We were on the road for only a short while when our windshield got initiated.  An oncoming big rig loaded with an oversize piece of construction equipment maintained his full speed and pelted us with gravel.  One piece put a chip about ¾” across in the windshield just to the left of the rear view mirror.

The other casualty was the truck’s air compressor that provides compressed air for the air horn and air bags in the rear suspension.  It worked last night when we hitched up but wouldn’t run this afternoon in camp.  I quickly determined that we had electricity to the compressor, so I pulled it apart and discovered it was 200% toast inside.  

The loss of the air horn is quite minor, but our ability to control the height of the truck at the rear is a major factor in our being able to hitch up easily.  Additionally, we frequently level the trailer using the air bags on those days we don’t disconnect.  The deal is that our trailer hitch has 2000# spring bars for the weight distributing part of the hitch.  With the air bags, we can lift the rear of the truck and lift the front of the trailer with it’s electric jack and then spring bars are in position to be connected without any real effort.  Now, without being able to increase the air pressure from 40 PSI to 100 PSI we have to use a big bar to lever the spring bars into position.  Trust me, levering a 2000# bar is NOT easy.  Fortunately, we do have 2 alternatives:

1. Drive the rear of the truck up onto a 3-4” stack of Lynx Levelers (thing BIG Legos).  We carry 40 Lynx Leveler blocks for leveling the trailer on uneven terrain.  Once the rear of the truck is up in the air, then re-lift the tongue of the trailer using the electric jack.
2. Apply air pressure to the air reservoir using an external compressor.  We carry a small 120VAC air compressor for adding air to our tires, so we can use it to put air in the reservoir and then lift the truck.  The air reservoir holds enough air for almost one lift cycle.

We’re camped at Engineer Creek Campground.  Our site is about 30’ from Engineer Creek with a lovely view of Sapper Hill on the other side of the creek.  Sapper Hill has “castle-like cliffs of dolomite . . .This type of rock is more resistant to erosion than the surrounding shales and limestones.”  CJ is convinced that she saw some sheep on the face of Sapper Hill this afternoon because she saw some of the white spots move.  But, after searching the hill with binoculars all I found was a few white rocks.  We went through the same thing the last time we went to Alaska.  J

Around 7 this evening there was some bird in the woods near the base of Sapper Hill making crystal clear sounds of a wooden flute; a series of 2 or 3 toots separated by about 20-30 seconds before the next series.  I’m sure there are some birders that would have forded the creek and headed for the hills to get a glimpse whatever bird it was, but we’re not that kind of birder.  

Steve & C. J.

Wahoo!  Not only did we cross the Arctic Circle this afternoon with our 29’ Arctic Fox, we saw a real fox shortly afterwards and got a bunch of photos of him.  OK, so it was a Red Fox in its ‘black phase’ instead of an Arctic Fox, but most folks wouldn’t know the difference unless we told them.  J

Now that I’ve spilled the beans on the headline, it’s time to go back and run through the day in the normal chronological order . . .

We got up around 7ish and were back on the highway at 8:15am.  Yeah, that’s pretty early for us, but we’d decided to target Rock River Campground after stopping at Eagle Plains for a while.  Eagle Plains is the the half-way point & primary stop for most folks traveling the Dempster.  They have fuel, mechanic, restaurant & hotel (20 rooms).  Since it’s 220 miles from Dawson, most vehicles are running low on fuel by the time they get this far.  We were hoping to get an Internet connection and start the process on getting a new air compressor for the truck.  The thought was to research the heavy-duty version of our dead compressor and get one ordered and on its way to one of our future way points.  It turns out that they do have free Wi-Fi but according to one of the patrons it only works in the early morning and late evening.  We tried but couldn’t get online, so not only will you have to wait for our update, we’ll have to wait till further down the road to replace the compressor.  We did have lunch in their restaurant, though.  It was pretty OK, as long as you don’t mind cold coffee & luke warm service.  The prices were quite reasonable for being only 20 miles from the Arctic Circle.  One quirk to the operation, though.  They received their weekly shipment of supplies while we were having lunch and after the forklift unloaded the truck, the staff proceeded to carry everything through the dining room to the hotel.  A little weird.

FYI, diesel fuel was $1.359/liter => or $4.44/gallon.  We checked our tanks; the main tank was half full (12 gallons) and we had 34 gallons in the auxiliary tank, so we’d used less than half our fuel to get to the halfway point, so we felt safe in passing up the most expensive place on the road.  The NWT Visitor Centre in Dawson told us the best price on the Dempster is in Fort McPherson, so that’s where we’re headed in the morning.  

Today was overcast with an occasional light rain, so the vista photos were severely handicapped.  That didn’t stop us from being awed by the beauty of the scenes as well as the enormity of it.  It’s hard to describe driving for hour after hour with no trace of people except a 20’ wide dirt road and an occasional vehicle. 

According to the literature, we crossed the Continental Divide twice today.  There weren’t any signs, so we can only guess when & where, although what they call 7-Mile Hill must have been one of them.  They don’t fool around with relatively gentle 6% grades like in the lower 48.  They simply point the road up the hill and go.  We’re not sure, but we’re guessing 12%.  The transmission “hot” warning light came on going up 7-Mile Hill because the dumbie driving hadn’t engaged the Tow/Haul switch.  In normal mode, the transmission lock-up clutch engages in 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th gears, but not 2^nd.  So, when we were climbing the grade in 2^nd gear the torque converter lockup clutch wasn’t locked up, which allows the transmission torque converter to slip like an old Hydramatic.  The result is heat.  The transmission hit 250 degrees instead of its usual 150-180.  Fortunately, we recently upgraded to “Transynd”, a special $40/gallon synthetic fluid that can sustain 500 degree temps.  After the transmission cooled to under 200, we continued up the grade with 180 degrees at the summit.

Going down the other side was equally steep, too steep for the engine/transmission to hold our speed back in 2-wheel drive high range, so we shifted down to 4-wheel drive low range and crawled down the hill, listening to the gear whine of the transfer case.  One forgets how much noise old-fashioned gear boxes made until you spend some time with one again.  It sure is nice to be able to crawl down a steep grade instead of trying to control our speed with the regular service brakes.  The trailer has its own brakes, controlled by the truck, but typical trailer brakes are just about identical to the drum brakes on a 1960 Oldsmobile.  If you’re familiar with how badly those old drum brakes faded to nothing after a couple of stops, you probably wouldn’t like having the same brakes on an 11,000# trailer that used to come on a 4,000# car.  In other words, we ONLY use our brakes to stop the rig, never to control our speed going down grades. 

Naturally, we stopped at the Arctic Circle marker and took photos of us & the dogs at the sign.  We’ve been told that we can get certificates from both the Yukon & the Northwest Territories for crossing the Arctic Circle a visitor center down the road.  

The Dempster ranged from very smooth to rough enough to get us down to under 25 MPH.  One uphill section was more mud than gravel and wet, so I slipped it into 4WD.  Another section was loose gravel and mud which made the rig a bit squirrely, again encouraging us to slow down.  Otherwise, the road was in fair condition, meaning it was not smooth enough to go over 40, but not rough enough to drop below 30.  What’s that like for a whole day?  Well, let’s just say that everything that normally sits on the dinette seat wound up on the floor.  Even my mouse pad that sticks well to the dinette table was on the floor.  The coup de gras though was the toilet seat, the pins backed out of both hinges on the toilet seat.

CJ found an entry in the Milepost:  “J 288 (463.5 km) I 168.3 (270 km) Turnout; good overnight spot for self-contained vehicles.”
So, that’s where we are tonight.  It’s about an acre of gravel on the side of the road in an area of grass covered hills.  No trees, but then most trees this far north aren’t any bigger than the average Christmas tree.  Besides being free, there are only a fraction of the mosquitoes which is a real bonus.  We scanned the place for what looked like a level spot, and after making a couple of minor adjustments back and forth a couple of feet we had the trailer level.  Perfect.  The stabilizer jacks went down, the slides went out and we’re all set for the night.

Steve & C. J.   

Wahoo!  Not only did we cross the Arctic Circle this afternoon with our 29’ Arctic Fox, we saw a real fox shortly afterwards and got a bunch of photos of him.  OK, so it was a Red Fox in its ‘black phase’ instead of an Arctic Fox, but most folks wouldn’t know the difference unless we told them.  J

Now that I’ve spilled the beans on the headline, it’s time to go back and run through the day in the normal chronological order . . .

