We left our home early in the morning to pick up the 5th wheel and onwards to Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal to catch the ferry to Swartz Bay. We were too early for our reservations plus we provided them the wrong length – vehicle and trailer. We made it on the noon ferry and the fare was $296! It was a beautiful sailing – the only complain is the greasy White Spot burger and fries, ugh. Not long after we got off the ferry we were part of the infamous island traffic – it was “rush-hour” to Goldstream Provincial Park campground.
On July 1st, we headed to our province’s capital. We parked at Beacon Hill Park, far away from the downtown core. We walked along the seawall, passed by the cruise ship terminal and Fisherman’s Wharf.
Beach by Beacon Hill Park
Fisherman’s Wharf is… a place for tourists with little stores and restaurants – there were also private residences, I don’t know about living in a place like that.. The highlight of Fisherman’s Wharf was seeing the seals.
Seal
Fisherman’s Wharf
When we arrived at the Provincial Legislature, we picked up tickets for the free public tour of the building. The tour was extremely informative. We learned some interesting facts about the building and the BC Coat of Arms. The kids kept on sticking out their tongues after the tour – because the tour guide said a tongue sticking out represents power, just like the elk on the BC Coat of Arms. You can imagine that became quite annoying – fortunately that stopped once we talked about food.
After lunch, we visited the Royal BC Museum where we spent a good 3 hours there. After the museum, we saw a few of the acts on the esplanade before heading back. We were quite tired when we got back to the campsite, we walked about 18km that day.
On Saturday, we explored the park that we are staying at. There are a few hiking trails and a couple waterfalls to see.
Goldstream Falls. 185 steps down from the trail
The trails were not very well marked and did not quite correspond to the map. We did not find the second waterfall but saw a trestle that is part of the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway that everyone seemed to be hiking up to see. We hiked about 15km that day – uphill grabbing on roots, downhill sliding on dirt, too many steps to climb and even crossing a shallow creek/river by rock hopping – very fun but quite tiring.
Today, we drove to a small town called Chemanius. This town is famous for the murals on many buildings all over town. It is a quaint little town where bus loads of tourists stop to explore this little community on foot.
3D mural with sound effects too!
We are off to the next campground tomorrow. I end this post with something Jeff said which I thought is hilarous – but I’m sure no humour was intended on his part: “How many pairs of shoes does a woman need?”
Here’s a 4.5min video we put together from the trip. Considering that I’ve not done any video editing in close to 20 years, I think it’s pretty good. Jeff picked the “trip song” and it works well the video and pics. I tried uploading it to YouTube but the quality was degraded and so the next best option was to share it from Google Drive. BTW, we weren’t driving fast – I sped up the driving scenes, otherwise the video would be way too long 🙂
If you are curious about our equipment, most of the photos were shot on the Nikon D7000 with the 18-200mm lens. The “dash cam” is a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS3 on a Joby GorillaPod – not exactly stable but good enough.
Editing was on Adobe Premiere and Photoshop Elements.
We hope you enjoy the video. That’s it from us for a while!
After being in the extreme cold for the last few days, anything hovering around 0C is actually quite pleasant. It has warmed up in Whitehorse – unseasonably warm, sunny and hovering around 2C yesterday.
Jeff and I had time to kill, so we visited the McBride Museum of the Yukon. The museum is relatively small but had some interesting things.
In the afternoon we headed off to Takhini Hot Springs. It was an enjoyable soak but unfortunately the weather was mild and Ashleigh and I could not enter the frozen hair contest :(. You need it to be way below 0C for that to happen.
Takhini Hot Springs
Happy soakers
When we felt too warm, all we had to do was roll in the snow to cool down and then back into the water again. It kind of hurts when you re-enter the water, only to feel good once the shock is over. The hotsprings was not too busy, just a couple locals and some travellers from China and Korea with their local Yukon guide. They have travelled long distances to see the Northern Lights, but you know many leave without seeing it…
Last night we drove to Fish Lake, which is about 20km from the city. It is far enough to get high and away from the city lights to try and catch the Northern Lights again. That was an wasted effort as it was quite cloudy.
We’re now at the airport waiting for our flight back to Vancouver and I’m trying to finish this blog entry.
Final Thoughts:
We have been very fortunate in this trip as we were able to stick to our travel plans. We made it through the Dempster without incident. Driving the Dempster in the winter is unpredictable. Quite often a section of the highway by the Yukon – NWT border is closed due to drifting snow, high winds and poor visibility.
The weather was good to us and we had a clear window to drive all the way to Tuktoyaktuk and back. It was closed the day before we left and the day after we completed it – talk about good planning and collaboration with Mother Nature! We saw a lot of wildlife, the Aurora Borealis, Sundogs, drove the Ice Road before it is gone.. a very good trip indeed. Oh by the way, thanks for driving hon!
The Arctic Chalet is not even a minute away from the start of the Ice Road to Tuktoyaktuk and Aklavik, both very remote communities that are accessible by the ice road after the river freezes or by plane in the warmer months. Tuktoyaktuk is our destination today to meet our local host and guide – Eileen.
