Sideways
July 25 - 31: Basking in the Midnight Sun
July 25-28 - Three days in Inuvik
Is it really three days in Inuvik if the sun never sets, or is it one?? For me it feels like at least 6 days. It has been sunny and, dare I say, hot up here since the moment we arrived. We have been hosted by the fabulous Calista (yes, I have a friend in Inuvik) as she pet sits and works in a greenhouse for the summer. Since Max is scheduled to fly out on the 28th and I'm not in a rush to get anywhere, we've spent three days exploring this beautiful northern town. Inuvik is as small as you'd expect a place at the end of a road 200 kms above the arctic circle to be and staying here for a few days has allowed us to better experience the local rhythm of life. The sun never really sets in the summer and the locals appear to follow its lead and don't sleep. We have spent lots of time walking the streets (sometimes on errands and sometimes just exploring) and found them to be surprisingly busy. Big trucks, ATVs, adults walking, children playing and roaming on bikes, everyone waving, dogs meandering, and the highlight - a young boy of about 10 ripping around with great skill on a tiny motorbike chased by a pack of three girls who he occasionally allows to catch up with him, aided by frequent foot planting and spinning stops.
Errands frequently included the grocery store, which was a welcome sight, even with its ridiculous northern prices. The store even featured the first fresh meat that we have seen for sale since Whitehorse and more fruit and a wider selection than anywhere else so far. Even so, we had a totally different shopping experience than what we're used to in the south.
Enjoying dinner with a few Loran scholar connections one night (a dinner of reindeer poutine and local fresh caught fish tacos, all made in a school bus parked on someone's lawn), we learned about 'the fruit man.' A fellow with a big rig who trucks in fresh fruit and veggies and Costco-sized quantities of dried goods from the wholesalers in Vancouver every three weeks or so. He then parks his tractor trailer in the heart of downtown Inuvik, swings open the doors and sells the contents at the best prices in the north. (Don't worry, you can pay with visa!) There is also a local food market run through Facebook which includes sales of local game, dried fish, fresh baked bread, sushi, etc. Now you can start to understand how things work up here. There's also the large Inuvik Community Greenhouse (where Callista works for the summer) that offers community members and local helping organizations opportunities to grow their own vegetables during the March to October growing season. A greenhouse tour informed us that it was built on the base of a hockey arena adjacent to a residential school after the school was closed (in the 90s). Tens of thousands of dollars of supplies were scavenged from the school and used to build the greenhouse which now boasts the northernmost apple tree, lush crops of flowers, herbs and vegetables, a very successful community and commercial plot program, up to 40 degree temperatures when its warm and sunny, and the original hockey boards still standing along the walls.
We were also directed to another community program - crafts at the community centre. We went to a session where a local lady showed us how she makes ink prints. Her patterns used to be overlayed by her father using sealskin stencils, but now she uses mylar to create traditional designs like artistic Ulu and Inukshuks.
Our days included a lot of pancakes, random errands, not many photos, trying to clean mud, and relaxing and getting into northern summer life. We even collected our Inuvik visitors town pin and certificate of passage north of the Arctic circle! We walked the dog around one of the several lakes near town - rather quickly, due to ridiculous quantities of mosquitos. We pressure washed the bikes - Max wincing the whole time because pressure washing isn't good for bike care, but it seemed to be our only option. We introduced Callista and her local friends to my favourite game (Salad Bowl) and laughed an evening away. We met up with our cycling friends when they arrived in town, and someone who had spent 7 weeks kayaking into town, visiting other communities along the way. We observed the quirks of northern construction, including above ground utility corridors, utility corridor bridges where corridors pass over roads, houses built on 'stilts' to keep them off the permafrost, boardwalk sidewalks, potholes in the roads, and colourful, smartie box houses.
It is a different world up here... The clouds seem higher, the space bigger, the mosquitos more numerous, the realities of life just a bit different, and the sun a constant.