We got up around 7ish and were back on the highway at 8:15am.  Yeah, that’s pretty early for us, but we’d decided to target Rock River Campground after stopping at Eagle Plains for a while.  Eagle Plains is the the half-way point & primary stop for most folks traveling the Dempster.  They have fuel, mechanic, restaurant & hotel (20 rooms).  Since it’s 220 miles from Dawson, most vehicles are running low on fuel by the time they get this far.  We were hoping to get an Internet connection and start the process on getting a new air compressor for the truck.  The thought was to research the heavy-duty version of our dead compressor and get one ordered and on its way to one of our future way points.  It turns out that they do have free Wi-Fi but according to one of the patrons it only works in the early morning and late evening.  We tried but couldn’t get online, so not only will you have to wait for our update, we’ll have to wait till further down the road to replace the compressor.  We did have lunch in their restaurant, though.  It was pretty OK, as long as you don’t mind cold coffee & luke warm service.  The prices were quite reasonable for being only 20 miles from the Arctic Circle.  One quirk to the operation, though.  They received their weekly shipment of supplies while we were having lunch and after the forklift unloaded the truck, the staff proceeded to carry everything through the dining room to the hotel.  A little weird.

FYI, diesel fuel was $1.359/liter => or $4.44/gallon.  We checked our tanks; the main tank was half full (12 gallons) and we had 34 gallons in the auxiliary tank, so we’d used less than half our fuel to get to the halfway point, so we felt safe in passing up the most expensive place on the road.  The NWT Visitor Centre in Dawson told us the best price on the Dempster is in Fort McPherson, so that’s where we’re headed in the morning.  

Today was overcast with an occasional light rain, so the vista photos were severely handicapped.  That didn’t stop us from being awed by the beauty of the scenes as well as the enormity of it.  It’s hard to describe driving for hour after hour with no trace of people except a 20’ wide dirt road and an occasional vehicle. 

According to the literature, we crossed the Continental Divide twice today.  There weren’t any signs, so we can only guess when & where, although what they call 7-Mile Hill must have been one of them.  They don’t fool around with relatively gentle 6% grades like in the lower 48.  They simply point the road up the hill and go.  We’re not sure, but we’re guessing 12%.  The transmission “hot” warning light came on going up 7-Mile Hill because the dumbie driving hadn’t engaged the Tow/Haul switch.  In normal mode, the transmission lock-up clutch engages in 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th gears, but not 2^nd.  So, when we were climbing the grade in 2^nd gear the torque converter lockup clutch wasn’t locked up, which allows the transmission torque converter to slip like an old Hydramatic.  The result is heat.  The transmission hit 250 degrees instead of its usual 150-180.  Fortunately, we recently upgraded to “Transynd”, a special $40/gallon synthetic fluid that can sustain 500 degree temps.  After the transmission cooled to under 200, we continued up the grade with 180 degrees at the summit.

Going down the other side was equally steep, too steep for the engine/transmission to hold our speed back in 2-wheel drive high range, so we shifted down to 4-wheel drive low range and crawled down the hill, listening to the gear whine of the transfer case.  One forgets how much noise old-fashioned gear boxes made until you spend some time with one again.  It sure is nice to be able to crawl down a steep grade instead of trying to control our speed with the regular service brakes.  The trailer has its own brakes, controlled by the truck, but typical trailer brakes are just about identical to the drum brakes on a 1960 Oldsmobile.  If you’re familiar with how badly those old drum brakes faded to nothing after a couple of stops, you probably wouldn’t like having the same brakes on an 11,000# trailer that used to come on a 4,000# car.  In other words, we ONLY use our brakes to stop the rig, never to control our speed going down grades.

Naturally, we stopped at the Arctic Circle marker and took photos of us & the dogs at the sign.  We’ve been told that we can get certificates from both the Yukon & the Northwest Territories for crossing the Arctic Circle a visitor center down the road.  

The Dempster ranged from very smooth to rough enough to get us down to under 25 MPH.  One uphill section was more mud than gravel and wet, so I slipped it into 4WD.  Another section was loose gravel and mud which made the rig a bit squirrely, again encouraging us to slow down.  Otherwise, the road was in fair condition, meaning it was not smooth enough to go over 40, but not rough enough to drop below 30.  What’s that like for a whole day?  Well, let’s just say that everything that normally sits on the dinette seat wound up on the floor.  Even my mouse pad that sticks well to the dinette table was on the floor.  The coup de gras though was the toilet seat, the pins backed out of both hinges on the toilet seat.

CJ found an entry in the Milepost:  “J 288 (463.5 km) I 168.3 (270 km) Turnout; good overnight spot for self-contained vehicles.”
So, that’s where we are tonight.  It’s about an acre of gravel on the side of the road in an area of grass covered hills.  No trees, but then most trees this far north aren’t any bigger than the average Christmas tree.  Besides being free, there are only a fraction of the mosquitoes which is a real bonus.  We scanned the place for what looked like a level spot, and after making a couple of minor adjustments back and forth a couple of feet we had the trailer level.  Perfect.  The stabilizer jacks went down, the slides went out and we’re all set for the night.

Steve & C. J.   

Status Report - Saturday, July 11th - Inuvik, NWT

A short & sweet status report . . . from the northern most town in the Western Hemisphere!

We’ve arrived in Inuvik, we’re camped in the best site with our living room & dining windows over looking the Mackenzie River about 100 yards away.  The mosquitoes are few, the weather is clear and comfortable in the upper 50’s as we watch float planes take off while having lunch.  We’re going out to explore as soon as I get this sent.

Steve & C. J.

On the road again . . .

Yep, tomorrow morning we hitch up, dump the holding tanks, take on fresh water and start the trek back south to Dawson.  We’re talking about making the return trip in 3 days instead of 4 & spending a night at the Yukon River Campground across the Yukon River from Dawson before returning to Dawson for 2 days of R&R—think laundry, Internet access and doing whatever technical homework might need to be done before the next backwoods leg to Eagle, Alaska.

Our stay in Inuvik has been very different than we expected.  Just don’t ask us what we expected!  J  It’s a small city with an interesting background and infrastructure.  The short version is that a decision was made in the mid-50’s to uproot a traditional Inuit village and move it to a new location.  Except that the new location would be a planned community based on contemporary standards.  The infrastructure side of the story is that the town is built on permafrost.  The definition of permafrost is ground that is frozen for more than 2 years in a row.  What that means is that only the top surface of the ground thaws in the summer; a few inches to a few feet.  The ground under that remains frozen, perhaps to a depth of nearly ¼ mile.  Some permafrost has a lot of ice content and some doesn’t.  Building on permafrost is a real challenge because roads and buildings don’t insulate the frozen ground like the tundra does.  The result is the ground thaws.  Think “melting” and what would happen if the ground under your house and street melted.  They’d sink and perhaps even disappear.  So, everything is built in a way to prevent the heat of the buildings and infrastructure (roads and all utilities, including all sewer and water lines) are above ground.  The roads are built on top of several feet of gravel, but gravel is a poor insulator which is why the Dempster Highway has soft spots that the truck wants to sink into as we drive by.  The sewer & water are located inside “utilidors” which are elevated several feet above the ground.  It’s a bit weird walking next to one and hearing the sewer water rush by.  J  We got a bit behind on our photo processing & story write-ups while we were here, so you might have to wait will be get back to Dawson to see what we’re talking about.

One thing we expected to do in Inuvik was buy a slew of Inuvik T-shirts.  We set out this morning to do just that and scored exactly 1 Inuvik T-shirt between both of us.  So few tourists come here that no one carries we’re planning on stopping at the Regional Heritage Visitor Centre on our way out of town to pick up a couple of their generic NWT Parks T-shirts.  

On the other hand, the Great Northern Art Festival has on the whole been more than we expected.  The physical size of the event is about right, but the depth is much more.  We started out with an exhibition of traditional dances on Friday evening.  All the all-female dancers dance troupe ranged from young children (in contemporary dress) to an 83-year old woman.  All the adults wore traditional dress that they’d made themselves.  The men played their drums.  Following that was another old-timer who demonstrated his skill with a rawhide whip by breaking cigarettes in half that we held by the feet of a volunteer.  Finally, a native story teller who recently moved to Ottawa and now does his stories to a hip-hop beat told a number of stories, primarily about how the changes brought by the white man has resulted in a loss of their native culture compounded by alcoholism, domestic abuse, etc.

The high point of the Great Northern Art Festival was when we got the phone call that CJ got into the drum building workshop.  The artist had limited the workshop to only 5 people and it was sold out when she tried to sign up on Friday afternoon, but someone dropped out and she got in.  This was something she’d been talking about doing at home for several years, so the opportunity to do it up here with a well-known artist was a real coup.  Now, my challenge is to get her priceless drum home without it getting exposed to severe weather or dirty while the elk hide is drying.  BTW, we did get some T-shirts from the festival, but this year’s design is (a) totally boring, and (b) only comes in black, which neither of us is fond of.  They did have some on a back table in navy, red and yellow and we very nearly got out the door buying them before the boss lady returned and stopped everything because those were reserved for staff & volunteers.  OTOH, they had a bunch of ‘vintage’ shirts from previous years that were far more attractive and 80% off, too.  

