Tuesday 7-17
Good morning. We had a great night’s sleep last night, but this morning we had a difficult time escaping Inuvik and we’ve changed our opinion of Mr. D2. Inuvik is not a charming place. We think, as a function of the climate, all of the buildings look the same. Same architecture (square), same construction materials (sheet metal), same configuration (on short stilts), virtually no windows. The grocery looks like the bank. The bank looks like the post office. The post office looks like the liquor store. The liquor store looks like the jail. The jail looks like the hospital. The hospital looks like the Info Center. It’s disorienting.
Plus we think the “F” word may have originated in this culture. Lots of the local words end in “k”, and the “F” word abounds. For instance, “MF” was artfully drawn on the front of our hotel, and last night as we were leaving The Roost a little boy said to his ‘tween sister, “FU”. She said she thought he was too young to use the “F” word, and I said I thought so too, so he said “FU” to me. This morning we stopped at the liquor store. (A 24 can case of beer was $54! What is this “eau de Lebatt’s”? These beer prices are NOT user-friendly). As we were leaving a lady outside screamed to an acquaintance, “FU”. We later saw the same lady downtown where she had other “FU” targets. Maybe here in Inuvik, the “F” word has a different meaning?
We had a number of minor mishaps while we were trying to leave, nothing major, but in aggregate they dampened our spirits…and it began to rain--I had told Nancy we wouldn’t need our rain gear, so the rest of us was also dampening…and we ran into the Ontario & Montreal & BMW posse again…
Among all of this gloom, there was one ray of sunshine—I saw an advertised special at the local ice cream store, “Empty Ice Cream Buckets: 50 Cents”. This had port-o-potty written all over it. We snagged a empty 5-gallon, Rocky Road pail. It will definitely come in handy tonight.
We felt better once we finally got under way. I remark that I think this will be our best animal day.
The rain was intensifying so we drove resolutely toward the first ferry at Ft. McPherson. Among other things, we hoped to find a Haagen Dazs bar in Ft. McPherson. Could I also be haagendazsinverous? No luck! One grocery store’s freezer had crashed and they lost their inventory, which caused a run on the other grocery. There wasn’t even a Klondike Bar or and Eskimo Pie left. The area from Inuvik to the second ferry is not compellingly beautiful so we continued to push on.
A brief pause here to talk about mosquitoes and the killing-machine that I married. Here in the far north it seems that mosquitoes are attracted to anything that moves. As the Cheap Jeep comes to a stop, the mosquitoes identify it as a potential meal. They come in droves. Open the window and count, “one thousand one, one thousand two", and one thousand feakin’ mosquitoes are in the car. They’re that quick. We have three strategies to contend with these buggers: Suck, Smack, and Spark. The Sucking strategy leverages the Bernoulli Effect. Open the window and a few dozen are sucked out. Some of the rest flock to the windows. They get Smacked. In the moments after we close the car doors or windows, as we Smack these guys, our car probably sounds like a motorized calypso band. Finally some of these pests make the mistake of flying around in the Cheap Jeep. They become targets for Nancy’s forehand or backhand. She rarely misses a scoring opportunity!
The spectacular scenery resumes shortly after the second ferry. As we come up over the first mountain pass, clouds are rolling up the north face of the mountains, over the top, and down the south face as if they are chasing us. Off in the distance, a violent sky is dotted with punctures of sunshine producing an eerie, dramatic light that makes the landscape even more beautiful. The rain is intermittent, but often intense. The condition of the road continues to deteriorate, the mud becomes thicker, and the surface more slippery. While we’ve never seen much traffic on The Dempster, we see even less now. In one section we drive 60 miles without seeing another vehicle. We shift the Cheap Jeep into 4-wheel drive. I am intently focused on the road immediately in front of us—avoiding potholes and navigating the mud. We are 35 miles north of Eagle Plains. Nancy yells, “BEAR!”. And there it is!---off the side of the road to the west--75 yards or so—a magnificent Grizzly—blonde and beautiful. We skid to a stop and he rears up and stares at us, then resumes his rooting for food in the tundra. I am snapping pictures like a mad man. The bear begins to move away. To get its attention I begin clapping, improbably The Mexican Hat Dance…Nancy thinks I’m insane, but the bear stops, looks up at me, and snorts “Ole”. We’re there for 20 minutes or so as the bear moves off toward the horizon…sometimes it walks slowly and sometimes it bounds gracefully and very fast. We’re transfixed and exhilarated. Finally we resume our journey but we can’t stop talking about the bear.
