INUVIK!!!

Yes we made it to Inuvik, after two long days of driving, we have conquered the Dempster Highway, 737.5 kilometers of dirt road.

So, lets go back to the day after we arrived in Whitehorse, June 16, we visited the "Welcome Centre". The lady there asked what our plans were and we told her we would drive the Dempster all the way, and she said no you won't, the Peel River ferry crossing has been shut down. Not only Barb and I, but 3 others came over with the same disappointed look that I had. This lady was terse, saying that she had no idea when it would be running again. Nice Welcome.

Our travel agent here in Whitehorse said that she would track this for us. We also tried to look up information on the Internet, but found nothing. It wasn't until we reached Dawson City when a lovely lady told us the ferry was back running and had been since June 17.

Our travel agent could not confirm which is why we were not 100% sure we would make it up here. But we did, and we are tired but happy to be here.

Day 1 from Dawson City to Eagle Plains. We kept our speed low, around 60 Km per hour, even though the speed limit was posted at 80 or 90. Tires were our main concern and at just over the 100km milepost we see a Toyota van in the ditch, driven right off the highway. Nobody was hurt, and it could take 2 hours to a day for help to arrive. This kept us focused even though the day in this area was sunny and bright.

We did catch some rain going through the mountains, heavy at times, but the Jeep performed well and Barb and I loved driving it. The scenery at times was breathtaking. Our main focus while driving, other than staying on this elevated road, was to try to avoid the potholes again to help protect our tires. When another car comes in the opposite direction we pulled over to the right to avoid flying stones hitting our windshield with force. By the end of this first day we were travelling around 70KM per hour as we had gotten comfortable with the Jeep and the Dempster.

Animals you ask, what did you see. A snowshoe rabbit who took off as soon as he saw our Jeep coming, a crow and a helicopter!! AND we saw 1 car with a flat tire on this day.

We spent the night at Eagle Plains, and again the scenery and quiet was something. After dinner Barb and I went for a short walk down the middle of this highway, there was no traffic from either direction.

Day 2, we were up again this morning ready to complete this drive. All reports here was the ferries were running so we were excited to get going. Most of the other travelers had left by the time we were ready to leave. The group that went off the road on day 1 did get rescued, luckily there was no damage to their van and they left before us as well.

Our excitement today was to cross the Arctic Circle and then enter the North West Territories, making this the farthest we have travelled north in our country and the world.

Once again the scenery today was amazing, the drive was long shortly after today's journey began, we saw a Toyota van and those same folks, changing a tire. They had lots of help so we just kept moving on. We also passed a transport truck with a front tire flat. He was going to have a long wait.

We did have two mishaps today, one while Barb was driving where we hit loose gravel and the van started to sway to the right. She got control back very quickly and no harm was done. Our second issue happened while I was driving. A pickup truck came over a hill just as we were approaching. He was travelling fast, I had no time to slow down and our windshield took a large rock to the passenger side. They are going to have to replace it when we return the Jeep, we have full insurance coverage for this, as recommended by our travel agent.