Hi folks,

We rolled out of Tubby’s RV Park in Dawson Creek about 9:30 and out of town about 10 am after stocking up on groceries at the last Safeway for a while.

The countryside along Highway 49 going east was surprisingly green and lush, as we were expecting the dryer prairie of southern Alberta & Saskatchewan we’d experienced before.  Maybe it’s because we’re earlier in the year?

There was a brisk wind from the west that gave us a boost when the road was headed east, but kicked our butt when the road headed north.  The computer was showing 10-14+ MPG going east, and 5-8 MPG going north.  Later, I dropped our speed from 55 to 45 and we saw our instant MPG readings jump from 5.2 to 6.5.  We averaged 11.32 MPG for the day; our best yet for the trip.

We saw 1 brown/grizzly bear on the side of the road south of Manning, but the road was too narrow to stop and the next place to turn around was over 5 miles later.  So, no pix of the bear.  OTOH, we passed about a zillion small lakes ranging from ¼ to 2 acres in size.  About 30% of the larger ones had a beaver lodge in the middle of the lake and we saw numerous beaver dams, too.  Beavers are nocturnal though, so it’s doubtful we’ll get any beaver pix.

The real excitement began about 5 miles south of Twin Lakes Rec Area where we’re staying.  First, the temperature started dropping like a stone; from 82 to the mid-60’s and eventually 53.  Then, it started raining.  When the rain stopped, there was a layer of fog from about 1’ above the road to about 3’ feet above the road.  I could see the headlights of oncoming traffic, but not the car.  Weird.  Then, I noticed the shoulders were white.  Snow!?!?  Our elevation was 2600’.  Very shortly after that we arrived at the campground and discovered the ‘snow’ was actually golf ball sized hail.  We’re the only RV in the campground now, but some in a car with a heavily dimpled hood said there were a couple of rigs with extensive hail damage.  It’s now 2 hours later and there is still quite a bit of the hail on the ground even though it’s back to T-shirt weather.  

I suspect this will be the last daily update till we arrive in Yellowknife on Wednesday.  The SPOT will be reporting our position regularly at http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0dTs1VETrG1fdFIelBH0dfd76We03XBSy

Steve & C. J.

Well, the big question is whether y’all be getting this in a timely manner or in several days when we arrive in Yellowknife.  We had a trace of cell phone coverage Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, but about noon both went away.  We called the NWT parks folks HQ this morning and they were supposed to check out the water situation for us and call back, but the cell service went away just a few minutes after we got off the phone with them.  A thunderstorm arrived this afternoon, so we’re thinking that might have had something to do with it.  

We visited Alexandra Falls today, the other falls in Twin Falls.  It’s about 3 times as tall as the Louise Falls that’s about 100 yards from our campsite.  We took the short trail to the top of the falls & took some photos.  After walking down the wooden steps to the river about 100 yards above the falls, we walked the rock bank to the top of the falls.  There is no railing of any kind, so there is nothing to keep someone from falling over the falls.  Actually, CJ got much closer than I did.  I kept about 10 feet back and she went to about 2 feet from the edge.  Very spooky.

The access road to the Escarpment Creek area below Louise Falls was closed, so we went on to the town of Enterprise to see if we could get water, or a funnel & container to transfer water.  The Enterprise grocery store was boarded up, so we checked with the 2 officers at the NWT Highway Patrol Weigh Station across the road.  Small world:  one of the officer’s grandmother lived in Sequim until recently.  The other officer had to weigh at least 400#, so I guess they don’t have much of a health program going on in the department.  The big guy spent some time with a map giving me tips on where to get fuel, where to be especially careful for wildlife, where to be especially careful because of road conditions, etc.  About then it started to rain.  Big drop rain.  NO doubt, this was my fault since I’d semi-washed the truck this morning.  Since there wasn’t much else to do, we headed for Hay River to find a funnel and container.  It turned out that Hay River is a real town with real stores, houses, even a high rise.  Yep, a real life high rise.  Some developer was building a high rise condo of about 12 stories right downtown.  Bizarre. 