We did have two art purchase goals for the trip, but unfortunately neither were fulfilled at the festival.  The big goal is to find a largish painting for our dining room.  The.small goal is to find some really nice locally made earrings for CJ.  Would you believe that there were no earrings there?  We did find one painting that both of us liked, but it was of a Grayling (fish) and we’re looking for a salmon.  So, I guess we’re still looking.  The aboriginal people have a “corporation” building in town and there’s a tiny gift shop in one of the staff’s office where they have a very small selection of items.  CJ got a pair of earrings and I got a jacket that commemorates the 25^th Anniversary of the "Inuvialuit Final Agreement"; the treaty between the Canadian government and the aboriginal people.  They also had some beaver & muskrat skin caps (I have a beaver skin cap from the 2004 trip) and some seal skin mittens along with University of Tuk T-shirts.  Tuk is short for Toktoyaktuk, a fishing village about 70 miles north of here accessible only by air or boat.

Naturally, we did a little exploring while we were here.  One of our excursions was to the end of the road north of town.  We discovered a huge antenna array that’s some kind of radar used for researching the weather in space which has a direct effect on the weather in the far north.  What appeared to us to be an abandoned house at the end of the road may in fact be a part of the antenna array.  Google “Inuvik radar antenna” for more info.

We also tried to drive to the junction of the road along the East Channel of the Mackenzie River across a pond from our campsite and the Tuktoyaktuk Winter Road (Ice Road Truckers).  What we figured out is that the Winter Road simply uses the boat launch ramp that we can see out our windows and onto the frozen Mackenzie River.

There’s no urban sprawl here, but there is some new development.  There are several neighborhoods.  An old section consisting mostly of single-wide mobile homes, the colorful Inuvik 4-plexes that are arranged in rows or star-like clusters, apartment houses, and a new development of relatively up-market, larger single-family homes.  All connected by the maze of above ground utilidors.  The north part of town is industrial and there’s a bypass so the heavy trucks don’t drive through town.  

We tried looking for a restaurant in the phone book and discovered that the phone book covers the entire Northwest Territories.  Imagine a phone book for Texas & California combined, yet the white pages are only 88 pages long.  And it’s a smaller format than the typical urban phone book.  And it includes a reverse directory for the entire Territory.  Still, the restaurant listings was less than 2 pages with only 2 listings in Inuvik.  Eating out is not something the local folks do much of.

We ordered a new “super heavy duty” air compressor to replace our dead “standard” air compressor today.  The standard was intended for very occasional use; less than once a week, while the Super HD has a 35% duty cycle rating, meaning that it’s built to run 35% of 24/7.  Of course, it’s also much larger so it won’t fit under the hood.  I’ll mount it next to the fuel tank in the bed of the truck.  We got an email today from UPS that it will arrive at North Pole, Alaska this Friday, a week before we plan on getting there.  You should have heard the guy in Michigan when I mentioned that we had to drive 600 miles south to reach North Pole, Alaska!!  Till then, I short-circuited some of the air system plumbing to by-pass whatever is leaking so we’d have air pressure in the rear suspension on our return to Dawson.  Unfortunately, that means the gauge inside the cab is also by-passed so we can only guess what air pressure we have.

Small world story.  Another couple arrived while we were checking into the campground.  He noticed our Washington state plates and asked where we were from.  Turns out he grew up in Port Angeles.

Dempster Highway statistics:  The Dempster averages 100 vehicles/day in the summer and 35/day in the winter.  That’s total vehicles using the road going in both directions.  Try thinking of a section of highway that it would take you 2 days to drive the length of, with only 100 cars/day using that entire length of highway.      

Till we get back to Dawson.

Steve & C. J.  

Hi folks,

A surprise report.  We got up before 7 this morning to a gray day.  We needed to get up early to get everything done we needed to do before leaving Inuvik by 9.  That meant eating breakfast, hitching up, dumping the holding tanks, topping off the fresh water tank, stopping at the post office for stamps, and the visitor center for  NWT Parks T-shirt.  A lot to do in 2 hours. 

By noon the gray turned to rain and it rained the rest of the day.  Of course the gray stayed, too.  Except when a couple of time when it got so ‘gray’ that our visibility got down to about 50 yards.  Most of the time, however, the visibility was fine for driving.  It never rained really hard, so the rain never became a real problem to drive in.  Taking photos was another story, as was the mud.

We told the guys on the Mackenzie ferry that we wanted to go to Tsiigehtchic, a little First Nation village at a different part of the river instead of the usual route.  Tsiigehtchic turned out to be very small and a bit of a challenge to maneuver the rig through.  The ‘streets’ are dirt, very narrow, very twisty and the town is on a hillside.  I was in 4WD the entire time and using about 110% of the road on a couple of turns.  When we got back down the hill to the ferry landing, we spotted a couple of Sandhill cranes in the nearby marsh area.  So, I grabbed by long lens and headed out across the mud flats.  After getting a few photos, I had to run back to the truck because the ferry returned quicker than I anticipated. 

We stopped in Fort McPherson for some of their $1.34/liter ($4.43/gallon) diesel.  It was $1.62/liter ($5.39/gallon) elsewhere, so we were glad to know about the $1.34/liter fuel.  We also took a lunch break there before going back on the road. 

Once the rain started, the road got muddy.  They aren’t joking about it getting slippery when it’s muddy, either.  I stopped once when we spotted a bird and the truck’s ABS was going to town even though I was barely touching the brakes.  Fortunately, the trailer brakes were warm and not grabby so the trailer didn’t try to pass the truck.  A good thing.  On another occasion, I moved over towards the shoulder for an oncoming car and the trailer started slipping sideways on the soft gravel near the edge of the road.  CJ felt the sideways pull of the trailer in the right seat almost as quickly as I did.    A quick dose of power along with pointing the rig at the rear of the oncoming car and we were back in the center of the road again.  We went down the major grades at idle in 2^nd gear low range.  That’s just 7 MPH so you know we were being VERY cautious.  The uphill sections aren’t as dangerous, so we went up them at about 15-20 MPH, but CJ didn’t appreciate the dancing around the truck did on the bumps and more slippery spots.  The mud wasn’t as deep as it was last week the day after that big storm, but it was more slippery.  Anyway, we eventually reached the Yukon border and before too long the road became more gravel and less mud.  J

We took some more photos of our now incredibly muddy truck and trailer at the Arctic Circle waypoint.  EVERYTHING is coated with a layer of mud.  Mud treated with calcium to reduce dust. I’ve washed my hands 3 times and they’re still dirty just from the door handles. 

As I mentioned, the rain didn’t affect our visibility too much, but the mud on the windows sure did.  The side windows on the truck became almost totally opaque.  I stopped and cleaned the side windows and mirrors once and within 5 minutes we couldn’t see out of them again.  So our sightseeing was confined to the windshield.  None the less, we still scored some new & exciting wild life. 

The first was some kind of somewhat raptor-like bird, but with a long swallow tail.  The photos made the identification; a Long-tailed Jaeger.  A while later I spotted a Loon in a lake.  There’s something cool about Loons so I stopped quickly (in the middle of the road, BTW) grabbed the long zoom and snuck up behind some road-side trees to get few photos.  Turns out it was a pair of Arctic Loons vs the Common Loons we saw a few weeks ago.  Sooooo cool. 

We reached the half-way point at Eagle Plains, Yukon just before 7 PM.  Both of us are pretty tired and hungry, so we parked the rig in front of the hotel/restaurant, fed the dogs and went inside for a sit down dinner.  As before their food was excellent and very fairly priced.  And as before the service was slower than a stop sign.  But, their Internet service was working—as you can tell since you’re getting this surprise report—and they only wanted $15 for a campsite with 15A electricity.  We’d prefer 30A, but we’ve spent enough time up here to know that you take what you can get.  So, we’re camped at this tiny little spot in the middle of the Dempster Highway & plugged into electricity and wireless Internet.  The wind is blowing and the rain is falling, but we’re warm and cozy.

NOTE: the Internet connection failed before I got this message sent, and it still wasn’t working in the morning.  So much for thinking we’d get it out on time.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Wednesday, July 15th - Klondike River CG

Brrrrrrrr.  It was 34 degrees when we left Eagle Plains this morning.  It must have dipped below freezing during the night because instead of water cascading off of the awnings over the slides, a sheet of ice came off.  In any case, 34 degrees on top of a mountain with a bit of a breeze & high humidity makes for a very cold morning.  Everyone but Gracie got from the trailer to the truck as quickly as possible.  Gracie, on the other hand, stood out in the middle of the parking lot with the wind blowing her fur every which way and just looked at us.  She must have been in 7^th Heaven, because we had to call her to the truck to leave 

It took a long time to get the truck cab warm because we spent a lot of time going downhill this morning.  When we’re going downhill, the engine actually turns off the fuel so there is no fire to make heat with.  So even though the heater was set to the max, nothing happened for the first hour or so.  Both of us wore jackets & gloves for a couple of hours instead of the usual 5-10 minutes before we shed them.

