Tuk and Back Again*

 

I cannot claim we were as intrepid as Bilbo Baggins in his quest with the dwarves.  We did not encounter evil monsters or warrior beings with edged weapons.  We encountered only mud, dust, long bumpy roads, and eventually, a peaceful-looking ocean beach!  Though it was the Arctic Ocean …

From tiny Fort McPherson, we drove to Inuvik, pop. roughly 3,000.  This is a center for local First Nations culture.  One of the most famous landmarks in Inuvik is the igloo church.  It is a Catholic church with the full name Notre Dame des Victoires – yep, same as the cathedral in Paris.  It was built in 1950 entirely with volunteer labor and local materials, costing about $70,000, which even at that time was amazing.  I understand part of the cupola is made of repurposed hockey sticks, but the tours of the church are only scheduled once per day, and not when we were there so I did not see the inside.  Duh, it did not occur to me to check the mass schedule and possibly see the inside by attending a service. 

We shopped at the North Mart store, which is a scaled-down copy of a big box, carrying almost everything.  The main difference is that along with watches, clothing, groceries, hardware and housewares, there are racks of furs and pieces of fur!  They are used to decorate traditional parkas.  The prices are high, but driving up here gives me a new appreciation for how difficult it is to get things we take for granted shipped so far north.  There are some things I just won’t buy if they are very high, but we were able to get plenty of food, just not every luxury we are used to. 

While we were parked on the street, a local teenager wrote “Vote Shawn” on the dirt on the outside of the trailer.  Did I mention the dust and dirt everywhere?  It made an excellent writing surface.  LCR talked to him for a bit and tried to figure out who Shawn was, but the kid was more interested in who did LCR’s hair.  

  

At the campground in Inuvik, we met a man named Gary, who has been canoeing in this area for 14 years.  He tent camps and sometimes drives from place to place.  He travels with a beautiful black Lab named Reina.  He was eccentric and talkative, and suggested we make it a point to stop somewhere and walk on the tundra.  While we were talking, we saw two beautiful red foxes with fluffy white tails.  One ran across the road, but the other hung around leisurely for a while.  I have never seen a fox do that.  (Yes, we have foxes in Chicago; in fact, one used to frequent Longwood Drive when we lived there.  He knew all the holes in the fences and had free access to every yard!)  Clearly they were at home and knew they were safe. 

Another famous sight just outside of Inuvik is the Pingo National Landmark.  Pingos are a unique structure to the Arctic tundra.  They are land formations consisting of an ice core and permafrost.  The permafrost shifts and expands from season to season and the ice core grows.  There are over 1300 of these hills in the Arctic, and 8 of these are protected in the park.  The largest is approximately 161 feet high.  They can take hundreds of years to grow and last 1,000 years.  Global warming is contributing to their decline (they slump and shrink over time in any case), which is one reason they are protected in this park.  We saw them from the shore, which was a little disappointing, but you can only get closer by boat which has to be hired in town.  Walking on the pingos in the park is not permitted, but we did take Gary’s advice and at one point, stopped the car and walked on the tundra alongside the road.  

Gary said he likes to walk out far enough that he cannot see the road or anything else except tundra, but that sounded a little extreme to me!.  He was right:  It’s soft and spongy, like walking on a mattress, only lumpy, not smooth.  This is the active layer that lies on top of permafrost.  The active layer is 4-6 inches deep, while permafrost can be anywhere from 3 meters to thousands of meters in very cold areas.  It is thick with strong plants.  I took some photos of the tundra, but it is hard to capture just how colorful it is, yellow and reddish brown and sometimes a bright fire red, depending on the plants. 

The “treeline” that is referred to, the point at which tundra, with its short plants, begins and the evergreen forest ends, is not really a line at all.  In this photo you can see a clump of trees.  There will be trees like this here and there, and then at some point you realize you haven’t seen a tree in a while. 

From Inuvik we drove to Tuktoyaktuk, called Tuk (pronounced “tuck”).  This is a tiny village considering its importance as the northernmost village on the Arctic Ocean, and the only place connecting the Ocean to the rest of Canada by road.  Its population is a bit under 1,000 people.  Many hunt caribou and whales as their ancestors did.  We saw many snowmobiles and the sledges they use to carry the game home, along the roads in the area.  They appear abandoned but they are not – they are used in the winter for hunting.  We asked about this and one local man told us they have no concerns about theft of these valuable vehicles.  It’s just the way they live.  You can also see caribou antlers on houses, garages, even trees.  They have got to be huge animals because the racks are big enough.  We did not see any, though.  Wrong time of year, apparently. 

In the photos, you might notice that buildings are built up on piles.  Permafrost is fragile and tends to shift with time and temperature changes, and foundations would be unstable if not drilled down into bedrock.  The 3-4 foot space also serves to keep the permafrost from warming too much.  Rarely, a building can be built directly on bedrock, if it is close to the surface, as with the Eagle Plains hotel.  (Most permafrost is above the Arctic Circle, 66.5 degrees north latitude, but there are patches as far south as 60 degrees.  The 60^th parallel forms the border with British Columbia, so that area includes all of Yukon Territory.)  Also because of the permafrost, gas is dispensed from huge containers kept aboveground. 

The beach by the Arctic Ocean, our eventual destination, is very rocky.  That is why we left our Crocs on and I just dipped one foot in the water.  There are “No swimming” signs, but I can’t imagine swimming in water where the bottom is that rough anyway.  While we were there we saw a small boy fishing, but he did not catch anything, though he did not seem discouraged by it.  The outside temperature was 57 degrees, so the water was not terribly cold, certainly nowhere near freezing. 