July 28, Inuvik to Dawson City via the Dempster
I'm really not sure how to date this post, here's why... I searched the online community networks of Inuvik for a ride down to Whitehorse or Dawson City, and found one to Dawson City. It left at 8pm for the Dempster with a planned arrival at around 5am. Wait, driving through the night? Not so much with the 24 hour sunshine! I hopped in the truck with three locals who worked for the Gwich'in council. A party and very interesting commentary then ensued. The commentary was mostly accidental, but I learned a lot accompanying these three on a drive through their ancestral and current homeland in the midnight sun. One of their mothers was out picking berries (they were a tad concerned about her alone in grizzly country), a cousin was minding a camp with three bear dogs, and a young nephew was stationed along the highway waiting for the caribou. Apparently a few wild caribou had been spotted moving through the tundra on their annual migration. We also saw a few hunters on the top of hills, searching and waiting for more caribou amongst the vast expanse of Arctic tundra. One traveler's son had already got three caribou this season, "three families would be full for the winter." Concerns were expressed about President Trump's planned developments across the Alaskan border, in the caribou breeding grounds, and how they would change the caribou's historic habits and further impact families that depended on the animals for food. (Years ago, the reindeer herd on an island in the Mackenzie Delta had helped alleviate hunger after the collapse of the caribou herds, but this would be very different than former times.) We ate dried fish, and fastidiously cleaned our hands so the truck wouldn't smell like the fish in the morning.
After a shockingly short time in the truck, we reached Fort McPherson. There was a wedding that day, so the locals were out in the streets visiting. We bought an extra jerry can of gas, aware that the one gas station further south on the Dempster would likely be closed when we went through. We also picked up another driver just by casually knocking on her door and asking if she wanted to go into Dawson for a weekend. The cackling laughter in the truck continued through the night, coming easily and frequently. However, it was rudely interrupted by a rock kicked up from the road and smashing the truck's back window like a gunshot. After some tense moments and 'injun-uity' (as they called it), a new back window was rigged up consisting of cardboard and my infamous yellow biking poncho. The drive itself was spectacular, of course. The 12 hours trip felt like someone was rewinding a video of the 6 days I spent biking on the road. I recognized all the rest stops, our random lunch spots, the places where we stopped because we were just too amazed at the view to pedal straight through it, the place with the almost lethal crosswind and the now dry and dusty patches which previously were inches thick mud. The light for the drive was magical. Hours of daylight, and then a stunning, bright twilight and a indescribably red glow on the horizon from about 2am to 4am. The mountains and tundra blurred together as we whizzed through the ranges which earlier we had climbed slowly in and out of.
July 29, Dawson City
We arrived in Dawson City at around 8 am the next morning, and after a visit to the local coffee shop, I made myself a 'To Whitehorse, the Dempster mud ate my bike' sign and decided to wait patiently beside the road. Dawson is quite a place - an old gold rush town, it remains decked out with wild west type building facades, dirt streets, boardwalks and lots of other tourist trimmings. I explored a bit but soon went to the road, knowing that the hitch was not likely to be an easy one. (Note to self and others: don't attempt a hard hitch when you're too tired to handle rejection.) After chilling roadside for 7 hours with no luck, it started to pour rain, so I abandoned my post for a picnic shelter. In relative dryness, I surfed (yes, the internet) and discovered that the Swiss motorcyclist I had befriended weeks earlier was also in Dawson! Yay! We went for dinner, and swapped stories of our last few weeks on the road. Walking to a local hostel (my camping gear was in Whitehorse and with Max back in Vancouver), I saw some familiar bikes... my cycling friends from the Dempster had managed to hitch to Dawson too! I waited by their bikes until they spotted me and revealed their location. We then joined for ice cream at a shockingly well-priced location (triple scoop of course!) and laughed the evening away.
July 30, Dawson City to Whitehorse
I got up determined to find a ride and biked to a motel just outside of town where, rather than waiting roadside, I was a bit more proactive in ride sourcing. And I got one! No trouble at all - a convoy of three cars transporting a family traveling from Inuvik to Whitehorse for vacation. They had tons of room for me and my bike, so I joined them. They were great company and the 8 hours into Whitehorse passed quickly with conversation, scratchies, cat naps, and rockin' 80s beats. The Dempster takes no prisoners however and a few hours into the ride, their trailer lost a wheel - discovered only when we pulled into a gas station for a stretch. No problems on the road, but not suitable to drive on so we left the trailer behind (they'll get spare parts in Whitehorse and drive back to fix the wheel and associatedly messed up springs and axel). We parted ways in Whitehorse, and I hit up a real deal grocery store. Dinner was half a roasted chicken, a bag of salad, 1.5 litres of smoothie and 4 donuts. Oh yeah - building those reserves back! Laid my head down at Zina's and Leigh's for a good night's rest. Thank you!
