From 11 to 29 July, Arthur and I went on a grand adventure trip to Tuktoyaktuk and back with my friend Tim and his son Matt. There's more to write than I can comfortably fit into a single blog post, so this is the first of a series. Check for the Epic Arctic Adventure of Epicness to find the other posts in the series!
This first post is an overview of the trip, covering the main stops along the way.
We book-ended our trip with visits to my Aunt Aileen in Terrace. We flew from Vancouver YVR to Terrace on 11 July - here is Arthur and me with the 'Terrace Wolves' art installation overlooking the town.
On the 13th, we set off to meet Tim and Matt at Stewart, BC, then on the 14th we crossed into Yukon. Note that Arthur already has his bug repellent to hand!
We carried on to stay two nights at Kathleen Lake in Kluane National Park, with a day trip to Whitehorse in between.
And then later on that day, we turned on to the Dempster Highway to the Arctic Ocean!
Tombstone Territorial Park is a place I definitely want to visit again!
We crossed the Arctic Circle.
And later crossed into the Northwest Territories (aka NWT).
Two ferry crossings later, we arrived in Inuvik.
The next day we carried on to Tuktoyaktuk.
And then the end of the road, the Arctic Ocean!
We ended up staying one extra day in Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, which will be explained in greater detail in a future post. I had Stan Roger's Northwest Passage living rent-free in my head, and as we had reached the Beaufort Sea, I thought of the line that we had "found there but the road back home again".
We camped at Engineer Creek, so as an engineer, naturally I needed to document this :)
We reached the end of the Dempster Highway, and returned to paved roads again. This was where we parted ways with Tim and Matt, as they proceeded on to Liard Hot Springs and Ft St John on their way back to Victoria, while Arthur and I had a stopover in Dawson City (and for Arthur, a night in a hotel after he had been VERY patient with tenting for so many nights).
Here we are in Dawson, with a stanza from Robert Service's Spell of the Yukon on the wall of the building behind us.
The next night, my friend Teresa and her partner Pam hosted us in Carcross.
Then it was back to Terrace, where we returned our rental truck. Aileen took us to Prince Rupert.
We had fish and chips at Bob's on the Rocks.
In Prince Rupert, Arthur and I boarded the BC Ferry Northern Expedition to take the Inside Passage to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
From Port Hardy, we took the bus to Nanaimo, then BC Ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and then bus and Skytrain home to Burnaby, arriving late on the 29th of July.
Stay tuned for more detailed posts about different aspects of our trip over the next few days!
