Herschel Pt 2: Eagle Plains - Inuvik

The second half of the Dempster was a bit of a blur - we were in a RUSH to make the ferries before they stopped running for the night. The Dempster highway has 2 river crossings, the Peel River and the Mackenzie. Ferries are there to take people and vehicles back and forth in the summer when the ice roads hibernate for the summer. They reappear in the winter though. ;)

We were rushing to make the LAST ferry which we knew was around midnight. If we caught the one ferry, but missed the second, we were kind of stuck in "no man's land" from midnight to 9:00am, when the ferries started running again. Four of us. In a truck. No thanks!! So we motored up the highway to make the ferry!! It was a close call, and we even had to cut short a viewing of a black wolf to keep moving.


Caribou!!! We spotted these guys on the trip back. The Porcupine Caribou herd is starting it's migration - there will soon be thousands of these guys all over the Dempster.


Yukon + Caribou





Gigantic culvert. Someone might find this interesting...


Big ol' bear butt


Grizzly #2

A not-very-exciting video of him grazing... that's just what they do!




The Dempster is definitely grizzly country!


Not too happy we're invading his space, but we really had no choice as he was crossing the hwy right in front of us!


Gave us a bit of a snarl. I'm just glad I'm in the truck!


Same guy.

The Arctic Circle - we made it this far, yay!


The Arctic Circle, land o' the midnight sun!



How freakin' cute is that little guy???


Great outhouse view - I love how they're "tied" together - the winds up here can be brutal.


NWT! (shot from the truck as we went speeding by, we had a ferry to catch!)


Midway


Midway Lake is the site of the annual Midway Lake music festival in August.



We made it to the first ferry! One more to go. It was about 11:15pm here. This crosses the Peel river.


The Peel river cable ferry

And we finally make it to the Mackenzie River ferry crossing!! Woohoo! This ferry crossing is at the confluence of the Mackenzie River and the Arctic Red River - the latter is a Canadian Heritage River.

The last ferry, yes! We made it. With 15 minutes to spare... whew! This is taken at 12:15am.


Lovely sky!!

Forcing Heather to pose in front of the ship's bathroom:


Peeking in


Why, yes, it's a ship's bathroom!!

She understands my weird obsession with bathrooms/outhouses. True friends don't question your quirkiness, they just accept it!

Inside the bathroom, not a lot of elbow room.

So what!? I'm fascinated by bathrooms. It had a huge heavy door AND a porthole, tell me that ain't totally cool.


Potty porthole


The cap'n of the ship, he was so cute and friendly! He gave us a play-by-play on his river navigation skills and how he was able to dock without some of his systems (um, can't remember his exact words here) working. What a pro!


The tiny community of Tsiigehtchic


The controls, one of which I accidentally bumped and hoped I didn't drop the anchor or hit "full throttle!"



Heather and Steph descend from the wheelhouse.

After this we were free and clear and on our way. We eventually made it to Inuvik at 2am or so! Woohoo!!


Next up: catching the plane to Herschel Island... do we make it on the planned flight or are we delayed, as flight's often are to this remote island...???!?