2004/08 Yukon trip - The road home - |
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At the end of Part 2 we were in the Northwest Territory. We had just come back from our day at Tuktoyaktuk, and we were heading south on a smoky evening from Inuvik back down the Dempster Highway. We don’t usually like to retrace our steps, but in this case it was unavoidable: there is only one road. However, once we were back in Dawson City we’d be traveling on all new routes. Home was over 3000 miles away by the shortest route, but we were going to be visiting family on Vancouver Island and in Alberta, which would add at least another thousand miles. And then, of course, there would be those irresistible side roads that we would have to explore, and add maybe another thousand.
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Tuesday 10th August
We’d left Inuvik at about 7pm and hoped to get some distance down the highway before we camped for the night. This time we were not stopping to explore and take pictures so we made good time to Tsiigehtchic where we crossed the Mackenzie River on the ferry. We had a brief encounter with a young caribou, the only one we were to see in this area. Hundreds of thousands of the “barren lands” caribou migrate to the Yukon Flats area of Alaska for calving, with just a few stragglers staying around the Dempster in the summer.
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Dempster Hwy South (0.31) |
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Partway to Fort McPherson we spotted a road heading off to the east, followed it for a couple of miles and found ourselves in a gigantic gravel pit, probably one that was used in the original building of the road. We set up alongside a pond and found we were sharing the pit with a flock of sandhill cranes. These are big, elegant birds, similar to Australia’s brolgas, but they make a very noisy kraak noise when they are unhappy. Clearly, they were unhappy with us, as they moved out of sight, but we could still hear them kraaking to each other! We were happy though as it was a great spot to camp.
Wednesday 11th August
We woke up to a very misty morning. We were glad it wasn’t smoke, though I suppose a gravel pit is as safe a spot as any in a forest fire. The cranes came to visit again. The birds are about shoulder high and look like a herd of dinosaurs as they hunt through the shrubs and rocks looking for bugs.
On the way into Fort McPherson we passed a sign for the “Nuisance grounds”. We had to go and find out what nuisances they have! It turned out to be just the garbage dump. We mentioned this later to some Alberta people and they said, “Yes, that’s what we call it too.” We have discovered another piece of Canadian culture.
We stopped off in Fort McPherson to buy gas, and visit the handicraft centre and the cemetery. The cemetery contains the graves of the Lost Patrol. I mentioned the Mad Trapper story in the last part of this journal. The Lost Patrol is the other great Northwest story. They set out from Fort McPherson with dogsleds in January to travel to Dawson City, a 250-mile trudge in the dark. They got lost, ran out of food, ate their dogs, and died from the cold and starvation. Corporal Dempster was sent to find them. Amazingly, he found them quite quickly, but too late for them of course. When the highway was built in 1979 it was named after him.