2013/06 NWT trip - Yellowknife |
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Thursday June 13th
Our first stop was to fill up for our journey to Yellowknife, but the station was out of diesel and the queue had already started of travelers who had to wait for the diesel delivery truck to arrive. For us, making it all the way to Yellowknife was iffy but there was supposed to be diesel at the Tlicho village of Rae, at ¾ of the way.
We drove for an hour through the Mackenzie bison sanctuary without seeing any bison except those on the signs. We stopped at Chan Lake park for coffee, but drank inside; the bugs were impossible. We met the bison herd shortly after; they were just working their way along the grassy verge, the best forage in the NWT. It sounds an idyllic existence but they carried their own gigantic cloud of biting flies; their skins are thicker than ours, but the flies go for the tender bits. These are wood bison, supposedly bigger than their plains bison cousins 
down south, but they looked much the same size to us. They have curlier hair too, and that’s visible in the picture.
Our next stop was at North Arm park where we had our first clear view of the Great Slave Lake. It was also the point where the scenery changed from spindly trees and water to bigger trees and water and rock, lots of rock. We’d passed from the Mackenzie lowlands to the Canadian Shield, an area similar to the Ontario side of Lake Superior. The good news was that we’d left the biting flies behind, though the mozzies didn’t seem to be affected.
Shortly after we’d crossed the lake’s north arm channel, we took the side road into Rae, also known as Behchoko in the local language. We found two gas stations selling just petrol and then drove (gently) through a senior citizens’ street party and found diesel on the far side of town. We expected to pay a premium for such a remote location, but it was cheaper than in Hope, without BC’s provincial taxes. We also needed propane but the kid in charge didn’t know whether he was supposed to charge $90 or $30. We declined; $15 would be closer.
The road to Yellowknife swings southeast along the lake’s north shore, so Rae was to be our northernmost point of the trip, at about 63 degrees north, about 250 mles south of the Arctic Circle. The sun does set there in June but only for a couple of hours.
The road was now passing through rock cuts, with walls of eroded granite on either side. It was also extremely bouncy, and frost-heaved, similar to the Yukon sections of the Alaska Highway. Why this should happen in the hard rock areas rather than in the swampy lowlands I don’t know but we had to deal with ripples that could easily bounce us off the road if we were unlucky. The day had clouded over and we had a few showers too but not enough to wash the mud off the truck.
We came into Yellowknife, and went straight to the Fred Henne campground. There was room for us that night but the staff warned us that all the local campgrounds were fully booked for Friday and Saturday. They arranged for us to camp in the overflow area of Prelude Lake, 20 miles away, on those days.
We had a scenic site on the edge of Long Lake, with beautiful grey granite boulders diked with splashes of pink rock, rocky islets, and plenty of ducks . But we were right across the lake from the airport, and could hear engines and gate announcements and got the occasional whiff of aviation fuel. The birds included surf scoters, a red-throated loon, and tufted ducks.
We had radio - same old scandals, but still no cell phone signal, though local phones seem to work. Rogers, our provider in BC, has no presence in the 
NWT.
Friday June 14th
Who would expect that a young city with less than 20000 people, and set in a vast wilderness would need to have skyscrapers and parking meters? We took advantage of being in a city to rush around shopping for food and propane, and picking up emails.
For lunch we drove to Old Town, set on a peninsula in the Great Slave Lake, with very narrow roads and even worse frost heave than the highway; the roads had slumped sideways, a horrible feeling with a high-sided vehicle. We ate at the Dancing Moose. We ordered musk ox stew but supplies had run out; probably waiting for the road kill patrol to bring one in. Sandie settled for the local whitefish while I had a bison poutine, truly a uniquely Canadian dish.
This giant Bristol freighter, donated by long-gone Wardair, is set on a hill by the airport; this was how air freight got to Yellowknife back 
in the sixties.
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