We don’t know if our recollections were haywire or if it was the two storms, but the road south of Eagle Plains sure seemed a whole lot rougher than it did last week.  It was shake, rattle and roll for the first several hours today.  The latest casualty of the road being a broken bracket that supports the left lower edge of the front cap—the “front cap” is the stylish molded fiberglass end of the trailer over the slab-sided end-walls underneath it.  A very minor & simple thing to fix.  CJ also noticed some water in the front cap window frame, so we’re wondering where that came from.  Either we have a leak again, or it was from the condensation inside the trailer from running the furnace with 4 breathing bodies in the small box.  

We added one of the biggies to today’s wildlife count—a grizzly bear.  I spotted him on the road about ¼ mile ahead and stopped the truck to switch lenses.  Since he was headed our way, we turned off the engine and waited for him to get closer rather than our trying to get closer to him.  He got a little closer than 100 yards away before turning into the woods.  Good enough to get photos, but not great photos.  Other wildlife today included:

We completed our round trip on the Dempster Highway and turned right towards Dawson City, but instead of going into Dawson, we stopped for the night at the Klondike River Campground.  The weather had warmed considerably once we got out of the mountains and we had a pleasant 68 in the campground.  We found a simple pull-thru site which makes setting up easy.  But, the site is quite rocky & we need to service (grease) the chassis on both the truck and trailer so we’ll move to  . . . ?? somewhere else tomorrow with better ground for lifting the truck and trailer off the ground.  But, not until we sleep in and get thoroughly rested after 457 miles of the Dempter Highway in two days.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Thursday, July 16th - Yukon River Campground

Hi folks,

Another short & simple status report.

We decided to stay another day at the Yukon River Campground, although we did move the rig to a nicer site.  The new site is wider, longer, lets the sun hit the solar panel to charge the batteries and has much finer crushed rock vs. the near cobble that was in the previous site.  

Our first order of business after moving to the new site was to lubricate the chassis on both the trailer and truck.  We have this wedge-shaped gizmo that’s designed to lift one of the trailer’s wheels off the ground by driving the other wheel up the wedge.  Since the trailer wheels are right next to each other and their springs are connected to each other via an “equalizer”, the second wheel eventually comes off the ground.  Well almost.  When the wedge is on gravel, it doesn’t quite lift the trailer high enough to get the other wheel off the ground.  Oh well, at least it got 99% of the load off the springs so I could get grease into the fittings. 

While I was getting things ready to lube the chassis, CJ cleaned the mud off the diamond plate on the front of the trailer.  We measured one hunk at 3 ¼” thick.  

After that we took a little walk on a trail that goes to the river.  But, they’re building a new bridge to cross a creek where the trail previously used a beaver dam to cross the creek.  CJ went back to camp while Gracie & I took photos of trees stumps the beaver had gnawed on & other interesting fauna.  

Tomorrow we head into Dawson & the Gold Rush RV Park again for a couple of days.  Dawson is having a music festival this weekend and we’re looking forward to that to break up the monotony of camping in an overcrowded gravel pit.  J  

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Friday, July 17th - Dawson, Yukon

Another short & sweet update.

We're camped in our site at Dawson's Gold Rush RV Campground again.  We'll be staying here for 2 days, doing laundry, Internet stuff and crawling under and over the rig looking for things that need fixing before moving on.

We'll be uploading photos later today so be sure to check the web site soon.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Saturday, July 18th - Dawson, Yukon

Well, we’re off to see the wizard again in the morning.  Our stay in Dawson has been interesting, as usual.  

First there was the Rotel Tour bus with it’s 21 German tourists.  You need to understand that they not only ride around in the bus, it’s also their kitchen and bedroom.  You have to see the photos to believe it. 

Second was the music festival.  It turned out to be very youth oriented which meant the campground was half full of young people in tents instead of the usual older crowd in RV’s.  Naturally, it included loud music.  The good news is that the music was 6 blocks away.  The bad news is that the wind was blowing just right and we were sure it was less than a block away.  We normally tend to think of Canada as being virtually crime-free, but the truth is it’s anything but that.  This weekend the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) maintained a very high presence—they came through the campground in their ATVs, mountain bikes and/or SUVs every 30 minutes.  OTOH, other than being able to hear the music last night and the different clientele with their little cars & tents we didn’t see any problems.

As usual, the truck and trailer got a lot of attention.  The truck usually gets noticed because of its rugged looks thanks to the numerous visible upgrades.  We’ve been amazed at how many people notice the oversized & rugged tires on the trailer, though.  But, this weekend the dirtiest of our RV companions have merely dusty rigs, while ours is thoroughly muddy.  We’ve got another 300 miles of dirt roads between us and the next paved road, so there wasn’t any point in giving it a bath here in Dawson.  But, the God’s must have thought it needed one anyway, because it rained pretty hard this afternoon and washed off about half of it.  

The next leg is one of the shorter ones.  We start by crossing the Yukon River at the edge of town via the ferry and climb the grade to the “Top of the World Highway”.  This road is unique because instead of following a river in the valley, it follows the ridge line of the mountains.  After about 80 miles of that, we’ll reach the minuscule town of Poker Creek, Alaska.  If there’s anything in Poker Creek besides the Customs Officers at the border, we didn’t see it the last time.  Thirteen miles later, we’ll turn right onto the Taylor Highway that will take us to Eagle, Alaska.  Eagle is the site of an ancient native village, then a mining town during the Klondike gold rush.  About 150 people live there according to the 2000 census, BUT the word on the street is the town was practically wiped out by the Yukon River spring breakup last year.  We’ll be staying at a BLM (Bureau of Land Management site at the abandoned Fort Egbert just west of the town.  We’ve known about staying on BLM lands, but we’ve never done it before, so that part will be a new experience for us.

After Eagle, we drive back down the Taylor Highway & head west for “beautiful downtown Chicken”.  Our itinerary calls for an overnighter in Chicken, but CJ might not be able to deal with the overdone tourist trap aspect of the place and I’ll have to drive on to Tok.  Once we get to Tok, we’ll be back in civilization, relatively speaking.  In other words, we’ll be offline for the next 2-3 days, except for our SPOT reports.

FYI, we’ve uploaded a bunch of photos of the trip to Inuvik and back, and linked them to the Leg 6 web page, but we haven’t finished writing the story line/descriptions yet so you’ll just have to guess what’s in the photos.

            Link to web page for Inuvik trip 

            Link to SPOT page 

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Sunday, July 19th - Eagle, Alaska

Back in the US of A! 

The “Top of the World Highway” has deteriorated considerably since we drove it in 2004.  Even the MilePost talks about it.  In 2004 it was very dry & dusty—there was a major fire going on and we could see the smoke from the highway—but the road was smooth.  It rained last night and off & on today, so there was little dust, but the road was quite rough.  Rougher than the Dempster in general.

After about 65 miles we reached the border at Poker Creek, Alaska.  Population 2.  We think they’re referring to the 2 Customs Agents that work the border ‘cause there ain’t nothing else there.  Re-entry into the US was painless and we resumed our drive on the Top of the World Highway for another 13 miles before reaching the turn north onto the Taylor Highway to Eagle.  

The Taylor Highway presented us with the roughest, narrowest and steepest roads yet.  

Narrow:  All of the Taylor Highway is narrow & passing oncoming traffic means slowing to a crawl and pulling over as far as possible.  Several miles are strictly 1-lane wide, yet there is no provision at all for determining if there is oncoming traffic.  Spooky.  A tour bus outfit has started taking cruise ship folks to Eagle, but they have a pilot car that runs about a mile in front of the bus & when he finds oncoming traffic, he radios the bus and so the bus can find a spot to pull over.  We know, because we found the bus & got past him on a sharp turn that had a bit of side room for both of us.  

Rough:  We average less than 18.5 MPH for over 60 miles.  We rarely got over 25.  Lots of washboard sections, potholes and large rocks that form the base of the road bed protrude through the gravel surface.  Rough.

Steep:  VERY steep.  We descended one grade from over 3200 feet to the river at 1200 feet in less than 6 miles.  It worked out to a 14.96% grade.  Average, some parts were even steeper.  Thank God for low range; although some of the steepest sections wound the engine all the way to red-line in 2^nd gear low range.  The service brakes were numb—useless.  It will be interesting to see how well the truck pulls that grade going back up tomorrow.  

In the mean time, the weather warmed from 50-something to 71, so we spent the afternoon with the sunroof and windows open, which is a lot nicer than all buttoned up.  And at under 20 MPH, getting wind blown isn’t a problem.