We found a good funnel and a 4-gallon water jug as well as a couple of light-weight long-sleeved shirts to help deal with the mosquitoes and black flies.  After fueling up, we headed back to our campsite at Twin Falls.  Speaking of fuel . . .  we were a bit disappointed with the MPG for yesterday’s run, but then we just remembered that the aux tank was filled about 3 gallons higher than the previous fill-up.  That raises the day’s average from 9.3 to something over 10.  Since fuel is critical up here with 300 miles between fuel stops, we have a wooden stick for gauging the auxiliary tank calibrated in 1 gallon increments.  We left home with 50 gallons in that tank and have 54 gallons in it right now.  So far, we’ve averaged about 10.0 MPG which was our target.  What we’ll get on the rough road sections where we have to slow down and gear down, remains to be seen.  Shifting to 4^th drops our MPG to roughly 7-something which isn’t far from the 6.0 we must get to make 300 miles between fuel stops.  We were getting 10.5 MPG pulling the trailer last year, but the heavy-duty off-road tires, extra 1000# of gear, roof rack with spares on the roof of the truck, and the trailer being lifted 2” all take their toll on fuel economy.  Oh well, it’s still better than the 8.4 we were getting with the motor home.  

They have these neat license plates on their vehicles up here.  They’re white in the shape of a polar bear.  CJ was wanting to steal one as a souvenir, but then she spotted a new bright red F150 4X4 with the personalized plate “CJ”.  If it hadn’t been parked in front of the RCMP office, she might have stolen the whole truck!

Back to the funnel and water jug . . . we made just over 4 trips with the water jug to fill the fresh water tank this afternoon.  We have 3.5 gallons left in the jug to top off the tank after tonight’s showers.  Theoretically, we only have one night of dry camping between here and Yellowknife, but after this we’re not making any assumptions that we can get water as long as we’re off the regular beaten path of RVers.

Steve & C. J.

Hi folks,

It’s been several days since the last update because (a) there was no Internet access, then (b) we got busy seeing what there is to see, and finally (c) we discovered that our Verizon service isn’t what it was supposed to be, or what we thought it would be (details on that to be determined).

Regardless, we arrived in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories yesterday afternoon.  Yellowknife has only been a city since 1970—three years after it became the capitol of the NWT.  First it was gold, then the provincial government, and now it’s diamonds that pump the economy here.  Old Town is definitely old and . . .  well, you’ll have to look at the photos.  But, downtown is a regular city, complete with several high rise buildings.  

We’ve got one more day to play tourist here and then it’s back on the highway to Fort Providence.  After Fort Providence we’ll be in uncharted territory as there is little information on the roads between there and Fort Nelson, BC.  The one comment we’ve heard so far is that “it’s a good thing you have a heavy duty 4X4”.  Hmmm, sounds like it’s not going to be much like an Interstate.

As usual, our SPOT will be reporting our position regularly at http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0dTs1VETrG1fdFIelBH0dfd76We03XBSy  You can follow this link and see our trail of bread crumbs in map format or satellite imagery.  Really cool.  FYI, the local electronics store here carries the SPOT.  Not something you find in most towns.

We’ve also made some changes to our web site at http://www.serenitysys.com/photogallery/alaska_2009/ to try to make it more user friendly.  

Steve & C. J.

Hi folks,

Technically, we’re 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle here, so the sun does set, but it’s hard to tell.  It looked like a normal summer pre-dusk evening at 2 am, and CJ says the sun was definitely up at 4 am.  No need for night lights in the trailer at night, even with all the drapes closed.

We started out our last day in Yellowknife doing some minor maintenance chores & working on processing the zillion photos we took along the Yellowknife Highway.  

Then, we drove out Highway 4 – the Ingraham Trail – in the afternoon.  Highway 4 starts just down the road from the campground and is paved for a while.  Then it becomes a nice wide gravel highway.  Then it narrows and gets rougher.  Then it narrows and gets rougher.  We drove the last 30 miles at 25 MPH or less.  Along the way, every turn brings another lake.  Seriously.  At the 68 KM marker, the road turns left an abruptly enters the lake.  This is the beginning of the “winter road” aka the Ice Road.  It’s as far as one can drive in northeastern NWT in the summer time.

We updated the web site with photos of the Yellowknife Highway and our stay in Yellowknife.  And the SPOT page has the latest trail of bread crumbs from our today’s trip on the Ingraham Trail.

We’ll be totally out of touch for the next 4 days, except for the SPOT updates, till we arrive at Fort Nelson, BC.  Till then.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Saturday, June 20th - Yellowknife, NWT

Hi folks,

Who’d a thunk that this place would be so interesting?  While knew that Yellowknife had grown to 20,000 people in recent years because of the diamond mines, neither of us expected such a frenzy of activity.  Of course, we weren’t aware that this weekend is their big hooha weekend because it’s the Summer Solstice, plus it’s the YK75 – Yellowknife’s 75^th anniversary.  Now the Summer Solstice might not be a big deal to you, but if you lived this far north (1700 miles north of Edmonton) and spent month after month in near complete darkness, the very long days of the very short summer would get you out of the house and enjoying the day – even if it only got to the mid-50s!

