It continued to rain all night long, but it tapered off as we drove north through the Cassiar Mountains. The deep valleys were full of wedged in clouds and there was water everywhere – Fernie called the land ‘muskeg’; I’ve heard the term but I must check on the origin of the word. Never have I seen such moisture in July – every crevasse has a waterfall and the torrents attack the road causing washouts and mudslides. And then suddenly, the rain stopped and there was a glimpse of the sun. Our spirits lifted and we hoped it wouldn’t disappear again.
There had been no centre line on any of the northern half of the BC portion of the Cassiar Highway – now suddenly we entered the Yukon to a yellow centre line and just a few miles later onto the Alaska Highway – pure heaven, we were able to drive 100 kph (60mph) again. The road had shoulders, centre lines, smooth pavement, & wide medians at each side. The Cassiar was like a country lane in comparison. A long sweeping snake of a highway was visible for miles ahead – because it was built high up, the vistas were magnificent.
Not only does Mukluk Annie offer free camping but there are picnic tables, fire rings and beautiful views over Lake Teslin; some spots were nestled in the trees and some were wide open (good for solar and satellite TV). FREE is the key word; it’s the carrot to draw folks in to dine on the famous ‘salmon bake’. Huge signs offered: FREE RV wash; FREE dump station and water; FREE boat rides. You don’t have to go for the ‘salmon bake’ – but I guess just about everyone does.
Fernie spotted a couple adjusting an Internet satellite dish beside their trailer and walked over to strike up a conversation – always on the watch for a signal that we could latch on to, but they were unable to get a connection because of the cloud cover apparently. Oh well. I was particularly interested in their system when the woman told me she was Canadian and paid only $69/month for her Internet service. Mind you, the cost of the dish and the initial set-up was about $2,000. Think I’ll stick to stolen wifi.
Note for the future: She bought the hardware from www.techmcw.com and paid Hughes Net for her monthly service.
About 6 o’clock, we strolled over to Annie’s for dinner and the satellite dish couple (later we found out they were Barbara and Bill) arrived at the same time so we asked them to join us for dinner. Another couple from Wisconsin who they’d just met came in and they joined us as well. The Wisconsin couple, a happy laughing duo were just on their way home after spending the last rainy month in Alaska and they shared lots of boondocking hints and horror stories about some of the roads they’d encountered. Several others from the café came over to tell us their stories too and I made mental notes, which I hope to be able to retrieve when needed.
The dinner itself was an interesting affair. A salad bar, baked potatoes, fresh rolls and butter and a cauldron of baked beans were on a buffet and it was an ‘all-you-can-eat’ sort of thing; the salmon was grilled on a huge indoor barbecue and brought to our table. Fabulous! The meal ended with a brownie and tea for dessert – all for $16. When we paid our bill, the cashier handed us our ticket for the FREE boat ride. “Gotta hurry” she said “it leaves in ten minutes – at 8 o’clock sharp”. Of course I can’t resist anything for nothing, so we trotted down to the dock and aboard the pontoon boat. All the other people from the restaurant were on board already – acting as if they were old friends. The hilarity was deafening as the boat pulled away. The 72 mile long Lake Teslin was calm, the sun was peeking between the clouds and birds circled overhead. However, that was about the excitement during the hour-long ride. The cap’n did bring a bag of bread crusts for us to feed the gulls – that entertained us for a bit and we did enjoy the jovial camaraderie.
A huge bonfire had been set-up in the middle of the camping area when we returned and several groups wandered over to join in. We elected instead to watch a movie and go to bed - at 11:30 pm ----- and it still wasn’t dark.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
We awoke to blue sky – small patches of it anyway. It was so cold though and we had the heat on high as we drove to civilization – Whitehorse, which somehow seemed such a huge metropolis after the wilderness. The sun came out, the clouds rolled back and we were able to take off our sweatshirts again – Yowee!
We geocached enroute and then again when we got to Whitehorse. It’s a great way to visit a new place. We stopped for the night at the Walmart, as did about fifty other RV’s. We really needed to stock up on groceries. Next-door was a huge Canadian Tire, which had a wonderful unsecured wifi signal – too bad it had signs warning “No overnight parking”. So I propped my laptop on my knees in the Honda and did my stuff.
Oh, Tammy Faye Bakker died – and she was born the same year as me – that’s uncomfortable. There she is being interviewed by Larry King - not too long ago, weighing 65 pounds – she’s a pathetic skeleton and looks like an embalmed corpse ready for viewing; and she still has on that appalling eye makeup. Her voice is a strained whisper and it is so hard to watch her. Oh well, she has or should I say had ‘her faith’.