Eagle is a pretty little town.  Quite a few old buildings from the gold rush in the late 1800s.  The town was hit hard by an ice jam on the Yukon River last year that flooded the section of town near the river and shoved house-size chunks of ice well above the normal high water mark.  The local ranger described it as the “Perfect Storm” version of an ice break-up.  Other towns downriver were also hit hard because of the flooding after the breakup.  It’s a bit hard to imagine, but one of the smaller rivers breaks up before the Yukon so it’s clear when the Yukon River breaks up, and when the Yukon does break up, the water from the Yukon runs up the other river 50 miles in a normal year.  Pretty amazing.

I peaked in the Eagle general store this afternoon.  It’s about 12-16’ wide and maybe 30’ long; a few shelves on each side and a bit of stuff in the middle and the world’s smallest counter near the door.  I don’t think they had enough food in the place to stock our trailer . . . except for ice cream and candy bars.  Right on the edge of town, the road crosses the grass airstrip to get to the visitor center.  Then we drove past the 4 airplanes parked under the trees to get to the Fort Egbert campground.  One of the planes was leaning on cinder blocks because it was missing some of its landing gear.  Two others appeared to have all their major parts, but still didn’t look particularly healthy.  The 4^th was a simple Piper Cub and was for sale.  A Piper Cub would make a super toy.  So simple and it starts flying at about 35 MPH.  Super Cubs with powerful engines, huge tundra tires or floats are very popular in Alaska and are worth a small fortune for a such a small & simple 2-seat plane.

We’re staying at the BLM campground at Fort Egbert.  The campground is free at this time because most of the workers that came to Eagle to fix the town after the flood are staying here in the campground.  CJ’s observed that the best looking young hunks drive red Dodge pickups.  The three guys in the campsite next to us with the red Dodge with white racing stripes are a worthy example, I’m told.  J

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Monday, July 20th - Walker Fork BLM

Hi folks,

What should we talk about first?  

Well, for starters we went back to downtown Eagle this morning and walked down to the water front to see what the scoop was on the damage from the ice break up.  We’d expected to find a number of buildings that were built right next to the river just begging for trouble.  Instead, we found the bank had been “hardened” with steel plates & it was over 12’ from the lowest building grade level down to the river.  Buildings 5-10’ above that level had been shoved off their foundations.  A few were repairable; workers were raising a very nice log home above its concrete foundation.  They had just reached their target of 8’4” so we’re guessing that the plan is to build a new wall below the original structure, much like was frequently done in Alameda, CA.

Besides taking photos of the flood & ice damage, a couple of ravens cooperated and got close enough for me to photograph with my short lens.  One was on the sea wall, the other had found some groceries inside a damaged restaurant & apparently thought I wanted his Cheezits.  Year old Cheezits in a flood damaged building?  No thanks Mr. Raven.

We’d parked the rig next to the house with a zillion bird houses and I noticed a pair of swallows was using one of them, so I spent a few minutes photographing one of them giving the babysitter bugs before we took off.

It seems that whenever we retrace our steps, we wind up wondering why we thought the road was so bad.  As always, we get past the gravy section and rediscover the rough road of our memories.  Today was no exception.  We were doing about 25 MPH talking about this phenomenon for the first 3-4 miles and then hit the rocky road we drove yesterday that quickly slowed us down to 10-20 MPH for the next 50+ miles. 

We were about 10 miles down the road when the pilot car escorting 2 tour buses came barreling down the highway without slowing down.  Yesterday, the driver of the pilot car stopped & talked to us and radioed the bus & had him pull over.  Now, we’ve got 2 buses out there somewhere & headed our way.  We stopped at the first pseudo wide spot and waited.  A couple of minutes later  the first bus flew past us doing 40+ and we could see the 2^nd bus across the cut, so we stayed put.  He too, flew by us.  Hmmm.  The locals seem to slow down to a near crawl when we encounter them, but these two tour buses blast by like they own the place.  

We stopped for lunch at a wayside park at the bottom of that big grade we crawled down yesterday.  We pulled out and headed up the hill at 3:18 PM (1260’ elevation) & pressed the loud pedal.  The Duramax responded with what it does VERY well – lot’s of power.  We pretty much flew up the grade at 15-30 MPH depending on the road condition and the twistiness of the turns.  The Duramax was registering 145-250 HP to maintain that speed.  Since, we’ve seen the computer show as much as 348 HP since I redid the intake system so it breathes cool fresh air instead of the hot underhood air, we didn’t lack for power.  The engine did warm up to 210 degrees twice which kicks on the fan to bring it back down to under 200 degrees.  The transmission temperature gradually climbed, though and reached 231 before we got to the top, which wasn’t enough to trigger the warning.  

Partway up the grade that pilot car caught up with us, but we figured they could deal with our speed as we were moving along nicely.  We pulled over at the wide spot at the summit and pilot car pulled along side to warn us that the bus would stop and let the folks out there so our peaceful spot wouldn’t be so peaceful.  Then he pulled up a ways in front of us.  Since we were wondering how they could possibly spend any time at all in Eagle when passed us going down and caught up going back.  Turns out they delivered 2 bus loads of cruise ships folks to Eagle to catch the ‘Queen’ sidewheeler to Dawson, and are now bringing 1 bus load that just got off the ‘Queen’ and are enroute Chicken etc.  The bus arrived while we were talking and parked next to us, between us and the road.  So, when we were ready to leave, we had to back up to get around them and onto the highway.  Why didn’t he stop behind us where there was lots of room?  Not very considerate. 

A while later we got to another high spot on the road with a nice wide spot to get off the road.  I climbed to the nearby rock premonitory and took a bunch of photos, one set of which will be turned into a 360 degree panorama.  Awesome. 

The road smoothed out again a few miles before we reached the Top of the World Highway, which was still in lousy shape, so our 30 MPH stint was brief.  The tour bus caught up shortly and was at least nice enough to sound a melody on his air horn when I pulled over and gave him room to get by.  

An FYI about big busses:  Those big buses weigh as much as 54,000# and ride on very large HD truck tires designed to last over 100,000 miles.  The combination of their weight, full air suspension, large diameter tires and very long wheelbase makes for a pillow-like ride.  We know, our Beaver Patriot was one of them, albeit a bit lighter at 30,000#.  Between that and the corporate packing of the itinerary, they give little heed to rough roads as they rush to the next place.

CJ found a nice little BLM park called “Walker Fork” about 15 miles before we got to Chicken.  We pulled in to check the place out and found only 2 sites were large enough for us.  We had to pull back out onto the highway to turn around and make a second pass at the first site.  Just as I pulled into the first site—a pull-thru—the Heavens opened up and hit us like a cow on a flat rock.  I had my rain coat on the coat hook in the back seat along with a Filson oiled canvas hat.  A quick run around the rig and I determined that (a) we weren’t hanging out in the driveway at either end, and (b) the coach was level right where it was.  We took both as signs that this is where we were supposed to stay tonight.  About 30 minutes later, the rain stopped and the sun came back out.  

FYI, the “new plan” is to stop at another BLM site CJ found; Moon Lake about 20 miles west of Tok.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Tuesday, July 21st - Moon Lake SRA

We reached Pavement, Civilization and half of our total trip mileage today. 

Pavement is a mixed blessing because of the frost heaves and potholes.  We hit an unmarked frost heave this afternoon at about 40 MPH that just about launched the trailer clear off the ground.  You could almost hear the dishes in the trailer crash around.  We could definitely hear the stuff in the back of the truck get semi-airborne and then come crashing down.

Tok, Alaska isn’t a great example of civilization, but it’s a welcome respite for most RVers after the dusty & bumpy drive on the Top of the World Highway from Dawson.  Three gas stations, a slew of RV parks, an RV repair shop, a large and VERY well-stocked visitor center and 1.5 grocery stores.  BTW, Dawson Creek, BC; Yellowknife, NWT & Whitehorse, YT are the 3 cities we’ve visited so far with grocery stores you’d recognize.  Everything in between is no larger than the typical convenience store.  The grocery store in Tok is the first grocery store that’s mid-sized.

Trip mileage.  The latest version of our route per Microsoft Streets & Trips is 10,020 miles.  We passed the 5,000 mile mark this afternoon, although that’s the gross mileage since we left home and hasn’t been corrected for the miles where the trailer wasn’t connected.  An admin detail we may or may not get to. 

Fuel mileage.  We’re hoping that today’s fill up will be the worst mileage of the trip, although the Dalton Highway to Dead Horse/Prudhoe Bay could be similar.  We managed a paltry 8.09 MPG for the last 332 miles.  But, if you consider that almost all of that in 1^st and 2^nd gears & none of it was on flat ground, getting over 8 MPG speaks volumes about the efficiency of a diesel engine. 

We splurged a bit and had lunch in a restaurant when we arrived in Tok.  It was a treat for CJ because then she didn’t have to fix lunch, and for me because they had WiFi so I was able to send out the status reports of the last couple of days and download both our email.  Then we fueled the truck, went to their lovely visitor center and picked up another inch high stack of literature, and went grocery shopping.  As I mentioned in the last note, CJ found this BLM place called Moon Lake about 18 miles north of Tok.  The road was dead flat smooth and straight as an arrow for the first 15 miles—the computer was registering  a steady 14-15 MPG at 50 MPH.  If only we could get that kind of mileage on all the roads we’re driving!

