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.