going home, eventually

View North West West Coast Adventure in a larger map
Here's my trip home. I'll update more when I get back to Toronto. This was my first time using My maps in Google. It's a cool program but not entirely user friendly.

Dawson

Do you know who lived in this cabin? Robert Service - the man who penned "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and other hit poems.

Dawson city's streets aren't paved with gold - they're not paved with anything at all. The city has dirt streets and wooden plank sidewalks. How cool is that?

This gives me an idea for a new tv series, "Little House on the River." It could be about a girl named Nora Tamer whose father inexplicably built a tiny cabin on the Yukon river.

Canada Day in Dawson. A boring photo but gives a sense of the town. The road in this picture is paved because it's part of the highway.

From Inuvik to Dawson

The Demspter highway is not for the faint of heart. This isn't to say that it's overly perilous but it is an altogether different kind of driving experience. The road varies between 1 -2 lanes (the two lane sections are usually designated as emergency landings for aircraft) and it's entirely unpaved. The shoulders tend to be soft which means that a driver has to be alert in order to avoid a calamitous accident.

It was a rainy kind of day when we left and the roads were very muddy. For the most part it was fine but the areas before and after the 2 ferry crossings and another section by a work camp had some deep ruts that made the going pretty tough. Interestingly, the driver of the car told me that it's better to have the roads muddy because the alternative (when there's no snow) leads to dusty roads with poor visibility.

This is some sort of cotton flower. They're all wet in this photo but when dry they look and feel just like cotton balls.

Here's a view from the Dempster highway. At times I felt as though there should be a woolly mammoth or two wandering about - they would have fit the setting perfectly.

This was taken on the way to Whitehorse at a place called "5 finger rapids." It's famous because many would be prospectors sailed hand made rafts down the Yukon river and found themselves with 5 different channels to choose from; only one of which is passable.