We had the entire park to ourselves when we arrived, so we took the one that’s parallel to the lake shoreline about 40 feet away.  A few people have come and gone after picnicking, and one couple is spending the night in their pickup canopy.  I’ve spent most of the evening taking photos of the critters.  Some gulls, ducks, loons, squirrels and a beaver.  Aside from the beaver, I’m still working on IDing the specific birds.  

The bug count seems to be very low, and the site is certainly lovely, so we’re staying a couple of nights.  But, there’s no cellular service so you won’t know that till we’ve left and moved on up the road closer to Fairbanks.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Wednesday, July 22nd - Moon Lake SRA

Sometimes we’re just amazed how things work out.  Take this little lake we’re camped at, for instance.  OK, the setting is real pretty and we got the one campsite that’s not just right on the lake, but we can park the rig with our living & dining room windows overlooking the lake instead of the interior parking/driveway.  And the place isn’t crowded.  In fact, we’re the only 2 people in the place at the moment.  But, I was rather disappointed with the apparent lack of wildlife, making it little more than a pretty picture.  

Wrong.

First, there were the Red Squirrels that Gracie flushes out.  And a rabbit this morning that proved that Gracie can move really fast when she’s motivated.  And the obligatory gulls—the exact type I still haven’t determined—and a few ducks.  But, most of the ducks seemed to be on the far side of the lake, far enough away that the photos just barely let me ID the type of duck.  Then, I spotted an Arctic Loon in the middle of the lake, but only got two very poor photos before I lost sight of him in the fading light.  Then, a beaver swam by.  We’d found beaver droppings & several trees that beaver had cut, so we knew they were around.  I spent a couple of hours between 11:30pm & 1:30am trying to get photos of him, but it got too dark about half way through and the flash has very limited range & annoys the beaver.  I’ve staked out a place to sit tonight & wait for him.  

Then, there was the Alaska Fish & Wildlife spotter plane that landed on the lake yesterday afternoon.  They secured the plane to the bank about 50 yards from our campsite, right next to where the beaver lives.  We got some great photos of the plane landing yesterday, and more of it taking off and landing today.  They’re counting eagle & osprey nests and chicks.  The pilot flies so low & tight around the trees with a nest that the biologist/spotter can count the number of eggs in a nest.  The pilot comes back after 2-3 hours to rotate spotters because the spotters can only take the aerobatic motions for a bit before needing to throw up.  The pilot joked with me about giving me a ride this afternoon.  I told him that CJ would divorce me if I went up and CJ didn’t get the chance.  So both of us stayed on the ground.  It was still way cool being so close to them landing and taking off that you can recognize their faces in thed photos. 

While waiting for the plane to come ashore this morning, I noticed one of the Pacific Loons on our side of the lake.  Finally got some great photos of a Pacific Loon.  Incredibly beautiful birds.  Even got a couple of so-so photos of one of them in flight.  BTW, we previously thought they were Arctic Loons, but discovered a small detail in their plumage make them Pacific Loons.  

Speaking of IDing birds, after referring to several of the bird books we carry, we decided that the resident gull at Moon Lake is a ‘Mew Gull’.  We don’t feel bad about this because serious birders talk about how difficult it is to ID some types of gulls and how much controversy there is over certain types, especially hybrids as gulls seem to have interracial relationships fairly frequently.  

The big maintenance project today was rotating the tires on the truck.  We mentioned when we were in Inuvik that we’d noticed how rapidly the drive tires (rear tires on the truck that make it go) were wearing.  The tires were new in March at 70,300 miles and we left home at 72,000 miles.  The odometer read 76,203 when we arrived in Inuvik and discovered an the rear tires were worn an estimated 1/3 of their useful life.  Today, we were showing about 50% of the tread left on the rear tires and 80% on the front tires.  We also noticed the major increase in scarring on the rear tires, so we spent 3+ hours this afternoon jacking up the truck and rotating the tires in our campsite.  We have everything we need to do the job: 2 jacks so 2 wheels can be lifted at the same time, an air compressor that runs off the generator set to change the air pressure to match the new location (62 front, 80 rear).  We also had to rotate the air pressure sensors for our TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system).  It started to drizzle about the time we finished, so our timing was great.

The rain has stopped and the wind has died down, but the wildlife seems slow coming out tonight.  Of course, we should complain.  We’ve got a little American Wigeon that swims up and down this side of the lake feeding on bugs near the reeds along the shoreline.  There’s a Scoter on the other side of the lake; just close enough to be able to identify with binoculars or a long lens, but too far away to actually watch or get any decent photos.  While I’m practicing taking photos in the fading light and taking an occasional shot of the sunset, the beaver swims right by me and I miss him.  So, I set up and wait for him to return, but an hour later there’s still no trace of him.  So I decide to go down where I think his lodge is and stake out that location . . .  he’s just leaving & headed south.  I get a few shots of beaver butt.  Gracie & I wait.  First the duck comes back, but I see the beaver is coming back too.  So, I take a few quick practice shots to try to zero in on the best ISO setting for the nearly dark scene.  Mr. Beaver returns with a bundle of reeds for dinner & I get a couple of decent photos.  It’s almost midnight and we’re on the road again in the morning, so these are going to be as good as it gets with this beaver.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Thursday, July 23rd - Clearwater - Delta SRA

Hi folks,

Another short & sweet one. 

We started the morning by taking more photos of the bush pilot & spotter doing their pre-flight chores and taking off for another day of monitoring Bald Eagle & Osprey nests.  Then we picked up our feet and headed on up the Alaska Highway for Delta Junction—the official historical end of the Alaska Highway.  The newer road going on to Fairbanks is also called the Alaska Highway, but it lacks the historical significance.  Naturally, we stopped at the visitor center in Delta Junction and signed the guest book for the second time.  J

We spotted a female moose on the side of the highway this morning, but she was a bit camera shy as she went into the woods moments after we stopped, but not before I got a few shots of her.

We dropped in on another SRA (State Recreation Area) less than  2 miles from town, but it didn’t have any suitable sites for the size of our rig, nor did it offer anything of interest, so we headed for another SRA 11 miles east of town.  We’re found one site at Clearwater-Delta SRA that’s big enough for us and not too much of a challenge to get into, so that’s where we’re spending the night.  There’s a lake or river just down the hill from the campsite, but we haven’t explored it yet.  

Tomorrow brings Fairbanks, although we’re spending the first night at the same RV park we stayed at in North Pole, a few miles south of Fairbanks.  The new air compressor for the truck should have arrived at the RV park last week and we’re looking forward to having it working again, even if we’re not looking forward to the installation process.  

There’s a military base in Fairbanks and another SRA practically in town, and we’re hoping to find a spot to camp at one of them instead of staying in a commercial park.  The plan is to stay in Fairbanks for a few days while we get ready to tackle the Dalton Highway; possibly the most challenging of all.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Friday, July 24th - North Pole, Alaska

It was less than 90 miles of GOOD roads from our campsite at Clearwater SRA to our campsite at North Pole, Alaska, yet it took us about 6 hours to get here. 

First we stopped as we were pulling out of the campground and said goodbye to the campground hosts who were really nice folks from Michigan.  We’d spent a good part of yesterday afternoon chatting with them.

Then we stopped at several other campgrounds along the way to get a feel for which ones we might like to stay at the next time we come up here.  A couple of them are contenders for future trips, while others aren’t.  We take notes on these things in our RV log book as well as take photos.  We organize our photos into folders by date & location so it’s really quite easy to find a specific photo even though we’ve taken over 10,000 so far.  Roughly half of those are just record keeping shots as we go along.  Anal retentive?  Naturally!  J

Another one of those God things . . .

The exit to our campground was under construction, so we had to pass it & take the next exit.  Shortly before the next exit, I noticed 2 very large candy canes with a banner between them on the east side of the highway.  This intrigued me because I knew that the “Santa Claus” part of North Pole was on the west side of the highway.  I was curious and read the banner “Universal Welding”.  It was just about 2 minutes earlier that I was thinking that we needed to keep our eyes peeled for a blacksmith shop to do some welding repairs on our trailer hitch.  So, we pulled into this large fabrication yard and shop.  I went into the office and found a bookkeeper—the place works 4-10’s shift and today was day #5 so just a handful of people were there out of the 50-something employees.  She got a foreman who came out and looked at the rig.  He checked and had the right size of a special steel on hand and said he’d pull one of the workers off their other project and fix our rig.  We backed the trailer up to the shop, unhitched and I prepped the hitch assembly while the worker cut and bent the new steel to fit.  About 2 hours later we drove out with a much improved hitch tension system.   Not only did they drop everything to fix our trailer, they only charged us $75.  

