Innuvik around 5:30 Yukon time, which was 6:30 local in the NWT, and knew it was too late to go looking for the air company which I wanted to see if they had spots for tomorrow’s flight to “Tuk”.  I went straight into the MacKenzie hotel, checked in, and went to my room.  Then I got the internet together, started loading files and pictures, and went for dinner.  It had been a long day.

I had travelled for twelve straight hours with no rest longer than three minutes (except for self portraits, ha ha), covered 500 miles (800km), and I was bushed.  I spoke to Kym and covered the basics, and told her I was unsure of how long I would be, as it all depended on whether I could get a flight out to Tuk tomorrow.

Thus far, it’s been a great trip.  The images and the memories and these words, bear testament to the experience.  Will it end tomorrow with no flight and me going back south to Dawson?  Or will I be able to make it one leg closer to the farthest point north I can expect to go?

I guess I’ll see.

Dempster Diary Update 9

The Sixth Day: Tok to Dawson City

I keep wanting to lapse into turgid and execrable prose on occasion…it’s a failing I have.  Every time the urge manifests itself, I try to remember Asterix & Obelix, those two indomitable gauls in the funniest comic series ever written.  In one of their adventures – “The Great Crossing”, I believe – the head Norseman wants to hear of his exploits immortalized in song and the bard starts by saying “Full of hope and glory, we set forth one misty morning...” and the chieftain bellows “Cut it short you fool, or I’ll cut you short with this!” and swishes his sword.  Bard is in the next frame saying “…arrive home, stop, happy to see you, stop, the end, stop.”  Keeps me in line, that memory.  So I’ll try not to make my trip sound too much like a heroic epos.

Anyway, I woke in the US of A at five in the morning Alaska time on Sunday,  and didn’t feel like doing much of anything.  I felt lazy.  Alas, it was not to be…doing nothing was not an option today.  Dawson and the Sour Toe awaited me.  So I gathered my stuff and had a cup of coffee with the receptionist at the office, and admired their stuffed ten foot Kodiak bear, and then headed out the door.

I wasn’t going to have breakfast…the one place that had been recommended to me looked too…well…uncouth for me. Just wasn’t in the mood. But then I passed a motel with the evocative name of Fast Eddie’s with an Open sign blinking most invitingly, and I weakened and went in, and am I ever glad I went.  Because I had the Musher’s Omelette, and my lord, was that the best omelette I ever tasted or what?  Huge, filled with green onions, hash browns, peppers, sausages and the silkiest, smoothest creamiest monterrey jack cheese I have ever sampled in my life.  Aside from some of my own creations, it’s quite possible that that Musher’s Omelette is the best ever made.  Too bad the coffee was weak crap.  As before in Topley, I noted that many of the people there seemed to be regulars and old timers, from the familiar way the waitress greeted them all.  Although I noted that there were also a smattering of camo-clad hunters who were either about to set off or were recounting stories about the one that got away.

Filled up and burping gently, I took one last shot of Tok in the orange morning light and the mile sign 1338 (as measured from Dawson Creek) then set my face to the rising sun, and full of hope and glory….sorry.  I’ll stop.  Don’t know what came over me J.  I set off for the Tetlin junction, where I would take the Taylor Highway back into Canada, and to Dawson City.  Since I was delayed by breakfast, and there was that pesky speed limit to obey,  it was 8:00 before I reached it.  Squeezed off a picture or two, and off I went.

The drive today wasn’t to be a long one, about four hundred kilometers (less, actually), but I expected the going to be rough, so figured it would take six hours no matter what.  But somewhat to my surprise, the Taylor Highway – or Top of the World Highway – was well paved for quite a bit, and I was able to go right at the speed limit, when I wasn’t actually jumping out of the car to take pictures.  Because although the sky was gray and threatening rain, the colours of the landscape were so vivid, so bright, that I couldn’t resist.  Besides, I had the time, and the driving wasn’t difficult, just interesting.

I reached Mosquito Fork Creek at around ten and stopped for a few minutes to take a picture of myself for no other reason than it was possible and I wanted a break.  I was still in the US and hadn’t reached Chicken yet.  It occurred to that thus far the road had not been very challenging, and I found myself just a tad disappointed.  All my reading suggested that the going was pretty hairy and one alkways had to be careful; but thus far nothing had botne that out.  Still, the topped road was done here, so maybe after it would get better.