There’s a very steep uphill climb 22 miles outside of Eagle Plains. The mud on this hill is extremely slippery and I’m carefully snaking us upward. Nancy yells, “BEAR!”. I look left and right and yell back, “Where?”. She yells, “Right in front of us!” I look up road and there he is, in the middle of the road about 100 yards ahead. I begin inching forward…Nancy is admonishing me not to scare the bear, but it seems unafraid. It lopes up the road ahead of us as we gradually close the distance. Finally the bear looks back at us, and steps off the road to the left. We pull up even with it and begin a long dance, the bear looping out into the tundra and then back to the road, once crossing closely in front of us and then back again…aware of us but unperturbed. This is a smaller bear, but definitely not a cub. We hypothesize that it’s maybe a year old…same beautiful blonde color with deeper brown accents. We’re very close—sometimes less than 100 feet—and watch it poke its snout into the tundra looking for food. At one point if appears to find a small animal and we can see it chewing away. Surprisingly, the bear becomes a target for the ravens. First one raven arrives, then another, then a third. They circle over the bear, diving and screaming at it. Sometimes they land near the bear seemingly to tempt or taunt it. The bear pays them little attention. Finally (is it a half hour later?) the bear tires of us, and moves off into the scrub. Incredible.
We press on toward Eagle Plains stopping again at Glacier Creek to look for my reading glasses—I think I dropped them there. I don’t find my glasses, but find a really interesting rock that looks like pen or pencil.
We rock on and gas up at the Eagle Plains Lodge. We’ve been thinking of Haagen Dazs all day—we are foiled again, but we do get gas.
Leaving Eagle Plains, we have a definite destination in mind. On the way north we saw this primitive campsite on the west side of the road, high up on a knoll, with a fantastic 360° view—that’s where we’re headed. We’ve been moving for about 10 minutes. Nancy says, “What’s that ahead on the road?” I look up from the mud and suggest that it’s a road sign. She says, “I don’t think so…I think it’s a…I think it’s a…yes! It’s a moose!” The huntress is again correct. The moose is noshing on a willow tree next to the road. As we approach he looks up at us as if to say, “Excuse me, I’m having dinner here!”, and then huffs off the road into the brush. Wow what a day! And the evening is young it’s only 8:30.
We’re moving forward in a growing river of mud, but the Cheap Jeep is performing magnificently. This is the CJ’s bar mitzvah. Its baptism. Its coming of age. Rain, mud, steep hills, 4-wheel drive, it’s all happening for the Jeep.
As we come over a hill we see the fog. It’s in front of us like a wall—thick and soupy. It stays with us the rest of the night and into the following morning. Sometimes thinning so that we can see a couple hundred yards but mostly so thick that we can only see a few feet of the muddy road ahead. When the fog is the thickest, I am laying on the horn to frighten any animals that might be in front of us. This tactic proves to be successful and I avoid damaging collisions with a Snowshoe bunny and a small lemming that scamper off the roadway. At 10 PM we reach our destination, pull the CJ off the road up onto the knoll, and set up the tent. We’ve driven 320 miles today. During the last two hours the treacherous road has been virtually deserted (one truck, one SUV). It’s been fabulous ride from seamy Inuvik to this steamy, fog shrouded-knob, and it has indeed been our best day.