We’re amazed at the number of new cars and trucks.  Especially new Ford trucks.  For every rust bucket, there’s 3 brand new Fords.  They also like chrome on their trucks, but otherwise very stock, probably because shipping stuff here costs a fortune.

The traffic is rather amazing, and yes, they have a rush hour.  We tried to cross a main drag a few minutes after 4:30 yesterday and it took several minutes to wait for the long string of cars to drive by.  The number of people on the streets is amazing.  All over the down town area all day today.  And you should have seen the number of young people out in the streets this evening.  Especially around the pubs!!   They must have a no smoking indoors policy because there sure are a lot of people hanging around outside the pubs. 

We filled the truck this evening.  The good news is that we managed to get 10.24 MPG by going so slow yesterday.  The bad news is that half a tank of fuel cost us $126 ($1.009/liter => $3.40/gallon). 

We solved the water mystery today.  Naturally, the reason is quite simple.  It’s so cold here for so much of the year that it’s VERY difficult & VERY expensive to have year round water lines outside.  The ground is so cold that I have to wear gloves to hold the nozzle when I fuel the truck because the fuel is near freezing temperature in the heat of the summer.  So, any place that isn’t open all year does not have a water connection.  Instead, they have a plastic water tank and a truck comes by and fills the tank with drinking water.  Here in Yellowknife, the buildings that get their water trucked in have a city license plate on the building near the water connection.  As a result, the infra structure doesn’t deal well with RVers wanting to fill their 40-100 gallon tanks (ours is 67) with expensive trucked-in drinking water.  Fortunately, the park we’re in at Yellowknife is a big RV park and has a large fresh water tank & dump station so we can hit the road with a full FW tank and empty holding tanks for the 4-day back road run to Fort Nelson and the relative civilization of the Alaska Highway.

Verizon and our Internet access.  Again there’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that our air card has worked in every location that our cell phones worked, and a couple where they didn’t work.  The bad news is that our statement indicates that Verizon didn’t change our account to provide for service in Canada, so we’re paying $0.02/KB roaming charges.  That means a typical 10KB email costs $0.20 to receive, or $0.60 to send one of these status reports.  That’s OK.  What’s not OK is attachments & Internet downloads.  For instance, yesterday I downloaded a PDF instruction manual for some gizmo.  Gonna cost us $60.  Yikes!!!  Maybe tomorrow we’ll have the chance to contact Verizon and maybe fix this.  Otherwise, we’ll be spending more time finding WiFi hotspots like we used to do.  The Explorer hotel across the street from the visitor center works great.  J

Bounce dryer sheets make great mosquito repellant, especially for the dogs.  Every time we go outside, we give the dogs a quick wipe down with a fresh Bounce sheet and the mosquitoes just hover around them without landing.  If we don’t, then they target both where there fur is short.  That’s on Gracie’s long nose that looks like she’s got the pox after a bunch of mosquitoes get to her.  Bo’sun’s short hairs are at the other end and  . . . 

We spent much of today on a side trip out the length of the Ingraham Trail – NWT Highway #4.  The Ingraham Trail starts just down the road from the campground and runs a bit over 68 KM to the start of the winter road that runs 600 KM up to the diamond mines.  The road starts out as a normal 2-lane paved road, but before long it turns to gravel.  After a bit, it gets narrower and rougher, and then narrower and rougher.  We spend about half the time at 25 MPH.  The drive was gorgeous.  Around almost every turn was a new lake—and the road is nothing but turns.  Check out the SPOT site and be sure to click on the satellite map link to see what we’re talking about.  If Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, this must be the land of 100 million lakes.  As usual, there are photos on our web site.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Sunday, June 21st in Fort Providence, NWT

Happy Summer Solstice!  Especially to Brittany as it’s also her birthday – Happy Birthday Brittany!!

Today was about as close to boring as it’s going to get on this trip as we back tracked almost 200 miles from Yellowknife back to Fort Providence.  This was especially true for the first 50 or so miles because (a) the frost heaves in the road, and (b) no buffalo.  But, once we crossed the Whatchacallit River, we were back in buffalo country & stopping to watch and photograph them.  For unknown reasons, their behavior was different today.  On our way to Yellowknife, the buffalo were walking slowly while eating grass.  Period.  Today, they were also taking siestas, nursing, playing, rolling, walking in the water, etc.  One of the more bizarre behaviors could almost be described as a mass pissing and pooping exercise.  About 50 buffalo were gathered together and taking a siesta.  A couple of minutes after we stopped, one got up and started to whiz - practically on top of the another one – then another one, and another one,  . . .  And they always face the other way while doing this. 