The community of visitors to this area is small enough that you tend to run into the same people repeatedly.  One such was a couple, Lim and his wife Lin, who were in a blue truck, pulling a larger trailer.  We saw them at the beach and several other places, camping at the same spots, following the blue truck for about a week. 

On the way back south, we spent a night at the Jak Territorial Campground.  The campground has an observation tower, which I climbed for panoramic views of the MacKenzie River Delta. 

Then it was back through Inuvik for gas.  While LCR was at the North Mart inquiring about Starlink (which many campers we met used for Internet access), I went to a local food truck, Amaruq, which means grey wolf.  I explained to the owners that I just wanted a coffee but had no Canadian currency.  They gave me the coffee free, saying, “That’s just how we do here.”  I talked with them for a while and found the owner was a former chef and his partner, a traditional seamstress (his words).  He showed me lots of pictures of traditional parkas he had designed and sewn (he pronounced it “parkees”), including several for his small dog, which looked to be a Dachshund mix.  He often uses modern waterproof fabric as a shell and trims it with fur and embroidery in the traditional style.  His mother does beaded embroidery on the parkas.  Sometimes he uses unusual materials too, as with one jacket he made from liquor store bags that had a gorgeous Northern Lights design.  His work was simply stunning and I wished later I’d gotten a photo, when I found the creations have made him a locally well-known artist.  Some of the photos were of a fashion show of traditional clothing, and one picture showed him with a cousin, drum dancing wearing some of his designs.  I got no pictures because I was so engaged in the conversation. His name is Dustin Smith and his partner, the chef, is Kieran Seward.  If you search for him online, be sure to include “Inuvik” or “parka” in your search.  At present their food truck features American staples, but they told me they are working on including some indigenous foods in the future. 

We stayed a few days in Fort McPherson, getting some work done, and had an interesting conversation with several other couples who were traveling in more or less the same way.  We traded notes about lessons learned and places we’d been.  LCR is considering Starlink, since they commented favorably on the reliable Internet access.  One couple had an Airstream and another had a truck camper with a tent top that opened up – so we sort of ran the gamut of various types of campers.  The woman with the tent camper mentioned that they sometimes put the tent down, though it meant sleeping in very cramped quarters, because of the high winds battling the tent.  That night the temperature dropped quite a bit, down to the lower ‘50s, with scary high winds.  I am sure the tent campers were uncomfortable, because I noticed the tent was fastened down.  Also they left quite early in the morning.

Back into the mountains and again to Eagle Plains.  This time they were out of propane.  We were going to restock, but had enough to make it to the next place.  Once again we ran into Lim and Lin and they showed us an amazing video they took – of a musk ox!  It’s rare to see them.  There are quite a few in Canada but spread out over huge areas.  It looked exotic, prehistoric, which I guess it is – they’ve been around for thousands of years.  We were pretty excited for them about that.  They were hanging out in the lobby of the hotel to get cell service, sharing the video with everyone they knew.

We treated ourselves to dinner.  The restaurant at Eagle Plains is pretty basic, like everything there, and of course quite expensive, but it was a treat to eat out, and they did right by the salmon, one of my favorite foods!  There are several pet dogs who have the run of the place, even begging diners for scraps.  I am not in favor of this practice but they seemed generally pretty well-behaved.

The next day, we ran into several large stretches of road construction, same as on the way up.  These really try the patience with the delay due to slow driving and the dirty, muddy and dusty roads.  By now the Bigfoot was pretty much covered with various colors of dust and mud – tan, charcoal, light reddish brown. 

We also went back through long stretches of evergreen forest with tall, spindly trees that seemed to lean every which way.  These are actually called “drunken forests.”  The soil is thin and these trees, black spruces, have shallow roots, so it’s not an illusion – they really are leaning.  Sometimes they have to be cut back because they lean out over the road.  They lean even more on the stretches with fire damage, but I did not get a photo of those. 

We had not intended to go to Dawson City, but once again we had a tire with a leak that needed attention and it was considerably closer than Whitehorse.  Turned out we really needed new tires.  The guy at the tire place sold us gently used tires, a much thicker, more rugged model than those originally on the truck.  In the campground, we talked to more people on their way up, going to where we had come from.  We found we were now experts.  People wanted our advice as to the roads, what to see, and how we got our rig so muddy. 

We had breakfast bagels at a shop downtown, but we did not stay to see any of Dawson City.  I realize it is the Klondike gold rush town, and there are some historic sites, but the town has a touristy feel that didn’t sit right with me – lots of t-shirt shops and kitsch.  I realized that we had not bought a single souvenir of this trip.  There are plenty for sale, of course, and not just t-shirts.  There are beautiful carvings and other indigenous crafts.  But I found that after the past year, what with moving and changing houses, I was still in getting-rid-of-stuff mode, and I just didn’t want to buy something to put on a shelf or wall.  In truth, this blog is my souvenir, consolidating my memories and photos – and sharing them with you all!

Back at Whitehorse, we had the trailer and car power-washed, among other errands.  The Yukon and NWT mud and dust are not something I want to take home.  We are headed back to Chicago for a while.  We have noticed others going in the opposite direction, heading north in September the way we did last year, and we wonder what they are in for.  Fall has already come to the Yukon as can be seen by the color on the mountainsides.  The hardwoods here are mostly poplar and aspen, which turn early, and their gold and yellow contrast with the dark green of the evergreens. 

 

Gas prices:  $2.25/l, or $6.18 US, in Inuvik.  This makes the Eagle Plains price the high for the trip. 

 

* Homage to J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, “The Hobbit, or There and Back Again.”