Monday, July 23, 2007
5:30am , a car careened through the Walmart parking lot and a raucous and ear piercing “Wake up you FxxxxxS! Good morning Vietna.a.a.a.am” emananated from raw male adolescent throats. They put the bass on full and blasted their music as they shrieked their greeting over and over. After three or four sweeps through the RV area, they got bored and moved on. It can’t be too satisfying when you don’t get a reaction.
An hour later, a shake on my leg “Time to get up” and another shake when I just groaned and rolled over. Then he shook Caesar and got a growl in response. Caesar and I were in agreement “It’s too damned early to get up”. But Fernie was persistent; Kal Tire opened at 7:30am and he wanted to get Maggie’s wheel re-torqued. So we tumbled out but we didn’t have to be happy about it - - - did we?
Fernie worked for Canadian Freightways for 44 years – his entire career. I guess when you’ve given so much of your life to a company, it gets in your blood. He always had a love of the north and an affinity for the northern operations because he started right out of school in Dawson Creek – Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway. So I understood why he wanted to visit the CF Whitehorse terminal. While Maggie was in the tire shop, I drove Fernie to CF only a mile down the road and he made a call. Caesar and I waited in the car and when he came out he said, “They’re still working 16 hour days”. I guess he won’t be going back to work anytime soon.
Tim Horton’s – ten times as busy as Starbucks; what a success story. I’m addicted to their steeped tea and really needed a sugar fix to jolt me awake and a lemon drop donut did its magic. It cleared away all the cobwebs.
The glorious day made it such a pleasure to drive north on the Klondike
Highway. Blue skies seem so vast and open whereas the low grey clouds are so claustrophobic. The scenery is majestic as the road follows the mighty Yukon River. An enormous fire started by campers in 1998 eradicated an immense area of forest near Fox Lake. Nine years later the regrowth is well on its way and it has an incongruous beauty. A nature trail meanders through and I marvelled at the fireweed that cast a fuschia-coloured aura. The charcoal timbers were glossy black and shone in the sunshine; red-berried groundcover; yellow flowers; gauzy grasses; it was a marvellous sight.
We stopped at a rest area beneath Conglomerate Mountain for Fernie to catch a snooze. I strolled among the massive boulders consisting of miscellaneous pebbles all stuck together with a natural cement. This mountain and these rocks are remnants of the Jurassic period.
A melee (flock?) of chattering magpies with flashes of iridescent turquoise blue on their wings congregated around Maggie. It sounded as if an army of them were walking on our roof with boots on. There’s a noticeable lack of bugs in the Yukon – there are some wasps and bees, but none of those nasty black flies and pesky mosquitoes. I wonder why?
We pulled into Carmacks and browsed around some of the old 19th century cabins and roadhouse.
A series of roadhouses were built all along the Klondike Hwy between Whitehorse and Dawson City in gold rush times. Several of them 
are still relatively intact. Fernie commented that he had been born in a turf-roofed cabin very similar to one that I was interested in – and I did remember seeing photos of his mother and him as a baby outside a comparable cabin. That is so amazing to me having always lived in and around a city. Vegetables grow fast and huge up here in the land of the midnight sun. I marvelled at the gardens and the prolific produce.The young woman at the info bureau in Carmacks told me that there was no problem parking our RV overnight in most rest areas and pullouts on the highway (unlike those in BC).
So we drove along to the Five Finger Rapids Recreation Site and decided it was a perfect spot to stay the night. It was located high above the Yukon River and the Five Fingers but the province had built long stairways down. It was now pretty scorching hot but we had to go down to view the rapids up close. A mile down and 202 steps seemed pretty easy in descent but I kept thinking of the hike back up. 
It was so worth it though….the view of the huge rocks was splendid – eagles and gulls soared and the river roared. I gritted my teeth and we tackled the ascent. Hot and sweaty when we returned, we craved a tall, cold vodka and tonic.
A cache is planted here, just 25 feet from the front of the motorhome, supposedly by the trash barrel. It’s a micro cache and it’s driving me nuts because I just can’t find it. I’ve been out four times and I’ve stuck my gloved fingers into every orifice possible. (Found out later that this cache is gone – and it drove me so crazy)
There were sporadic visitors to the rest area through the evening but the road is so quiet. I took a photo of Fernie writing notes with no artificial light and the clock reads 11:01pm. Maybe it will never get dark tonight.Tuesday, July 24, 2007
A monsoon hit in the middle of the night but we were high and dry and we just snuggled deeper into our duvet. We woke to such fresh smelling air and just remnants of clouds. It promised to be another glorious day.
