Dempster Part 3, back to Whitehorse

 

This is part 3, the last part of our little catch-up series, going to the Dempster Highway. 

Today we headed out from Eagle Plains, early of course, intending to spend the night at the same campground as the night before last. Another beautiful day. Yesterday we briefly considered driving to Inuvik, but decided against it. We were only about halfway, and some of the drive has been punishing to us and our van. No damage though, so hope that continues.

For quite a while we seemed the only vehicle on the road, not seeing anyone else. So this dust was all ours:

Lots more of the mountain views:

A few of the mountainsides looked like they were sueded, or elephant hide

We did see a couple of moose. They caught us by surprise, so this was the only somewhat legible picture we got:

Here's a closeup of the Fiber cable I mentioned in yesterday's post,  the crew is installing a line from Dawson City to Inuvik:

These partially-buried lines were visible in many spots along the way

They will have to interconnect these ends in many places.

We stopped at a nice little pond for a better look, and discovered it is from melted permafrost:

We also found the remains of an accident though, that must have happened after we were by here yesterday:

Lots of belongings were scattered around, so we don't know how the occupants made out. It looks like they ran off the road on the curve and flipped into the pond.

We did spot a few caribou along the way back south, the first ones this trip:

Because we made such good time, an early stop at the campground we had been aiming for just didn't appeal. No Wifi or cell, so we couldn't work on emails and blogs, and there are usually enough bugs around to cause discomfort when sitting outside. So what could we do but head to Whitehorse.

We had tried to get a reservation in Whitehorse for Thursday night. However that park apparently has no provision to help people that have no Internet access to use their online booking site. Their only alternative was to send them an email. Oh yeah, we don't have that either. 

We checked for sites all along the way, but with no luck pulled in to the old reliable Walmart in Whitehorse about 8pm for the night. We weren't the only dirty van spending the night here:

This is the end of our Dempster trip (but we're not heading home just yet!). We truly enjoyed the Dempster tour. It has its rough spots, but not nearly so bad as the mythology around it. We found that moving about 60-70 kph helped smooth out the washboard. This is similar to driving over those Texas Gates that help keep cattle or bison corralled. After the first afternoon we had great weather, and that surely helped the experience.