Dempster Virgins No More!!

Day #11 – Whitehorse, YK – Eagle Plains, YK (with a side trip to Dawson, YK) over 800 km.!!

I am typing my blog today from Eagle Plains, Yukon, the halfway point between the beginning of the Dempster Highway and Inuvik, which is where the road (for the time being) ends. It is currently 10:38 pm and it is twilight. It was a long day of driving, but the end of the road is only about 350 kilometres away. Then we leave our van in in the paddock by the port, and on August 28^th, the van will be transported via barge up the McKenzie River to Tuk, which is a trip of about 24 hours. We can expect to pick up our van on the 29^th. Cool, huh? As for the Wilsons, we get to spend tomorrow night in Inuvik, and when there is room in a plane that will fit all five of us, we will be flown to Tuk, either Sunday or Monday.

The kids have been absolutely amazing on this trip. We have raised them to spend long periods of time on road trips, and they are used to it, but even a journey like this – after eleven days on the road they haven't batted an eyelid. We make sure they have a chance to stretch their legs and run around as best we can. Today they had a chance to run around in a beautiful green space right by the Klondike River in Dawson City, Yukon. They played for an hour while Greg and I walked around and read all the placards about the Gold Rush which were situated all up and down the river in a really nice park like setting. Charlotte had to use the bathroom, so we stopped at a campsite where there were outhouses and the kids ran around for a few minutes there, too. You really had to run there in order not to get bitten by the black flies and the mosquitoes!

There has only been one “I'm bored!” exclamation (can you guess who it was from?), which was quickly alleviated. Although they have been playing on their iPads a fair bit, they have also been reading like crazy too. Charlotte has read all of her Wayside Stories books and is looking for something else to read, Patrick is partway through Tom Sawyer, and James is mid-way through Harry Potter #4. Greg and I have been reading our Mileposts Book, which documents all the northern highway routes through the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Alaska km by km. It documents every rest stop, every creek/river you pass over, cautions you about particular animals which are known to be in certain areas, talks about camping, fishing, and the history of everything you see along the way. It is an amazing book. Our poor kids have not watched a single movie on our state of the art Video Entertainment System (as Chrysler so calls it) in the van because Greg didn't put the movies in the van when I asked him. Rather, he placed them elsewhere at his parents' house, and promptly forgot them. By the time we realized that they weren't in the van, it was too late to turn around. Oh well! We have also been listening to a lot of music, and can all agree on several albums and genres of music. Occasionally we accommodate a particular request, but most of the time the kids are just happy with something on in the background. (Bottom pic of Patrick...he had his own little den in the very back, and he loved it!)

Me on the marge of Lake Laberge....

We began our drive today with a 5 km stop off the highway to 

Lake Laberge,Yukon.

Some of you may know the poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and this is the lake where it takes place. “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.....” What a great poem! Now we have actually been on “the marge of Lake Laberge” and can add that to our list of cool stuff we have seen.

It must be a northern thing that you are not allowed to control the thermostat in your room. It was boiling hot in our hotel room again last night, uncomfortably so, and when we complained to the front desk they gave us a fan. The fan was cheap and didn't have much power to it, so nobody benefited. It was a long night for me, so that means that yet again, I was pretty sleepy this morning. At least everyone else slept well. I don't remember much after Sam McGee, and woke up as we were approaching Dawson City.

Dawson City is the center of the Gold Rush. It was neat to see Skagway, Alaska, which is where people disembarked from the steamships which brought them up the Pacific Ocean, and then they began to hike from Skagway up through a passage in the mountains,

Downtown Dawson City, YK

The Klondike River

camping along the way. After 3 to 5 days, they would reach the lake, where they had to build boats that would float them up the lakes, down the Yukon River, and into Whitehorse. At this point, they could board the paddle boats that would take them up the Klondike River to Dawson City. Now that we've been to Dawson, we have seen both ends of the Gold Rush, and it was incredible. Both cities are designed to look like they did during the Gold Rush, complete with the wooden boardwalks along the front of the stores, and the wooden facades on the buildings to make them look they did in 1898. Skagway looks slightly neater and more urban, while Dawson City looks pretty rustic.  Incidentally, our server at Sourdough Joe's Restaurant in Dawson City was from London, and the other server was from near Chatham.  Go figure!

Gulp. Breathe. Drive.

Good beginning.

Avoid potholes!

After having lunch and stretching our legs in Dawson City, we began our trip up the Dempster Highway. Greg and I exchanged a look, and then hit the road. All I can say is I have never been on a road like this in my life. Driving the mountains through northern British Columbia and to Alaska were pretty incredible, overwhelming at times, but this?! Driving through these mountain passes and down through the valleys was....well..... epic. Kids use this word as a trendy catch phrase, but I use it in the purest form of the word. It took us just about 5 hours to go the first 369 km of the  road, which had some parts where the potholes were pretty bad, but otherwise, they were in good condition. We passed very little traffic, and only one or two transport trucks. Mostly we passed or were passed by enormous half tonne pick up trucks with extended cabs and cargo areas. There were also the pick up trucks that carry the camper on them too, plus a few motorhomes. I definitely wouldn't want to be driving one of those up this road!

 The landscapes were simply amazing, unlike anything we have ever seen before. I think the adjective I would use to describe this kind of landscape would be 'edgy'. The minerals colour the rocks along the banks various shades of orange, red, yellow and green, and the rivers all had an urgent rush to them. The mountains were bizarre; tall hills of broken rock and shale and then out of nowhere there would be giant rocks protruding from the tops or out the sides. Some of the mountains were almost icy blue and others were covered in trees and scrub almost to the top. Every mountain was unique.

 There are various kinds of scrub type bushes all over in shades of yellow, orange and burgundy and the trees are mostly black spruce and poplar. We drove through parts where the trees were still tall burnt strips after a forest fire ripped through the area in 1991. I had no idea it took a forest this long to regenerate post-fire, or at least it does up here. There were lakes we passed that were so still you could see the reflection of the mountains in them with blue skies and fluffy white clouds tinged with grey. Just like the last few days, sometimes it would rain but only for a few minutes. There had definitely been rain earlier in the day, thus the puddle-filled potholes. Greg is an excellent driver, and navigated them incredibly well for a first time Dempster driver! (Please see my FB album called 'The Dempster Highway' for all our scenery pics)

Well, I have been working at this blog for a few hours now, with time off for picnicking and getting kids ready for bed. It is now 12:23 a.m. PDT and you can still see the last traces of twilight in the sky. Amazing. Onward to Inuvik tomorrow.