Pictures done, I went off the tarmac road for good in the US, and  immediately hit the township of Chicken.  The way the story goes, the miners who hit gold here, were trying to hunt ptarmigan for food in the 1890s, and wanted to call the town after their favourite lunch…but couldn’t spell it. And so Chicken it became.  The other way the legend goes, the small placers and ponds where the mining took place looked from the air like a Chicken’s foot: although how the miners could have told that before flight was invented is not recorded. By now, unfortunately, the rain was pelting down out of a depressingly gray sky, and I had ore than enough to take care of my attention with the gravel turning tricky under my tyres, so I took my time and didn’t take pictures of much of anything.

Now the road became more challenging.  I was at Mile 66 of the Taylor, about 78 miles out of Tok, and had maybe twenty more to go, all of it apparently through gravel and slick secondary roads.  That appealed to my sense of adventure a lot more than an easy route would have, but I really had to watch it now, because the road became a lot more windy and snaky through the hills (they were too small to be called mountains), and the trees were thick enough to obscure my vision even without the rain. I pushed on, crossed the South Fork river and shortly after arrived at the little intersection that marked the turn off to Eagle (where the Taylor terminates)…I took the road more travelled, down to the Canadian border.

It was just around this point I saw my first major wildlife of the entire trip thus far: a small threesome of caribou…I’d like to think it was Mommy, Daddy and the Little ‘Un.  I had been waiting for something more numerical substantial, since I knew this was caribou migration season, and the Taylor and the Dempster were both roads that the “40-mile herd” (it was, in earlier times, supposedly that long from beginning to end) crossed at this time of the year. But even so, they were skittish and just the motion – let alone the sound – of me opening the door was enough to get them to twitch away. I perforce had to shoot them through the window, and I can’t say I was satisfied, but it was more than I started with: they then vanished into the vegetation at the side of the road.  I wish I could have had more time to watch them.  I don’t expect bears or wolves, but even small fauna would have been nice.  I guess they avoid the roads and the noisy cars that travel there, and I can’t say I blame them.

And then I was up against the border, and the experience was as painless as it had been in the opposite direction.  I was asked by a tall young brunette who looked very competent, how long I had been away (24 hours), did I bring back souvenirs (no), parcels (no), food (no), pets (also no) and  was then most cordially sent on my way.  I love having a Candian passport.  It makes crossing these borders that are so difficult to get into as a foreigner, so much easier.

And here, though the road got better, I was suddenly enveloped in a whiteout.  It was snowing.  I sighed and slowed right down.  Only in Canada.  I come back and five minutes later it’s snowing.  And through this pea-soup of fog and sleet and snow, which lasted all of half an hour, I finally realized why this was called the Top of the World Highway: not because it’s so far north, but because, as it wends on, it literally is on a height with all the other hills and mountains around it.  It went around and over hill after hill, always right at the crest or just under it, and I looked down into steep drops that made me extremely nervous.  The photographs I took really don’t do it justice, for sure. 

What I liked even more than the spectacular views – after the weather started to clear – was the profusion of colours. There were greens and browns and reds, purples, blues, subtle shades of all these for which only an artist could have had names.  The lack of a visible sun softened the light in a way that did not diminish this storm of colours through which I drove, and I kept stopping to take even more pictures.  What a drive!  When Drew told me that the season was just turning and this was the time to do the drive, he knew what he was talking about.  At one point I just got out and walked up the hill, the moss so springy under my shoes that it felt like a bed, and gleaming an iridescent, wet green and brown. I’ve never been in a landscape even remotely like this one and knew it would be a long time before I was again, so I was storing up memories.

It was with real regret that I finally noticed the road tending downwards, the vegetation getting thicker again, and I could see a major river off to the side: the Yukon.  Dawson City was near. The road wound around a little more and then came out at the bank, where the ferry was visible on the other shore.  Within ten minutes it was back (there was a young Innu girl as the pilot in the high wheelhouse, I saw with appreciation), and then I was over the river and in Dawson proper.

An interesting town, I noted immediately.  Whitehorse had an occasional building or series of buildings which had that old fashioned look, mixed in with many more modern ones: here, the whole downtown had that aged, frontier appearance, as if it had just been a few years ago that the miners, the saloons, the dancing girls and old telegraph houses and RCMP detachments had been occupied by those long ago denizens.  I liked it.  The weather would have to get a little better before I could take any kind of decent pictures, but there was quite an abundance of material to begin with.