A volcano in the St. Elias Mountains in eastern Alaska is thought to have blown its top in a massive explosion around 700 AD. The white ash covered a large area of the southern Yukon. The white layer is plainly visible where the highway has been excavated at roadside. I had assumed, in error, that the white layer was limestone.
The natives have seemingly had problems with drugs because before entering the native Selkirk settlements of Pelly Crossing and Carmacks, huge signs declared “Drugs are not welcome here”.
Along a 6 km gravel stretch, a construction zone, signs denoted the speed limit as 50kph; three or four pickup trucks passed us in the opposite direction at I’d guess double that speed and wouldn’t you know it the last one kicked up gravel and badly chipped the drivers side windshield.
There was no observable wildlife along the Klondike Highway until just a few miles outside Dawson City. In a river beside the road, a very small baby moose stood knee deep in the water, drinking. Where was the Mom?
Fernie phoned Hank of Versatile Glass in Dawson to see about getting the windshield chip repaired. We’d been told last year that
if you get chips repaired within 48 hours, they will be as strong as new and won’t spread. Hank said ‘come on in right now’ so we did. Half an hour later and a payment of $35 cash, no receipt, and it was done. He made a point of walking over to the car where I was waiting to strike up a conversation with me. Hank arrived from Holland 25 years ago and settled in Dawson never going back to his native country. I found it strange that a garrulous guy like himself would bury himself way up here. We asked Hank about boondocking spots around town and he said the locals do not approve and would probably ask us to move along. It’s a tourist town and they support their local merchants – and that goes for campgrounds – can’t fight it. We settled into Guggieville where they gave us one of two unserviced sites for $15. We don’t need all the nuisance of hookups and the serviced lots are so close together. We were all alone in our own corner of the campground.
Dawson City, on the banks of the Yukon River is a truly authentic gold rush town; many of the old original buildings still survive though mostly boarded up and falling down.
The new buildings have been built in the style of the era and so it’s like stepping back in time. They’ve made a tourist mecca out of it and have revived the Palace Theatre and of course the famous Diamond Tooth Gertie’s gambling hall and saloon. The cabins of Jack London and Robert Service are on display in the high end of town and right across the road is the childhood home of Pierre Berton. Jack London’s cabin was reconstructed in Dawson as it was actually 100km away. It was really agreeable strolling the boardwalks around the quaint town and we stopped at Sourdough Joe’s for a halibut dinner after.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Caesar’s eye is infected so we checked with the information centre to find a vet in town – but there isn’t one. They offered a long distance phone number but I figured that I’d just talk to the local pharmacist to see what I could buy at the drug store to clear it up – but there is no pharmacist in town. How do people live in places that don’t have the necessary services? I remembered using Polysporin eyedrops to clear up an infected eye I’d had and I’d bought them over the counter – but do you think they had anything like them? No. The best I could do was buy an eyewash, so every morning and evening I cleanse his eye and if it doesn’t clear up, we’ll find a vet when we get to Fairbanks.
A geocache took us up to the tippy-top
of ‘The Dome’, the mountain looming over Dawson City. What a view! We passed the old cemetery on the way and ambled around the tumbled over stones – I love old cemeteries. Another geocache took us along a road that skirted many of the old gold mines. The tailings and debris still remain all these years later.
You can’t leave Dawson without an evening at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s, the ‘piece de resistance’ of Dawson City, so we’d heard. A $6 each admittance fee bought us entry to the gambling hall, saloon and theatre – all the same room – and three shows over the course of the evening if you wanted to hang around that long. Fernie checked out the single poker table but they were trying to gather people for a tournament with a $36 buy in. He turned up his nose at that – and anyway, he wanted to keep me company to watch the show.
Gertie’s is a venue that has been cloned many times throughout North America – in Barkerville, Deadwood, Tombstone and so forth. Trite? – certainly. Entertaining? – somewhat. However, the onslaught of overweight (a lot bigger than me) middle Americans from a Fantasy RV Caravan Tour that washed in like a tidal wave, would totally disagree. They tapped their toes, some of the smaller ones got up and swung their hips, they sang-along, clapped along, got up onstage and did the can-can and laughed uproariously at the ‘not so funny’ jokes. “Please don’t let me ever evolve into one of them” I prayed – not that any greater power is out there listening for me.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Dempster Highway is a 750 kilometre gravel highway north from Dawson to Inuvik, and there was no way we’d put Maggie through the torture of travelling that road. So we stored her at the campground in Dawson, threw sleeping bags, pillows, food, water and stuff for about three days into the back of the Honda. Oh, and of course, we tossed Caesar in too. He’s an exceptional traveller and quickly made himself comfy in his bed on the back seat.