July 31, Whitehorse
Whitehorse - I'm starting to really like this place! Another logistics day ensued including more laundry, bike love, book shopping, and lunch with my marvelous friend Rachel, the new Whitehorse summer librarian. I then set about planning the next leg (haha pun intended) of my journey. Considering my timeline, the expanse of highways in northern BC which roll through trees, not many towns and major bear habitat, and that are often less pleasant to ride due to speeding trucks and no shoulders, I did some thinking... I thought, and I thought, and I booked a 26 hour bus ride (ughhhh!) southeast to Prince George. For those wondering - on my way north, I biked north through PG, so I'll still have a continuous bike line east/west through Canada, with a bunch of northern riding, hitchhiking and busing. I'm pretty happy with my plan, and I'm really looking forward to getting back on a functional bike and out of these motor vehicles (writing this on the bus now). From Prince George, I'm headed east. My goal is Ontario to see family and friends, with lots of stops to see other family and friends along the way!
I am starting to embrace that I never seem to know where the winding road of this trip will take me. So far, the best parts of the trip have been completely unplanned. Biking in Canada was not part of my original summer plan, but has been phenomenal. Pushing north by bike and hitch to ride the Dempster was beyond all expectations (and a huge boost to my bike handling skills). Altogether it's been 20 days and 3,000 kms in the USA, 15 days and 2,160 kms of paved Canadian highway and 6 days and 820 kms of Dempster gravel and mud, for a total of around 6,000 kms of riding and 5 bike chains in 41 days on the road - here's to the next leg!
Basking in the Midnight Sun
July 25 - 31: Basking in the Midnight Sun
July 25-28 - Three days in Inuvik
Is it really three days in Inuvik if the sun never sets, or is it one?? For me it feels like at least 6 days. It has been sunny and, dare I say, hot up here since the moment we arrived. We have been hosted by the fabulous Calista (yes, I have a friend in Inuvik) as she pet sits and works in a greenhouse for the summer. Since Max is scheduled to fly out on the 28th and I'm not in a rush to get anywhere, we've spent three days exploring this beautiful northern town. Inuvik is as small as you'd expect a place at the end of a road 200 kms above the arctic circle to be and staying here for a few days has allowed us to better experience the local rhythm of life. The sun never really sets in the summer and the locals appear to follow its lead and don't sleep. We have spent lots of time walking the streets (sometimes on errands and sometimes just exploring) and found them to be surprisingly busy. Big trucks, ATVs, adults walking, children playing and roaming on bikes, everyone waving, dogs meandering, and the highlight - a young boy of about 10 ripping around with great skill on a tiny motorbike chased by a pack of three girls who he occasionally allows to catch up with him, aided by frequent foot planting and spinning stops.
Errands frequently included the grocery store, which was a welcome sight, even with its ridiculous northern prices. The store even featured the first fresh meat that we have seen for sale since Whitehorse and more fruit and a wider selection than anywhere else so far. Even so, we had a totally different shopping experience than what we're used to in the south.
Enjoying dinner with a few Loran scholar connections one night (a dinner of reindeer poutine and local fresh caught fish tacos, all made in a school bus parked on someone's lawn), we learned about 'the fruit man.' A fellow with a big rig who trucks in fresh fruit and veggies and Costco-sized quantities of dried goods from the wholesalers in Vancouver every three weeks or so. He then parks his tractor trailer in the heart of downtown Inuvik, swings open the doors and sells the contents at the best prices in the north. (Don't worry, you can pay with visa!) There is also a local food market run through Facebook which includes sales of local game, dried fish, fresh baked bread, sushi, etc. Now you can start to understand how things work up here. There's also the large Inuvik Community Greenhouse (where Callista works for the summer) that offers community members and local helping organizations opportunities to grow their own vegetables during the March to October growing season. A greenhouse tour informed us that it was built on the base of a hockey arena adjacent to a residential school after the school was closed (in the 90s). Tens of thousands of dollars of supplies were scavenged from the school and used to build the greenhouse which now boasts the northernmost apple tree, lush crops of flowers, herbs and vegetables, a very successful community and commercial plot program, up to 40 degree temperatures when its warm and sunny, and the original hockey boards still standing along the walls.
