Inuvik to Dawson ~ The Marathon Run

Cold Beer, Laptop and Bloging Away
 in Inuvik, NT

The earliest that I could get up this morning was 6:30am. You really don’t sleep the best way up here 207 miles past the Arctic Circle. The problem is not the sun light. It’s the noise. People are running around all night long. Even the locals are roaming around. Every house has at least one dog and they tend yelp on and off all night.

We stopped outside the local hotel to send one email (WiFi hotspot) and down the paved road we went. (That is the two miles of paved road to the airport.) The goal today was to drive the entire 476 miles back down to Dawson. Sheila, from the Visitor Center, had told us that they drive all the way to Whitehorse in twenty-four hours. Whitehorse is six hours past Dawson. Remember we are talking of a rough dirt road 30mph to 50mph.

Ogilvie Mountain Range

I got into the groove of the road and tried to do the impossible. What helped me this time was converting the truck back to miles per hour. With the laptop computer running, I could see how much mileage we had done and how much to go before each milestone. The McKenzie Ferry, Ft McPherson, the Peels River Ferry, Eagle Plains, Tombstone Visitor Center and so on.

We made excellent time and arrived at the turnoff for the Dempster Highway at 7:30pm. We made it in 13 driving hours. The truck was plastered with mud. At the turn off, there was a car wash and I pulled in. I put on shower shoes, slid on some shorts and used the pressure spray to take off a couple of layers of mud. We drove a few miles down to the Klondike Territorial campground, checked in, took a shower, ate dinner and man did that bed feel good!

That is what we did and saw.