The Dempster’s reputation of ultimate beauty and the last truly accessible wilderness was what drew us.
It’s the only Canadian highway that crosses the Arctic Circle. There were a series of geocaches all the way up to Inuvik, with the first at mile 0. They gave us regular breaks with hikes and opportunites to wonder at the immense beauty of the open country. The scenery was changeable as we progressed. From forest, to plains, to plateaus, to high mountain passes, to tundra. There were no power poles, no signs of civilization beyond the ribbon of unpaved road winding ahead. The road surface was excellent in some places, loose gravel & rock in others, some long stretches of construction but overall it was a very good road – maybe I say that because the Honda rode it so well. Some stretches we were able to do 100 kph and were mostly able to do around 80kph. There were very few people driving the road; some foolish souls actually took their motorhomes and trailers and they slowly negotiated the route taking three days to navigate it. One Roadtrek, which is a small and expensive van-type motorhome, tore out his brake lines and the driver was waiting on the side of the road for help to come. A local had called ahead to Fort McPherson and he said they’d be towing him. Funny thing though, his vehicle was still on the road when we returned. We also saw a large trailer mounted on the back of a big flat deck truck. We were so glad Maggie was safe and sound in Dawson.
About 60 km along, we ascended above the tree line into tundra and the most majestic landscape possible. We were awe-struck at the immense green spiky mountains and vast stretches of open tundra. The wildflowers were vivid especially the predominant fireweed. It was a magic land, reminiscent of that in The Lord of the Rings. I know that was filmed in New Zealand but they could have quite well used the north Yukon. Most of the geocaches we hunted along the Dempster required a bit of a hike through woods or across the tundra. It was strange ground that we walked on with the mosses, and tightly knit groundcovers making a springy surface – it was like walking on a mattress.
Eagle Plains is the first sign of civilization; it’s half way to Inuvik – about 375km. It is today what it was once built for – a service stop with just a gas station, repair shop, motel and restaurant but it’s a welcome and necessary stop even though dusty and bleak. We just gassed up and moved on – destination Inuvik!
The territory changed a few miles after entering the Northwest Territories. It was much lower and wetter – the start of the huge Mackenzie Delta and as a result there were so many flying insects. The grader operators even wore mosquito net hats.
A flagman at a construction zone stopped us and the young native man told us it would be a five minutes or so wait. He batted mindlessly at the swarm of mosquitoes that were circling his head. I wondered if he used a repellent, but later found out by personal experience that no repellent works in this area that’s over-populated with mosquitoes.
“Is that your dog?” I asked seeing an animal scoot behind his truck and into the bushes.
“Naw, that’s a fox I bin feedin’ so he hangs around” he answered in a strong native (Dene) accent. With that, the charcoal grey fox snuck out onto the road again, looked us all over and stalked off down the road.
“You seen any grizzlies?” he continued.
“No, are there any around here?”
“Lots of em – just look beside the road and they’ll be there eatin”. I don’t know if he was fooling me or not because we sure didn’t see any grizzlies. During that minute of conversation, at least a hundred of those voracious mosquitoes had moved into the car and we spent the next hour slapping and crushing as many of their nasty little bodies as we could…….and it was our blood that oozed from their carcasses. I normally don’t like blood sport but when it comes to mosquitoes………I’m like a big game hunter.
There are two ferry crossings a couple of hours south of Inuvik. The first crosses the Peel River, a tributary of the Mackenzie and the second crosses the Mackenzie. The lone visible ferry worker was hosing down the ferry deck as the empty boat glided across the wide river to pick us up – we were the only ones waiting. A wide toothless smile greeted us as we climbed out of our car onboard. He obviously was lonely for conversation.
“Big river, eh? And the Mackenzie – she’s way bigger.”
We nodded our agreement.
“Is this your first time up here? How do you like it? Where are you from?”
I asked him if he’d ever visited Vancouver.
“Naw – I’ve lived here 48 years and never been nowhere but here.”
He was referring to the Fort McPherson area of NWT which is inhabited mostly by the Dene.