I drove to the Downtown Hotel with its Jack London bar (anyone who goes to the north should absolutely read Jack London, and not just “White Fang” or “Call of the Wild”, but “Batard” and “To Build a Fire” as starters), home of the famous “Sour-Toe” cocktail.  I checked in, called Kym to make sure she knew I had arrived ok, rested fo a bit, and considered my moves for the next few days.

Sleeping for a few hours didn’t help me much. I went down to the  Jack London bar, and engaged the plump Australian bartender in conversation just to pass the time while my inevitable burger was being prepped.  She told me something about how she, and aussie, got over to the Yukon of all places, and I remembered a similar conversation I had in Toronto with my dark skinned Aussie pal from Sri Lanka, when we worked together at Nestle: he mentioned that there was a work program for aussies in Canada, and indeed, that is exactly what she said.  She apparently likes the cold and the communality that comes as a result, after all the tourists have bailed.  Having seen something similar in my short time at Kujjuuaq, I can certainsly understand.

And for some reason, that helped me make my decision.  I would leave tomorrow for Innuvik, and take my chances.  The weather was going to be shitty no matter what, internet in this hotel was out till Tuesday and the weather was crap here too….what would be gained by staying?  Might as well go, make for Tuk too (sounds funny, doesn’t it?), and come back down at a leisurely pace when (hopefully) the weather would be better.. I would havr to fill up, pack up and be ready to bail early.  I told Jamie, the girl at the front desk, that I would be leaving, she gave me some good advice, and that was that.  Sunday bwas over.  I had driven 193 miles (~310km) over rough ground, and the next two days would see ore of the same.

Monday, then, the Dempster it would be.

Dempster Diary Update 8

The Fifth Day: From Whitehorse to Tok (US)

There’s no particular reason I had to go into the US, aside from my dislike of repeating any route I’ve been on before (I call it running in circles, ha ha). Truth to tell, after consulting my map yesterday, I knew that the trip could just as easily gone straight up Highway 2 from Whitehorse through Carmacks, and on to Dawson City from the south, thereby saving me two days going west to Tok at the Tetlin Junction in the US, and then east again, arriving at Dawson from that direction.  I would, of course, have had to repeat the journey back down again (hmmm….).  But the thing was, also, that to be able to say, as one hoists one’s tankard and sneers at the lesser bred who took a cut-rate package tour down to Cancun for a hundred bucks,  to be able to say that one had been on the “Top of the World Highway” and stopped over at Tok and Chicken…well, to compare that with saying that one had gone north on the #2 or I got a deal on a vacation – it just doesn’t have the same ring, somehow.  What can I say. On such small points of future beer stories do long journeys hang.

So this morning, all packed, I started my day at six with three acts of cheapness that would have made my penny-watching, deal-sniffing wifey gasp, then sniff, then dab her eyes, and say, “I’m so proud.” I’ve driven her to utter distraction on occasion with my usual shrug and indifferent, “The few extra bucks don’t matter” statements that have her hands itching to once again caress an AK and perhaps point it in the direction of my nether regions.  But I digress. 

To begin with, I had been told that there was a $25 reduction in my bill for a “walk in incentive” two days ago.  The morning clerk had forgotten or was not aware, so I cheerfully reminded him (at six in the morning with a trip to look forward to, I’m very cheerful indeed), and he proceeded to knock it off both days, for which I was duly grateful. Then I was out of small bills, so tipped rather measily for breakfast, apologizing to the (new) waitress for my scandalous lack of couth and begging her not to think of me as a cheap bastard (even though I was).  And lastly I actually found a gas station after a mere fifteen minutes or so, that had the cheapest gas in Whitehorse, and happily waited five minutes for them to open for me, and filled up. Dearest wife, I hope you have read this, are nodding and approve and are muttering happily “Pravilna” and “Haroshi malchyk”.  However, do not take this as license to now go and find ways to spend my saved sixty bucks…I have plans for this $$.

But anyway.

Off I went out of Whitehorse, and hit the Alaska Highway (why they call it that when it’s actually in Canada for most of the way is not a question I have heard answered yet) by seven.  The weather report was miserable: rain and showers, with Sunday looking just as bad.  But as I drove, the weather was great: lowering dark gray clouds for sure, but also a bright sun behind them, peeking out every now and then to illuminate the landscape.  I was definitely away from inhabited parts after the first miles.  There was, quite literally, no-one home.  The landscape was deserted, and I passed as many abandoned shacks and old houses and buildings as I did inhabited ones.  And in each one where I saw some semblance of habitation, where a car was parked and toys were strewn in a yard jam packed with discarded, rusting relics of machines long dead, I wonder: who lived there?  What did they do?  Why did they live there?  How do they eke out a living in this place where probably the only regular paying work is for the government or some road contractor, a town-based business, a tourist-related trade, or maybe a guide?  What keeps them in this place? The question fascinated me.