Three miles down a side road we pulled into the Riverview RV Park & checked in.  As soon as I mentioned my name, the owner remembered receiving our new air compressor last week so that was painless, too.  After looking at our rig in the driveway, she offered free access to the car wash, but we declined since we’ll be on the Dalton Highway in just a few days.  We’ll give her a good bath when we get back here from Deadhorse as 98% of rest of the trip will be on paved roads.  Besides, it’s been rained on a few times in the last few days and most of the mud has been washed off.  It still looks 10 times as dirty as anything else around.   

We do have a decent wireless access here, so we’ll try to get the photos & story on the web site caught up during the next couple of evenings.

We scouted out the other RV parks in the Fairbanks area this evening and found the 2 desirable places were packed solid, so we’ll stay put for 2-3 days while we’re making our repairs and preparations for the Dalton Highway.  We also bought the new wiring we need for the new compressor but haven’t found the new air hose yet.  The alarm is set for 0800 so we can get that done before some of the shops close at noon on Saturday.  Cross your fingers & we’ll find some of that air hose, OK? 

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Sunday, July 26th - North Pole, Alaska

Hi folks,

Our stay here in North Pole & Fairbanks the last few days was very pleasant, but only semi-productive.  

We installed the new air compressor in the bed of the truck, partly under the auxiliary fuel tank.  The compressor works great and pumps up the air tank much faster than the old standard model, but there’s a huge leak in the system that we haven’t been able to find, so the system isn’t working like it should.  We installed a valve to shut off the air pressure in the rear air springs (bags) but since it won’t hold air pressure for more than a few hours, we use it to temporarily hold the desired air spring pressure, and then cap off the line.  We found a source for push-on air fittings in Fairbanks so making the change back and forth only takes about a minute and doesn’t require any tools.  So, we can reconnect the hoses back to their normal connections and put the air compressor fuse back in and in about a minute we have full air pressure for either unhitching or adjusting the ride height of the truck.  Not only did the process of doing this meant numerous trips to the nearest hardware store, we had to reload everything back into the truck before we could make the run. 

While working on the air system, I discovered that the grill guard bolts had come loose.  The two bolts that came loose were OEM Chevy bolts that hold the fender on.  The problem is that they use blind nuts, so while that makes tightening them easy, it also means it’s not easy to replace the blind nuts with Nylocs to prevent them loosening again.  Another detail to re-engineer when we get home.  Besides, both of us agree that I need to reengineer the grill guard & install a winch on it. 

The weather has been warm, going on very warm.  In the low 80’s today.  That will change as we head north.  The only questions are (a) how quickly it will cool off as we proceed up the Dalton Highway, and (b) how cold it will get in Dead Horse.  

We made our reservations today to take the 2-hour tour of the oil facility at Prudhoe Bay for this Friday.  They run the tour twice a day, at 7 am and at 5 pm.  You don’t have to know us very well to figure out which one we took.  J

Our Internet connection here has been very spotty.  Sometimes it works great and is reasonably fast, other times it’s slow.  And it simply doesn’t work at all about half the time.  So, between the Internet & our mechanical issues we’ve gotten nearly nothing done with the images for the several days, much less getting the web site up to date.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed that we don’t have any significant new issues that need our attention when we get back from the Dalton Highway.

Once again, we’ll be 100% off the grid between here and Dead Horse.  We’ve not sure if we’ll have cellular service in Dead Horse, just like we’re not sure if we’ll have access to water once we’re north of Fairbanks.  As important as our cell phones seem to be, water is still more critical, so we’ll be very careful with the 67 gallons our tank holds since it might be all we’ll have for the next 10 days.  Unlike the Dempster Highway which is a public road to Inuvik, the Dalton Highway is an oil company haul road.  Instead of a town of a few thousand in Inuvik, we’ve heard the population of Dead Horse is 35- 40 oil company employees.  In other words, this leg is the classic case of it not the destination but the journey that’s important.

Steve & C. J.

Status Report - Friday, July 30th - Deadhorse, Alaska

Hi folks,

This is a combined report for the 4-day run from Fairbanks to Deadhorse.  BTW, our thinking was that we’d travel roughly 40% of the way the first day, 25% the second day, 20% the third day and the remaining 15% the fourth day.  Why?  Well, we knew we had 80+ miles of pavement on Day 1 before we’d reach the start of the Dalton Highway, we anticipated that road conditions might get worse as we got further north, we were concerned with steep descent of the Atigun Pass and planned on taking that grade extremely cautiously, and finally the wildlife we were most interested in finding—Muskox—would be far north of the Arctic Circle so we’d either (a) be driving very slowly trying to find them, or (b) spending lots of time photographing them once we did.  Anyway, that was the plan, but you’ve no doubt gotten used to how easily our plans get adjusted as we go along.

Day #1 - Monday, July 27^th

Our departure from Fairbanks was highlighted by an unexpected search for propane.  We’d mistakenly assumed that the RV park sold propane at their gas station along with gas & diesel.  Wrong.  OK, no problem, there’s another gas station on the way to the highway that we’d seen an LP tank at.  To our amazement they told us that they don’t sell propane until 5pm when another worker comes in.  One hell of a way to run a business.  So, we headed for Fairbanks proper instead of bypassing it.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to go far till we found a station and refilled our tanks.  A good thing since we only had about 1.5 gallons left in one of our two 7 gallon tanks. 

The route to Deadhorse leaves the Alaska Highway on the Steese Highway out of Fairbanks.  After about 15 miles the road makes an abrupt right turn at the remains of an old highway junction and we’re now on the Elliot Highway.  The Dalton Highway begins another 58 miles later. 

The introduction to the Dalton Highway is brusque.  There are four signs immediately after turning onto the Dalton. 

50?  Yeah right.  We’re down to 20 MPH and getting thoroughly beaten up doing that.  The road was so bad, we even had a discussion that maybe we should reconsider & go back.  But, we continued northbound.  Eventually, the road improved some and we even got pavement once in a while.  Of course, even the pavement was mixed blessing.  Some of it was as smooth as glass and almost free of frost heaves.  I say almost, because the Dalton has sneaker frost heaves.  Just when you’re thinking the road is so nice you can drive faster, along comes a large frost heave.  To make matters worse, the sky is full of smoke from a mega fire, so the lighting is very soft & frost heaves are impossible to spot in advance.  In fact, even bathtub size potholes are impossible to see further than about 50’ away.  Worse yet, 95% of the potholes are in line single-file, many times in a continuous contiguous row down the middle of the road.  OK, so we drive down the middle straddling the potholes.  Except, 4.99% are in a separate row about 4-5’ to the east of the main row.  The truck is just barely wide enough to straddle both rows.  But, as you might have guessed there’s that 0.01% that are laying in wait for us.  Now, 0.01% of the potholes might not sound like many in normal circumstances, but on the Dalton that can mean there’s a sleeper pothole every 100 yards.  Needless to say, we hit a few. 

At 2 PM the Check Engine light came on after a particularly steep descent.  We pulled over and queried the Palm PDA that controls the Banks SpeedBrake (hardware/software that maximizes our engine braking on downgrades).  The PDA reported 2 codes:

P0045 “Turbocharger Vane Position Control Solenoid; control circuit.”

P2565 “Turbocharger Vane Position Sensor Circuit High voltage.”

The P0045 code is the same one we got when we started the trip.  We cleared the codes via the PDA and proceeded down the road. 

An unexpected casualty—my base lens, a Nikon 18-70, refuses to zoom wider than 24 and gets stuck at 50 although I can futz with it and get it to zoom out to 70 but then I have to futz with it again to get past 50 again.  We don’t have any good explanation for the lens because it spends its time in the camera bag on the back seat or in my lap. 

We spotted the wreckage of some kind of RV off the side of the road this afternoon.  If I’d climbed down the bank I might have found something that told me what it was once upon a time, but from the road it was just a pile of thoroughly busted up RV.  We’ll try not to duplicate it.

We reached a rest area called “Finger Mountain” about 4:30 PM, after 191 miles for the day—99 miles of that on the Dalton.  We parked the rig in a corner so the entrance door was facing away from the body of the parking lot to avoid any hassles with possible traffic.  Finger Mountain is a bit of an exaggeration.  Finger Rock would be more accurate as it’s a 40’ tall rock that looks like a crooked finger.  After hiking up the interpretive trail to the summit of a rock formation, Gracie & I visited with a trucker that had broken down & was parked alongside the highway.  The wheel bearings on one of his drive axles had come loose and wiped out the oil seal, getting gear oil all over his brakes.  He had called a truck shop in Fairbanks via his satellite phone & was expecting parts the following day.  He’d been driving the Dalton for 31 years so he had a few stories to tell. 

BTW, it’s only Day #1 and we’re just 12 miles south of the Arctic Circle already.

