End of the Northern Loop

After a day recovering from our Dalton adventure, we paid a quick visit to the Alaska University Large Mammal research station close to Fairbanks to check out musk ox and caribou up close. We took a short tour with a uni student earning some summer dollars and found out more about musk ox then we ever needed to know. Very much worth the time and minimal cost.

After a total of five nights and warm sunny days in Fairbanks it was back down the highway to Tok and up to Dawson City. This road is called the Top of the World Highway and runs about for 250 km along rounded ridge tops. It was mostly good gravel and altogether a very nice drive. Highly recommended.

After enjoying the Alaskan Arctic circle trip so much, we decided to do it all again in Canada. So it was up the Dempster Highway towards Inuvik for us. We spent the first night at a campground called Engineer Creek that had the worst mosquitos I have ever seen. Not only were there lots of them, but they were active 24 hours a day. They were so bad I hooked up the trailer the next day wearing shoes, trousers, jumper, gloves, beanie and lots of DEET. It made Merle look good.

Anyway, it rained all night and all the way to the Arctic Circle the next morning. We didn’t think much of driving through thick cloud on a skating rink, so after a few quick photos it was back to the van.

From Dawson City it was a long, wet, uneventful trip south-west to Whitehorse and Dawson Creek. The only thing of note at Whitehorse was that we woke up at 2.00 AM and – believe it or not – it was dark (well, sort of at least). We worked out it had been just over four weeks since it had been dark. Hard to believe after a lifetime in the tropics.

The next night was spent at Grand Cache, a small town in Alberta with a coal mine, forestry and oil and gas industries built on a ridge within a few miles of the Rocky Mountains. Very scenic, lots of hiking and skiing and would be a great spot to live for a while.

We are currently in Edmonton to take some stuff out of the van and put other stuff in. It was to be a short visit, but the FIFA U21 World Cup is being played in Canada, so we are off to a double header tonight – neither of us has been to a good quality soccer game before, so it will be interesting but probably also a bit boring.

So,,, we’ve now completed the north-west loop (in exactly 9 weeks and 17400!! km) and about to head off on the southern loop. Hopefully, this will be more weeks and less kilometres as the fuel bill is killing us.