Dempster Highway

Driving the Dempster Highway has, for the past few months, been shimmering in the future as a kind of capstone on my Canadian summer. It's not the end of the adventure, by any stretch, but it is a pretty extreme part. After driving the Alaska Highway as far as Whitehorse in the Yukon, and then driving another 8 hours straight north to Dawson City, I was still then only at the start of the 500-mile, unpaved Dempster Highway. Most of the Canadians I met this summer had never driven it and warned me to bring lots of spare tires. With two in tow, and with a thumbs up from the visitor's center in Dawson that is focused solely on the Dempster (it's been record dry weather in the Yukon this summer, which is not necessarily good in general but is very good for road conditions), SS and I set out for our 4-day adventure on the Dempster.

The views were spectacular from beginning to end. While the lower half was more mountainous, the landscape actually didn't change quite as drastically as I was expecting as we went north, north, north, north.

...right on into the Arctic Circle...

...past hordes of Arctic Ground Squirrels (we also saw a red fox and an eagle, though didn't get pictures of those)...

...and straight on through the border from the Yukon into Northwest Territories. This was a really big deal for me because, even though the bulk of my British Colombia time is still to come, I did cross through a corner of BC on the Alaska Highway, so this crossing into NWT meant that I've officially been to every single Canadian province and territory this summer!

My favorite part(s) of the highway might have been during our approach to Inuvik, around the Fort McPherson area, where there were two river crossings not by bridge but by ferry. One of the ferries had a motor, but the other looked like it was just a rope winch and made feel for a moment like I was in Africa. (And I felt like that again on the way back down, when we heard that a vehicle had overshot the edge of the platform while boarding, tipped into the water, and consequently shut down the crossing for three hours during the rescue operation, while upwards of 40 freight semis piled up in the lines on either side.)

The end of the road on the Dempster is the town of Inuvik, Northwest Territories, and it did feel like a huge accomplishment to arrive there after two days on the road. In the winter, an ice road continues north to the town of Tuk, on the Arctic Ocean, but as in summer Tuk can only be reached by (expensive) plane or boating day trips, this was the end of the line for us.

Our visit began with a bang at the Inuvik visitor's center, where our conversation with the Parks Canada staff stationed there was interrupted by a visit from the Deputy Mayor and a tourism board representative, who named us the tourists of the week in Inuvik, gave us a bag of Inuvik swag, and took our picture for the local paper.

Though we knew that experience could likely not be topped, we also visited what one guidebook we have declares to be the northernmost stoplight in the world (AKA the only stoplight in Inuvik)...

...and greatly enjoyed an extremely picturesque campsite. (Full disclosure: we actually had to switch tent platforms when we wanted to go to sleep at 10 p.m. and realized that would be difficult since the sun was going to be shining directly into our tent for nearly three more hours.)

The next day, our goals were to check out the Arctic Market in the main square of town, which had been recommended to us by the ladies of the tourism office, and to take a tour of the community greenhouse. The Arctic Market was a little underwhelming...

...but it turned out one of the handful of stands that was set up there belonged to organizers of the greenhouse. We arrived just as they were running out of everyone's favorite leafy green (that is to say: kale) and so we hitched a ride to the greenhouse itself with one of its coordinators as she dashed back to restock. It's an enormous, impressive, operation!

After that, we kind of ran out of things to do in Inuvik. After driving two days to get there, it felt totally ridiculous to leave after only 24 hours, but we kept asking locals what we should do in town, and it became pretty clear there isn't much. The journey was the destination, as they say. So we waved goodbye to the far north and steered the car back south for the two days' return trip to Dawson. Along the way, we paused for one more appreciative look at the Mackenzie Delta (an absolutely massive delta which, with the relatively temperate weather it causes, is responsible for the fact that there are still trees and it is much warmer in Inuvik than it is in other places at the same latitude).

We also appreciated the scenery, equally beautiful in reverse...

...as well as our multiple stops for our new favorite sport: berry picking!! I am a little obsessed. We collected and munched on crow berries, blue berries, and cloud berries. We prowled like bears along the roadside, finding a different type of treat at every stop, as we swiftly lost latitude.

We also stopped to search for a gyrfalcon nest in an epic landscape...

...but instead spotted some gravity-defying ungulates (not totally sure whether these are Dall sheep or mountain goats; either way, I'm impressed):

We later stopped for a hike in the lovely Tombstone Territorial Park...

...and lucked out that a volunteer group was holding a talk on local mushrooms and lichen right at the time we were there. So after stretching our legs on a hike, we exercised our brains a bit by attending their talk.

I admit it was a bit of a relief to reach the end of the road--otherwise known as the beginning of the road--after 1,000 miles of gravel. It was especially a relief to reach it without even one flat tire and with my windshield in tact (despite the best efforts of some seriously inconsiderate drivers). But it was also incredibly sad to say goodbye to such an amazing landscape and adventurous part of the trip, never to be forgotten.