Beautiful hike to end our time on the Dempster Highway!

We got up at 6:30am Saturday morning and started driving right away. We only had to do about 70 kms (43 miles) to get to our hiking trail but we also had to stop in at the Tombstone Park visitors center and we knew that it didn't open until 9:00am.

The visitors center had lent us some paperwork and we had to return it. We arrived there at just after 8:00am, which gave us lots of time to have breakfast before they opened.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

It had rained hard Thursday night, but we think it stopped around 4am Friday morning. When we got up, the ground was still soaking wet, even though the sun was peaking through the clouds occasionally. We decided to wait out the morning and let things dry out a bit more before finally hitting the road again.

We had been parked up at Eagle Plains, Yukon for about two and a half days by the time we finally left at around 11:00am.

And the road was actually drier than we thought it was going to be.

The skies are clearing...

First of all, we are a little overwhelmed by the response to our Mexico RV Caravan news from yesterday! We have received 19 emails so far from people interested in joining the trip! Wow!

It's going to be a great trip. We are looking forward to finalizing things over the next couple of weeks.

But, lets bring you back to the present for now...

Exciting news! Your chance to Travel with Kevin and Ruth!

Any of you who had read our daily reports about the Mexico RV Caravan trip we did in January through March of 2018 know that we weren't totally happy with a few things on that trip. Mainly, that it was too rushed, and it didn't include enough relax time. And there was quite a bit we didn't like about the route itself.

We have not been able to come to an agreement with the people who organized that caravan to do another trip through them this upcoming winter.

So we are going to run our own Mexico RV Caravan, with our own route and time schedule!

Back in the Yukon!

We did 178 kms (110 miles) yesterday heading south from Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories to Eagle Plains, Yukon.

Definitely some rough roads along the way, and it's amazing how much they could change from the time we were on this road heading north almost two weeks ago.

It is truly messed up.

We're in bed, sleeping... and there's a "knock, knock, knock" on the door that wakes us both up. Ruth says "one minute!", and I get up and quickly throw some clothes on. I open the door, and it's light outside. Momentarily confused, I think maybe it's morning.

There's an older teenage boy, and he says "what are you doing, sleeping?"

We're cutting it close, so hopefully we'll be okay.

We did some grocery shopping in Inuvik yesterday, making sure we had sufficient supplies to do us at least the next five days. We're hoping to be in Dawson City by Friday, but that may or may not happen due to a storm that's supposed to affect the area between here and Dawson City on Wednesday. We were originally planning to spend a couple more days in Inuvik, but our delays in Tuktoyaktuk, plus the upcoming storm are making us head south quicker. We tried to get into the big community greenhouse in Inuvik, but it's closed on Sundays.

We're hoping that storm isn't as bad as they're forecasting because we would end up stuck in Eagle Plains again waiting for the road to dry up... the same way we did on the way north!

We have begun the journey south!

The forecast called for clearing yesterday afternoon, and so just before lunch I took a 4 km roundtrip walk up the road to see what it was like compared to the day before. It was a definite improvement, so we decided to have some lunch and then make a run for it!

We had watched quite a few vehicles coming in during the morning, and none of them looked very muddy. They were calling for rain again yesterday evening in Tuktoyaktuk, so this was our chance.

Stuck in Tuk!

The weather has not been co-operating here in Tuktoyaktuk. And not helping the situation is that the weather forecast changes by the hour. They obviously can't predict it, and the changes come so quickly I don't understand why they bother trying.

The problem of course, is the highway. Which is not really a highway, it's just a dirt road. And the first ten kms (6 miles) leading out of Tuktoyakyuk are not graveled yet. So when it rains, it becomes a mud road, not a dirt road!

Extending time in your RV without hookups...

It was a wet, rainy, windy, miserable day yesterday. We had been parked overlooking the Arctic Ocean, and when the cold front blew in overnight... it blew in hard! We were both woken up by the wind rocking Sherman, and howling through the electrical cables we were parked near.

Winds were averaging 50 km/h (30 miles per hour) and gusting to 70 km/h (42 mph).

Life in Tuktoyaktuk

We tried again to get in touch with our "cousin of a friend" contact who lives here in Tuktoyaktuk. Still no answer on the phone, so I tried an email address that I had been given, and got a response right away. But it wasn't from Maureen, it was from her daughter Rebecca. She asked if we were parked out at the point, and I said yes.

She said to meet her around noon at the tent snack bar set up right here at the point!

Way up up up up up in Tuktoyaktuk

As they forecast, things got cloudy and cooler up here in "Tuk" as it's often called. But, we still managed to get out for some exercise to explore the town a little bit.

We stopped in the grocery store and even bought a couple of things! Then, we tried to look up a friend's cousin who happens to live here!

Wow. We can't believe we made it!

As you can see from today's header photo... we made it to the Arctic Ocean!

For those of you who don't know, the Dempster Highway has been able to take you as far as the town of Inuvik since 1971. But the village of Tuktoyaktuk (pop 900) on the Arctic Ocean has only been accessible via air, boat, or an ice road that operated only in the winter.

Made it to Inuvik for Canada Day!

We only had 40 kms to drive to get to Inuvik, and we made it in time for their Canada Day parade!

Inuvik is a town of about 3,200 people located 200 kms (120 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. The town has a fairly broad demographic, with 39% Inuvialuit (what we used to call Eskimos when I was growing up) 18% First Nations, 37% non-native. There are even about 100 Muslims, and they even have a small mosque here.

June Expenses

About what we figured it would be, so no great surprises. We spent a total of $2,279 CAD ($1,750 USD) which is not bad considering we started the month in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and ended it to Inuvik, Northwest Territories!

And as expected, the biggest expense of this trip is fuel. We drove a total of 2,925 kms (1,813 miles) during the month.

The biggest surprise of the monthly expenses? Groceries!