At one of the pullouts we stopped at, I noticed the front spare tire under the trailer was hanging down a bit.  This is a mount we added and it’s not quite as stable as the OEM mount under the rear of the trailer because of conflicting structures (living room slide mechanism, LPG line & the A-frame at the front for the hitch).  So, the tire can wobble a bit and given the frost heaves, it worked it’s way loose.  I’ve got an idea on how to resolve the issue, but I need a 3’ piece of steel to do it.  In the mean time, we’ll just have to check it regularly.  Of course, that means remembering to check it which is harder to do than the actual checking.  J

Another worry both of us had today was that the campground at Fort Providence would be full when we arrived.  Today is “Aboriginal Peoples Day” and since First Nation people are a huge percentage of the population, we figured that many of them would be vacationing and some of them would spend the weekend camping.  So, both of us worried all day, although quietly not saying anything to each other aobut it so we wouldn’t get ourselves into some kind of mental frenzy.  As it turned out, the park was about 80% empty when we arrived.  Maybe it’s because this place has more mosquitoes than any place else we’ve stopped at.  Mosquitoes and flies.  I spent an hour late at night on the warpath killing mosquitoes in the rig.  Still missed a couple, so CJ stayed awake most of the night listening to their buzz.  

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Tuesday, June 22nd - Fort Providence to Fort Simpson, NWT

Today was our first day pulling the trailer primitive roads.  Yesterday we drove about 150 miles of primitive roads, but we weren’t pulling the trailer and it makes a big difference.  We drove 203 miles today, 141 of which was on dirt & gravel roads.  The nice thing about dirt and gravel roads is that they don’t get frost heaves.  The bummer is that they do turn into wash board surface.  If you haven’t driven on a wash boarded dirt road, imagine driving on a big louvered door where the louvers are about 9” wide and 3” high.  It’ll rattle your filling loose.  The good news is that the wash boarding wasn’t too bad and was only on parts of the road.  None the less, we still rattled loose the both handles on the bathroom sink faucet.  

Another issue with gravel roads is the gravel that gets kicked up by the oncoming traffic.  The first big rig going the other way gave us a real taste of what we can expect on the Dempster & Dalton Highways later.  We got pelted with about a dozen pieces of gravel.  One landed on the roof and sounded like a coin hitting the bottom of an empty can.  I pulled over and checked – sure enough, he scored one in the tray of our sunroof that was opened to the vent position.  Fortunately, he was the only big rig that kept going full speed as he passed.  Every other rig we met today, responded to our pulling over to the far side and stopping by slowing down enough to stop throwing gravel.  Nice!

Then there is the dust and dirt.  And since it rained today, mud.  I think we got the trailer dirty too dirty to get away with returning it when we’re done with this trip.  J  Since they treat the roads with something to keep the dust down, the mud isn’t like regular mud, either.  Almost oily. 

About mid-day I stopped on a bridge to take some pix of the river and there was a strange noise coming out of the rear of the truck.  We pulled up the road a bit to a pullout and I started my search with a stethoscope to find the source of the buzzing noise.  Turned out to be the back-up beeper that is connected to the trailer hitch.  We’re guessing that the sensors on the hitch got so dirty with the oily, wet dust (you can hardly see them) that one of them was trying to run the backup beeper, but the short circuit was only good enough for a buzz instead of a beep.  Today’s solution was to pull the wire on the beeper.  

The wildlife count today was next to zip & all birds, not counting the ubiquitous raven.  The first was a Swainson’s Hawk that was working on his lunch when we drove by and flew into the forest.  Later, I had to walk back a couple of hundred yards to re-read a sign and a sand piper type of bird was very unhappy with me & yelled at me until I turned around and headed back to the truck.  What was really funny was that he kept trying to land on the tree tops to yell at me, but he’s not designed to perch so he’d jump as if the needles on the tree pricked his feet.  Finally, I saw an unidentified passerine here in the campground; commonly referred to as an LBB (little brown bird).

For those of you who are comparing our itinerary to our progress may have noticed that Fort Simpson wasn’t in the “PLAN”.  It was less than 100 miles from Fort Providence to Sambaa Deh Falls so before we even got there we decided to continue on and take the side trip up Highway #1 “The Heritage Route”.  It was about 100 miles extra today, but most of that will save us in the next couple of days.  The deal with Sambaa Deh Falls was that there’s nothing else there besides the falls and going to Fort Simpson sounded more interesting.  So, we stopped at Sambaa Deh Falls and pulled into our reserved campground, had lunch and hit the road again.