We were also directed to another community program - crafts at the community centre. We went to a session where a local lady showed us how she makes ink prints. Her patterns used to be overlayed by her father using sealskin stencils, but now she uses mylar to create traditional designs like artistic Ulu and Inukshuks.
Our days included a lot of pancakes, random errands, not many photos, trying to clean mud, and relaxing and getting into northern summer life. We even collected our Inuvik visitors town pin and certificate of passage north of the Arctic circle! We walked the dog around one of the several lakes near town - rather quickly, due to ridiculous quantities of mosquitos. We pressure washed the bikes - Max wincing the whole time because pressure washing isn't good for bike care, but it seemed to be our only option. We introduced Callista and her local friends to my favourite game (Salad Bowl) and laughed an evening away. We met up with our cycling friends when they arrived in town, and someone who had spent 7 weeks kayaking into town, visiting other communities along the way. We observed the quirks of northern construction, including above ground utility corridors, utility corridor bridges where corridors pass over roads, houses built on 'stilts' to keep them off the permafrost, boardwalk sidewalks, potholes in the roads, and colourful, smartie box houses.
It is a different world up here... The clouds seem higher, the space bigger, the mosquitos more numerous, the realities of life just a bit different, and the sun a constant.
July 28, Inuvik to Dawson City via the Dempster
I'm really not sure how to date this post, here's why... I searched the online community networks of Inuvik for a ride down to Whitehorse or Dawson City, and found one to Dawson City. It left at 8pm for the Dempster with a planned arrival at around 5am. Wait, driving through the night? Not so much with the 24 hour sunshine! I hopped in the truck with three locals who worked for the Gwich'in council. A party and very interesting commentary then ensued. The commentary was mostly accidental, but I learned a lot accompanying these three on a drive through their ancestral and current homeland in the midnight sun. One of their mothers was out picking berries (they were a tad concerned about her alone in grizzly country), a cousin was minding a camp with three bear dogs, and a young nephew was stationed along the highway waiting for the caribou. Apparently a few wild caribou had been spotted moving through the tundra on their annual migration. We also saw a few hunters on the top of hills, searching and waiting for more caribou amongst the vast expanse of Arctic tundra. One traveler's son had already got three caribou this season, "three families would be full for the winter." Concerns were expressed about President Trump's planned developments across the Alaskan border, in the caribou breeding grounds, and how they would change the caribou's historic habits and further impact families that depended on the animals for food. (Years ago, the reindeer herd on an island in the Mackenzie Delta had helped alleviate hunger after the collapse of the caribou herds, but this would be very different than former times.) We ate dried fish, and fastidiously cleaned our hands so the truck wouldn't smell like the fish in the morning.
After a shockingly short time in the truck, we reached Fort McPherson. There was a wedding that day, so the locals were out in the streets visiting. We bought an extra jerry can of gas, aware that the one gas station further south on the Dempster would likely be closed when we went through. We also picked up another driver just by casually knocking on her door and asking if she wanted to go into Dawson for a weekend. The cackling laughter in the truck continued through the night, coming easily and frequently. However, it was rudely interrupted by a rock kicked up from the road and smashing the truck's back window like a gunshot. After some tense moments and 'injun-uity' (as they called it), a new back window was rigged up consisting of cardboard and my infamous yellow biking poncho. The drive itself was spectacular, of course. The 12 hours trip felt like someone was rewinding a video of the 6 days I spent biking on the road. I recognized all the rest stops, our random lunch spots, the places where we stopped because we were just too amazed at the view to pedal straight through it, the place with the almost lethal crosswind and the now dry and dusty patches which previously were inches thick mud. The light for the drive was magical. Hours of daylight, and then a stunning, bright twilight and a indescribably red glow on the horizon from about 2am to 4am. The mountains and tundra blurred together as we whizzed through the ranges which earlier we had climbed slowly in and out of.