“Well, once I bin to Inuvik and it was such a big city and it was so busy it almost drove me crazy”
That really made us smile as the population of Inuvik is only a bit more than 3,000.
After thirteen hours of dusty and bumpy roads, we suddenly found ourselves on pavement again….we had reached Inuvik.
All we wanted was a motel room with a shower and a comfortable bed. It was 10:30pm in bright sunshine of course and just on the outskirts of town, we drove down the lane to the Arctic Chalets – a known dog-friendly inn. But a ‘No vacancy’ sign greeted us – guess we should have reserved. Oh well, we’ll just go into town to one of the larger hotels.At the first “Sorry, we do have rooms but we don’t take dogs. The Mackenzie Hotel does – but they’ll give you a smoking room.”
At the Mackenzie “Sorry we’re fully booked”. I was almost glad because the thought of a room stinking of smoke turned me right off.
The only other hotel was one that the clerk at the first hotel did not recommend “It’s a pretty wild and tough place”.
“There’s no room at the inn” Fernie said with a long face as he clambered back in the car.
We discussed leaving Caesar in the car to sleep……well, not really discussed because we both agreed we’d never do that. So what was left? Guess we’d sleep in the car – after all I’d brought sleeping bags and pillows.
We knew we’d need snacks to keep us going through the night – after all, we hadn’t even had dinner so we drove down the main street of town looking for an open market. It was almost midnight by now and the dusty and depressing street was filled with little children, three or four years old playing as if it were noon – across from the scuzzy hotel where drunks were falling out the door. Maybe their parents were in there. The midnight sun is an eerie light and casts strange and spooky shadows – I found it a bit depressing.
We pulled into a local park by the river but about twenty or thirty youth had a huge bonfire and were partying there. So, where to go? I suggested a campsite and that’s what we did. At least there were washrooms and hot showers.
The hideous part was that thousands of mosquitoes descended on us as we exited the car. So trying to get the car ready for two of us and our little king dog to sleep with all the windows and doors closed was a tricky production. 
We put our cooler minus food, and other non-necessary items outside to make more room. My first suggestion was for Fernie to recline the passenger front seat and for me to curl up on the back seat while our royal hound curled up in his bed on the driver’s seat. That lasted all of ten minutes. I would have to be two foot shorter to even manage it. We couldn’t figure out how to make the seats go flat but we knew that they were supposed to. So 1:00 am (still light enough to read – it never did get dark) and we have the Honda manual out and we’re performing contortions so as not to let any bugs in. Finally, success! We spread out our sleeping bags and Caesar settled into his princely position – right between our pillows. But it was far from comfortable - there was a big bump sticking in our backs. We lasted until about 5am and got up.Cranky and tired, we figured coffee, tea and a big old fashioned breakfast would make it all better. The Mackenzie Hotel was the only place in town offering such a thing – and they sure jacked up the prices – omelettes $13?. Anyway, we felt renewed and decided to chase some geocaches around town while seeing the highlights. That was a bit of a fizzle because the mosquitoes never sleep – we ran with jackets over our heads to get back to the car.
The population of Inuvik is a mixture of Dene (pronounced denay), Inuit and whites who are in the minority. At the info centre, a lovely native (Dene, I think) woman told me a bit about their area and just generally chatted about life and travel. Surprisingly, she’d visited Europe several times – I guess I was stereotyping (that’s dangerous) and expected that none of the population were in any way sophisticated. Well, I was wrong.
All the buildings in Inuvik are built above ground on pilings because of the permafrost – it makes for a very strange looking community. We hit the highlights and that took all of an hour. The Igloo Church, the community greenhouse, public buildings and parks – that’s where the mosquitoes attacked us.
Gee, what else would we do in Inuvik? We certainly didn’t look forward to a gourmet dinner there and didn’t want to stay in a smoky hotel room – so why not head straight back to Maggie who we missed so much – and that’s what we did, getting back about 11 pm and revelling in her luxury.
With such vast open tundra, we had great expectations for lots of wildlife sightings along the Dempster, especially caribou or at least some moose but all we encountered was a fox, a rabbit, multiple gophers and chipmunks and hundreds of deep-voiced ravens.
In conclusion – are we glad we did it? Damned right! - will we do it again? Probably not, but it will remain clearly in our memories. The Dempster is definitely one of those ‘must do before you die’ things. Its beauty can’t be described well enough or even photographed properly. Only an Imax film or Disney Studios could do it with those 360-degree theatres.