Next year is the last year to drive the ice road, before the all weather highway is completed – cutting the distance from 185km to about 137km. This road is called the Ice Road because it is literally made from ice – more specifically the frozen Mackenzie River and parts of the Arctic Ocean. The ice can be up to 10 feet thick and easily supports the weight of fuel and container trucks. It is not slick like a sheet of ice, you can walk on it without slipping on your butt. You still need to pay attention when driving otherwise you’ll be sliding into the snowbank. The Ice Road is pretty wide – as wide as 6 lanes at some sections.
Heavy truck on the Ice Road
Cracks on the ice road
The drive for the first few kilometres was kind of strange – seeing all the large ships docked on solid ground and some of them are even frozen stuck to the ice.
Ships frozen stuck in the river
The drive there took almost 3 hours as you should not drive above 70km/hr – but of course many people were just flying down the road.
It was quite cold that day, we reached -35C at some points, the SUV never did really warmed up and we saw a lot of vehicles with a sheet covering the front grill. Jeff tried to stick a cardboard in front of the radiator to keep it warmer, but it was so cold that the cardboard snapped like plastic, oh well, I guess we won’t bother with that then. Interesting things we saw along the way include a fox, abandoned vehicles and a tent. Tent? What the heck is someone doing camping along the Ice Road under such extreme cold conditions?
The word on the street is it is some Japanese guy doing the ice road on foot
The obilgatory photo on the Ice Road to Tuk
When finally arrived in Tuk we looked for our guide’s home. As we were doing the cultural tour of Tuk, we experienced the local “cuisine”. On the menu: caribou stew, whale blubber, muskox, smoked white fish, smoked whale and eskimo donuts. We paid good money for this tour, so you bet your bottom dollar I tried everything. I didn’t fancy the fish and blubber. The meats – tastes just like gamey beef. Ashleigh didn’t feel too good having the caribou stew – must be the non-meat diet that is causing her to feel uncomfortable. Anyways, you won’t see us visiting any eskimo restaurant anytime soon.
Clockwise from top left: Smoked white fish, smoked whale, whale blubber, pan fried muskox
After lunch, Eileen showed us their collection of pelts – muskox, seal, martin, caribou (the winter, spring and summer collection), foxes etc. She even had polar bear pelt/fur pants her husband Billy wore for hunting – not to forget matching polar bear mitts. She has a pretty neat coat from her mother with the sunburst design made from the ruff of a wolf so that it furls outward and upright.
The styling of the wolf fur around the face is known as the sunburst design
Eskimo snow goggles to prevent snow blindness
Next on the agenda was the tour around town. As we stepped out, she said we arrived on the coldest day, -40C with windchill. I think Tuk is a community in a giant chest freezer, everything is covered in frost including the power lines!
Frosty power lines
The narration around town was very interesting, she showed us the churches and spoke of the residential schools that she and her husband attended.
Houses in Tuk
Most of the homes in Tuk are owned by the housing cooperation that rents it to the people. Rental is determined by your pay check – if you don’t earn much, you don’t pay much rent. You can’t get a job there unless you pass a drug test. She mentioned that seniors pay $35 per month to rent a home. There are no restaurants or hotels. The community has a health centre which does not have a doctor on staff all the time, a community hall / rec centre, a seniors home, a cemetry, a school, a couple supermarkets, an airport and that’s about it.
Kilometre- Zero North – Arctic Ocean Trailhead of the Trans Canada Trail
After the tour, we headed back to Inuvik and had dinner at the Mackenzie Hotel, I guess it’s the “fanciest” hotel in town.
The next day we headed back to Dawson City – we drove the Dempster Highway in about 10 hours with a lunch stop at Eagle Plains.
We drove through snow drifts at a high point of the highway and we even had cellular signal at the Richardson mountain range! (We have some more videos of the drive along the Dempster Highway, but unfortunately I can’t post it as I don’t have any means to download and process it on the iPad. Stay tuned!)
Snow drifts
Sunrise, Richardson Mountains
As we approached the Arctic Circle we saw the bright sun and two bright spots on the sides – we were quite confused not knowing what exactly is was, thinking it was probably a rainbow. Apparently this is called sun dogs – “are an atmospheric phenomenon that consists of a pair of bright spots on either side on the Sun, often co-occurring with a luminous ring known as a 22° halo.”
Sun dogs at the Arctic Circle
We arrived in Dawson City just before 6pm, hungry and eager to stretch our legs. We decided to try a different restaurant and walked for about 10 minutes in -21C temperature only to find out that the restaurant is boarded up. So much for trying something new, so we headed back to our hotel’s restaurant and feeling the pain in our face from walking in the extreme cold..
Our hotel was fully booked that night as Dawson City is one of the pit stops for the Yukon Quest – 1000 mile dog sled race from Eagle, Alaska to Whitehorse. Unfortunately we could not stay for that, just a photo of the check point. It would be quite neat to see the dogs coming in…
Yukon Quest. Dawson City was buzzing with activity as the support crews have arrived ahead of the dog teams
We left Dawson City at 10am this morning for Whitehorse. There was no need to leave early as we won’t be able to check in the hotel anyways. We saw a pair of caribou about 80kms away from Dawson City and that was pretty much it for wildlife spotting on this leg of the journey.
We have a full day in Whitehorse tomorrow – not too sure what else we will be doing besides going for a soak at Takhini hot springs.
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