July 29, Dawson City
We arrived in Dawson City at around 8 am the next morning, and after a visit to the local coffee shop, I made myself a 'To Whitehorse, the Dempster mud ate my bike' sign and decided to wait patiently beside the road. Dawson is quite a place - an old gold rush town, it remains decked out with wild west type building facades, dirt streets, boardwalks and lots of other tourist trimmings. I explored a bit but soon went to the road, knowing that the hitch was not likely to be an easy one. (Note to self and others: don't attempt a hard hitch when you're too tired to handle rejection.) After chilling roadside for 7 hours with no luck, it started to pour rain, so I abandoned my post for a picnic shelter. In relative dryness, I surfed (yes, the internet) and discovered that the Swiss motorcyclist I had befriended weeks earlier was also in Dawson! Yay! We went for dinner, and swapped stories of our last few weeks on the road. Walking to a local hostel (my camping gear was in Whitehorse and with Max back in Vancouver), I saw some familiar bikes... my cycling friends from the Dempster had managed to hitch to Dawson too! I waited by their bikes until they spotted me and revealed their location. We then joined for ice cream at a shockingly well-priced location (triple scoop of course!) and laughed the evening away.
July 30, Dawson City to Whitehorse
I got up determined to find a ride and biked to a motel just outside of town where, rather than waiting roadside, I was a bit more proactive in ride sourcing. And I got one! No trouble at all - a convoy of three cars transporting a family traveling from Inuvik to Whitehorse for vacation. They had tons of room for me and my bike, so I joined them. They were great company and the 8 hours into Whitehorse passed quickly with conversation, scratchies, cat naps, and rockin' 80s beats. The Dempster takes no prisoners however and a few hours into the ride, their trailer lost a wheel - discovered only when we pulled into a gas station for a stretch. No problems on the road, but not suitable to drive on so we left the trailer behind (they'll get spare parts in Whitehorse and drive back to fix the wheel and associatedly messed up springs and axel). We parted ways in Whitehorse, and I hit up a real deal grocery store. Dinner was half a roasted chicken, a bag of salad, 1.5 litres of smoothie and 4 donuts. Oh yeah - building those reserves back! Laid my head down at Zina's and Leigh's for a good night's rest. Thank you!
July 31, Whitehorse
Whitehorse - I'm starting to really like this place! Another logistics day ensued including more laundry, bike love, book shopping, and lunch with my marvelous friend Rachel, the new Whitehorse summer librarian. I then set about planning the next leg (haha pun intended) of my journey. Considering my timeline, the expanse of highways in northern BC which roll through trees, not many towns and major bear habitat, and that are often less pleasant to ride due to speeding trucks and no shoulders, I did some thinking... I thought, and I thought, and I booked a 26 hour bus ride (ughhhh!) southeast to Prince George. For those wondering - on my way north, I biked north through PG, so I'll still have a continuous bike line east/west through Canada, with a bunch of northern riding, hitchhiking and busing. I'm pretty happy with my plan, and I'm really looking forward to getting back on a functional bike and out of these motor vehicles (writing this on the bus now). From Prince George, I'm headed east. My goal is Ontario to see family and friends, with lots of stops to see other family and friends along the way!
I am starting to embrace that I never seem to know where the winding road of this trip will take me. So far, the best parts of the trip have been completely unplanned. Biking in Canada was not part of my original summer plan, but has been phenomenal. Pushing north by bike and hitch to ride the Dempster was beyond all expectations (and a huge boost to my bike handling skills). Altogether it's been 20 days and 3,000 kms in the USA, 15 days and 2,160 kms of paved Canadian highway and 6 days and 820 kms of Dempster gravel and mud, for a total of around 6,000 kms of riding and 5 bike chains in 41 days on the road - here's to the next leg!