The Alaska highway was built in the 1940s, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.  The Americans realized that the sparsity of communications and links up north could possibly lead to an invasion that might not even be heard about for months, so they put together a small army of 10,000 men and constructed the road from Dawson Creek in B.C.,  to Fairbanks in Alaska, some 1500+ miles of road – in nine months.

I joined the Highway the day I emerged from the thousand kilometer drive up the 37, and have stayed with it since Watson Lake.  Now I was going on another section, from Whitehorse to Tetlin Junction in Alaska. It was a reasonable drive, about 625km, not too taxing, and because the weather was so fine, I paid careful attention to the scenery.  Here and there I could see where the route of the highway has been changed, to make it straighter: the old section of the road that the Americans built is slowly going back to bush, but can still be seen, the way I once saw the ghost of the old 1950s cattle trail from the Rupununi to Georgetown being swallowed up by the jungle, but visible to those with an eye to see.  Drew had explained it to me: the engineers deliberately made the route a snaky one through the mountsins so that Japanese planes could use them as runways, nor would they be so easy to bomb.  After the war, when such fears receded somewhat, certain sections were made more navigable, but the ghosts of the old road are still there, as they were in an RV camp I saw, which still held relics of the construction and military equipment used, or the 1942 GMC truck perched on a hill I passed too quickly to take its picture.

I passed Haines Junction at around 8:45 and a hundred miles into it, fueled up (as it has now become my practice to do every time I approach half a tank) and continued.  The weather continued to be great – dark, lowering clouds pierced by dazzling gold sunlight of a particular hue that is impossible to describe precisely.  Sometimes, coming over a rise, I saw great pillars of sunlight pouring from rents in the clouds, and march in stately procession across the low lands beneath.  I kept jumping out of the car to take a picture, bemoaning my lack of ability to capture what my eyes saw so clearly.

When I passed Kluane Lake – a very wind-chopped body of water today – my luck with ‘trust, no security’ streak came to an end at a small place where the guy asked to hold my credit card at Destruction Bay (how appropriate is that?). before turning on the pumps or me to refuel.  Bummer.  The lake is surrounded on all sides by mountains and long shelving beaches, but for sheer magnificence can’t hold a candle to Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan for grandeur, and since the light was wrong, I regretfully could not get any picture worth a damn, and pushed on.

I finally hit Beaver Creek, the easternmost settlement of Canada, at around 12:30.  There’s a small RCMP station here, more gas, the usual shops and knick-knack sellers, plus an equal assortment of long abandoned buildings, where people or their businesses have simply folded.  I’d sorely love to do a photo essay on these little towns, though I concede I lack the friendliness and approachability – the love of other people – which would make such a venture a success.  In any case, at this particular juncture, I was more concerned about crossing the border than I was about essays or “the colourful 5%” as they are referred to here.

I always detest border crossings of any kind.  That great economist, John  Maynard Keynes, once noted (in an essay that some see as the precursor of globalization’s effects) that an Englishman could, without moving from his door, invest his capital worldwide, afford himself of the bounty the world had to offer, or travel without hindrance or passport across any land. I have paraphrased that here, but the gist is there; not so, now, alas.  We now live in a world of rigorously patrolled borders and officious nonsense preventing free movement of people or labour. And my experiences with border guards were never really that pleasant for me, because under all the affability and mutual bonhomie, I always felt that if one of them one day decided to be pissy and not like the colour of my eyes, well, he could just stop me, and there was precious little I could do.  In some countries, the ever-present fragrant grease could not be avoided.  So even though I knew (better than my wife, who received hers on the same day I did) that my Canadian passport granted swift passage to the US, you can forgive me for being quite antsy about it.

I was actually so wound up that I completely forgot to take a picture of the signpost welcoming me to Alaska as I passed it, and that annoyed me so intensely that it snapped me right out of my funk: because wasn’t I the guy who told Kym that we are afraid of too much in our lives, and that we live with a constant low-grade apprehension surrounding us at all times?  Fear for our kids playing on the street, of the food we eat, getting fat, getting cholesterol, getting sick, being attacked, being alone, being old…fear of trying?  This shit had to stop.