Day #2 – Tuesday, July 28^th

The big event of the morning was crossing the Arctic Circle, again.  A couple of motorcyclists from Southern California were there at the same time, so we took photos of them with all 3 of their pocket cameras.  It was kind of funny, because they kept on pulling cameras out of their pockets almost like a magic show.  

The scenes along the Dalton is similar to the northern half of the Dempster; rolling hills with stunted Boreal forests, tundra and the pipeline.  Except that we’re plagued with the smoke from the fire.  Even nearby mountains are hazy.  Makes for really lousy photographs, but we keep take some anyway. 

The road itself is probably more varied than the scenery.  Sometimes it’s gravel, sometimes it’s paved.  Some sections are smooth, some are quite rough and some are in between.  Most gravel sections are washboarded, but much of the time I can find a path that isn’t too bad.  Of course, our concept of what “isn’t too bad” is a bit different than most folks. And we’re willing to slow down a lot more than most.

There aren’t any towns on the Dalton, but there is a place at the halfway point where someone converted one of the original pipeline construction camps into a . . . well, a place to stop for folks traveling without an RV.  They have a gas station (2 pumps in the middle of a large dirt & gravel area), a restaurant, and a  ‘hotel’ converted from the old construction camp barracks.  A generator in a shipping container supplies power for the place.  We fueled up and recorded our worst mileage so far. 

There was one area between mileposts 300 & 302 that folks had reported seeing a blond grizzly, so we drove through there at 5-10 MPH.  Nothing.  L

The Atigun Pass is very different from any mountain pass we’ve ever crossed before. 

There used to be a pipeline construction camp at the bottom of the grade on the north side of Atigun Pass, and part of it remains as large gravel area on the west side of the highway.  We pulled into it and parked the rig at the far west side pointing away from the highway and straight at the base of one of the mountains.  I”d guestimated that we’d stop at 77,800 miles on the odometer and when CJ stopped positioning the trailer, that’s exactly what the odometer read.  Spooky.  

At first, the campsite seemed spectacularly beautiful, yet very desolate.  Bare rock mountains, tundra for a couple of hundred yards between us and the base of the mountain and our gravel parking area.  But, if you sit and wait and watch.  The Arctic Ground Squirrels had a burrow about 20 feet from the trailer and that drove Gracie crazy.  A gull flew over and yelled at us.  A couple of Long-tailed Jaegers were working the tundra for dinner.  I think they had a nest because when a couple of raven came by, the Jaegers took great exception to their presence.  The Jaegers were about 100 yards away & the light was fading behind the mountain, so great photos were not an option, but I tried anyway.  Since they were hunting, I took a couple of hundred photos of them flying.  My 150-500 zoom has a 2^nd stabilization program for panning that works great for shooting birds in flight, but when I add the teleconverter trying to track the bird gets really hard to do. 

Day #3 – Wednesday, July 29^th

It’s all downhill from here.  Literally.  The road from here to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay should be a gradual descent to the “North Slope”, the large plain bordering the Arctic Ocean.  Since we’re well north of the tree line, the scenery is dominated by tundra.  In other words, there’s tundra after tundra after tundra for mile after mile.  It makes the Great Plains of the MidWest seem positively varied by comparison.  Life here is hard, very hard, so very few critters can survive.  Obviously, a zillion birds come here to have their young, but then they migrate.  Few 4-legged critters (think Caribou) can migrate far enough, fast enough to escape the winter though, so either they hibernate (bears & squirrels) or they develop skills necessary to survive the winter (think fox, muskox & hares).  As much as we’d hope that things were different, the critter count is so much lower than at the lower latitudes.  Arctic Ground Squirrels are the exception.  They’re everywhere.

In other words, it’s difficult to describe today’s drive in exciting terms.  By the end of the day, the mountains were way off in the distance and we only had an occasional hill & turn in the road.  Otherwise, it was straight and ever so gently sloping down towards the ocean.  Once the road reaches the plain, it tends to follow the general path of the river, only without all the curves.  This is where the Muskox live.  Seeing Muskox is one of the big reasons for coming up here, so we once again drove very slowly scanning the vast tundra for dark lumps.  Using the binoculars while the truck is moving is impossible so any possible sighting meant stopping.  This went on for over 20 miles.  Nothing.  Big bummer!

We stopped for the night at what was another pipeline construction camp years ago.  All that remains is a HUGE gravel area about ½ mile by ½ mile on the east side of the Dalton.  We parked at the far east edge near 2 of the 3 semis that were parked in the place.  There was the usual pipeline service road from the NE corner of the area that went east for about ½ mile and then T’d to parallel the pipeline itself.  The rest of the area was tundra.  The two nearby big rigs left within a half hour so we were essentially totally alone once again.  

One of the things that’s been happening on this trip is Bo’suns’ interest in exploring.  We’ve nicknamed him “Nanuk of the North”.  He goes to the door and growls till we let him out, and he wanders around for up to an hour before returning to the coach.  We’ll check on him periodically to make sure he hasn’t ventured too far away & during one of those checks I noticed two guys in camo clothing had parked their pickup nearby and were scanning the area with binoculars.  Gracie & I went over to talk to them.  They were bowhunters—it’s Caribou season up here and only bowhunting is allowed—and they were looking for Caribou.  While they hadn’t found any Caribou, they did spot a Muskox on  the far side of the berm on the other side of that road I described above.  Well, this is hot news so I told CJ and we lathered up with bug stuff, grabbed our 2 new bug head nets, our cameras and headed out.  Yes, we left the dogs in the trailer. 

It took a half hour to walk to that area of the gravel road.  I forged through some brush down the berm to scan south for the Muskox and spotted them a few hundred yards away.  So, back through the brush and we continued south in the grass along the gravel road to make our approach quieter.  About the time we were approaching them, they started coming through the brush to our side.  Oh boy!  They were only about 100 yards away and there was nothing between us and them but that 100 yards.  And no where for us to go.  We’d just seen a few of them run on the tundra and through the brush.  Muskox may look like ancient mops but they can move really well.  Needless to say, we were a bit nervous about being so close with no where to hide.  One of the larger Muskox continued onto the road and appeared to stand guard.  And he saw us and began to head our way.  I responded by retreating about 20 feet.  That seemed to satisfy him & he lost interest in us.  However, the herd did change course from heading our way (north) to heading the opposite way.  That was a mixed blessing as we’d hoped they’d get closer, but we’d also hoped to have something between us when they did.  Oh well.

I set up my camera on the tripod and started taking photos.  About 150 of them.  I could just fill the frame with 1 Muskox using my 150-500 + 2x teleconverter.  The combo is tough to focus and is a bit soft vs sharp, but it’s still a good setup for this situation.  The problem that I discovered later at the computer is that I had the camera set for an ISO of 3200 & on full auto so the resulting settings of f6.3 & 1/4000 second made for OK exposure but really grainy and soft.   Sigh.  Well, at least we did see about 15 Muskox pretty much up close and personal.  After a short time, they turned east & crossed the tundra to the river bank.

Day #4 – Thursday, July 30^th

We can just see the dark lumps of Muskox sleeping on the riverbank with the binoculars when we got up this morning.  So much for any more photo ops with that herd anyway.

The road is flat, but the usual highly variable condition all the way to Deadhorse.  CJ spotted some white birds on a small lake to the west, probably gulls.  I check with the binoculars.  Nope, swans.  Five Trumpeter swans feeding.  Somehow swans loose their majestic appearance when they’re butts sticking straight up while they’re padding with their feet to keep their balance while they’re feeding on the bottom of the lake.  I got a slew of swan butt photos & very few of the whole swan.  

Just outside Deadhorse, a smallish Caribou crossed the road.  He had all the appearances of being very scared well before he got to the road and well after he crossed it.  Another caribou approached the river and we stopped & positioned ourselves to photograph him crossing the river.  But, a small plane took off from the airport and scared the bejesus out of him when it flew directly over him.  He jumped into the river and crossed it very quickly so my photo op went by way too quickly.

We checked in at the Arctic Caribou Inn for our tour tomorrow and got rescheduled for the 7am tour on Friday.  After the tour, we’re going to head back south again.  We spent an hour or so wandering around Deadhorse.  The place is amazing.  It’s one hopping busy huge complex with a definite Arctic twist.  You’ll have to see the photos.  We could have stayed on one side of the inn, but it was seriously industrial, so we went back south about 10 miles to a short side road to the river bank.  So, we’re camped tonight on the bank of the river at 70° 6'25.87"N, 148°30'21.61"W.  Enter this lat/long into Google Earth and you’ll see the little side road and gravel bar we’re camped on.  The clocks are set for 5:30 AM – UGH! – so we’ll need to crash early tonight.  BTW, the heat wave even reached Prudhoe Bay.  It was 74 today, although it’s dropping quickly. 

With our new plan of starting the return trip to Fairbanks around noonish on Friday, we will probably arrive in Fairbanks on Monday afternoon.  Till then . . .

Steve & C. J.