Shortly before reaching Fort Simpson, we had to take another ferry.  Once again, I shifted into low-range 4 wheel drive on our approach.  It seemed so silly ‘cause the ramps were almost dead flat at this side.  But, it turned out to be a good move because the other side was plain old dirt and quite steep.  The crew on the ferry was extremely nice and even got down on their hands and knees to watch the clearance of the trailer as I pulled off the ferry into a hole and then up the steep grade.  Our Arctic Fox was built with more than average ground clearance and we lifted it another 2”.  A good thing because we’re just barely making these unimproved ferry landings.

Speaking of itinerary changes, we’ve decided to go to Fort Liard on Tuesday instead of Blackstone Territorial Park.  Again, besides being more interesting (there’s a craft shop in Fort Liard that CJ wan’ts to go to), it will cut Wednesday’s run from 190 miles to 130 miles.  It’s either Tuesday or Wednesday that we’re supposed to run into some difficult road conditions, but we can’t remember which???  Time will tell, I’m sure. 

Did we mention how much attention our truck gets?   You’d think that off-road prepared pickups would be everyday things up here, but they’re not.  Everywhere we go, people look at it.  Not just 20-something guys either.  A couple of days ago, a couple of 30-something women spent an entire traffic light looking at it.  Today was the best, though.  Some guy was looking at it while walking across the gas station parking lot and walked straight into the back of another truck in the process.  J

Last but not least, the transmission seems to have learned my ‘new’ driving style and adapted well.  I’ve been able to drive at 42-43 MPH in high gear almost all day today.  Besides being a bit quieter than in 4^th, we pulled off 10.64 MPG today without the benefit of a tail wind.  Very cool.

Steve & C. J.

Hi folks, 

OK so here we are in the middle of no where and we have both cell phone service and online access via our air card.  Five years ago air cards barely worked in New York City, Chicago, San Franscisco and LA.  Now, we’ve got it in a town that doesn’t even have a paved road leading to it.  

We started the day with another ferry ride, only this time I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get onto the ferry because of the soft dirt and big holes in the dirt at the ferry landing.  But, I was prepared and in 4-low and we kept on moving so it worked OK.

We drove another 130 or so miles on gravel roads today.  Most of it was smooth, but there were many places where the surface was soft and the rig would sink into the gravel some, slowing down that side of the truck and trailer.  Well if you slow down one side of a vehicle the vehicle will try to turn in that direction.  Not my favorite thing with just the truck; less so with a 10,000# trailer in tow.  We learned quickly to do our best to avoid the soft spots, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible because the soft spot was nearly the width of the road.  According to the woman at the Visitor Center here in Fort Liard they closed the road last year because so much of it went soft.  

Besides the soft spots, there were a few rough spots and areas where there was an excess of loose gravel.  Fortunately, modern 4X4’s shift into 4-wheel drive on the fly at the press of a button.  

The other issue was the dust.  Most of yesterday’s road was treated for dust, but only parts of today’s road was treated.  Anything over 20 MPH left a dust cloud trailing us.  We spent most of our time slightly over 40 MPH so the dust cloud was huge.  No problem, right?  Well, except that some dumbie (me?) left the front ceiling vent open, so EVERYTHING in the front half of the coach was covered with a layer of very fine dust when we arrived in Fort Liard.  I spent over an hour wiping down everything with a damp microfiber cloth.  Then we fired up the generator and broke out the vacuum cleaner and filled it.  We’ll try to get photos uploaded via a WiFi hotspot when we get to Fort Nelson Wednesday.  

Today’s wildlife score card highlight was an Arctic Fox.  It’s always been exciting to see a fox, but since our coach is an Arctic Fox it’s especially exciting now.  This guy was in his brown phase, but no pix because he skedaddled before I could get a long lens on the camera.  It’s a real challenge getting photos of the wildlife because even though we’re only driving at 35-45 MPH most of the time, it still takes a while to stop 10 tons safely so I’ve almost always passed the critter before I get stopped.  Most critters, even the buffalo, turn tail and head for the forest as soon as they see me.  They’re OK with the vehicle, but not OK with people outside of the vehicle.  We also saw another small all-male herd of buffalo about 10 KM east of Fort Liard and some American Robins in the campground.  There were also a bunch of dragon flies in the reeds along the shore of the lake were at making whoopee.  When they get spooked, they fly to another reed a few inches away without disengaging—very interesting.  

CJ loves it here at this little lake (Hay Lake on the outskirts of the Village of Fort Liard) and it talking about staying here another day, so we might stay or we might move on.  We’re talking about it now and leaning towards staying here another day.  When you see the photos you’ll know why.

Steve & C. J.