And so I approached the border crossing in a more zen frame of mind (hush, ye snickerers), and answered the litany which the blonde, crew cut young man posed, as he probably had to hundreds in the past week: was I alone, did I have a pet, where did I live, how long was I staying, did I have any firearms.  The usual. He didn’t offer to look into the car, and I didn’t volunteer. I did see him smile a bit when I said I was just staying in Tok for a night and then heading to Dawson the next day.  I guess he sees a lot of nutty Canadians who want to say they had done the Taylor Highway (which is what the yanks, poor lost lambs, call the Top of the World highway).  And he waved me casually through without further ado.  Sixty seconds, start to finish.  I drove out, up a hill and around a corner and the little border point was already invisible, and I could no longer tell where Canada ended and the USA began.  What a total waste of time, I thought, the way I do every time I cross a border.

Now that I was in the US, I faced an ethical dilemma: in Canada, I had a good feel for where the ghost cars were and if any was keeping tabs on my speed: in the north, outside the towns and cities, you can take that to be almost never.  I had regularly travelled for long stretches at 120 km per hour, sometimes higher.  There were often hundreds of kilometers where I didn’t even see a speed limit sign, though logic told me it was probably meant to be whatever the last one was, usually 100.  Here, though, the signs saying 55 mph was the speed limit, were posted every few miles, and so I took no chances, chafed at the restriction, and moseyed on at the equivalent of 90 km per hour.  Grrr.  It made the eighty miles to Tok a pain in the ass, especially when I was stuck behind three slow-coach RVs that were doing about 48.

I have to be honest, though and admit that when at 12:30pm Alaska time, I saw a sign that said “Anchorage, 534 miles” I was tempted, sorely tempted, to go further, take this trip to the logical, even ultimate conclusion – the end of the road.  Because I could go to Fairbanks first – this is where the Alaska Highway officially ends – and then drift on to Anchorage, all in a single day.  But then reality asserted itself, and I regretfully turned away from this altogether excellent idea.  It could be done, yes, but just because it could, didn’t mean it should.  I had made my plans and reservations and much as I would like to wing it and go all the way, this was not the time.  Later, perhaps – after all, I had already done more than I had expected or dreamed of a mere year ago.  Why be greedy?

Tok, like Haines junction, and Bell 2 before that, was no more than a small collection of houses, gas stations, souvenir shops and motels, plus a contingent of state troopers and a smattering of smaller businesses mostly involved, I would guess, in construction. I fueled up and checked into my fleabag motel, which helpfully informed me that (a) their restaurant was closed for the season so I could pick one of two greasy spoons they would recommend up the road (b) cash was fine if I didn’t want to trouble with my credit card and (c) yes they had wireless internet, but I would have to register online with my credit card and pay $6.95 for a 24-hour useage. Ah well – I guess my own cheapness was coming back to haunt me. However, to my delight, Rogers was active so I spent some minutes on the clock leaving a message for Kym to let her know I had arrived safely and was now ensconced in yet another fleabag.

Given it was now close to five, and since I had food in the car, I just schlepped what needed into the room, parked my car right outside, and mournfully warmed up two tins of soup (which my darling wife probably got on sale) on the baseboard heater (well ok, so I was lazy and not inclined to be picky, what of it…I was tired) and some trail mix, stuffed my face with some sausage, and actually had a pretty good dinner. 

The soup tasted like it had old cardboard and sawdust I it, but the sausage and the trail mix were fine.

When I talked to Kym later, she had no sympathy, and rather snippily informed the love of her life (I hesitate to use the term “Lord and Master”, much as I’d like to) that this was the just reward of faithless husbands who abandon their dedicated, long-serving, loving wives to go on long, selfish holidays on their own, drive to remote and romantic locations and have great fun, leaving aforementioned wife alone to deal with bills, garbage, kids and all other issues of a domestic nature.  I was archly informed that she was glad, *glad*, that all I had was soup and trail mix, and she hoped it tasted real nice, ‘cause she got it all special for me from the Starvation Army food bank basket…a year ago.  Apparently she saved it for a special occasion.

I dunno. Somehow I always end up on the losing end of an argument like that.  I save sixty dollars and get fed canned cardboard soup. There is no justice in the world.  And just to show I am serious, please see my last photo of the day: note the can next to the computer.

Tomorrow: on to Dawson City…and the preserved toe.