July 10, 2024 – Wednesday – Day 17
We decided to take is slow today. We left camp after 10:30 am and only drove until 1:30 pm. We found a nice spot for lunch on the shore of a lake. It was far from the highway and nice a quiet, so we decided to spend the night. Tomorrow we will arrive in Dawson City.
July 11, 2024 – Thursday – Day 18
It rained most of the night and was raining when we left camp and headed north on the Yukon Highway. In this part of Yukon the gas stations are big above-ground tanks with attached pumps. There are no employees around, you just use your credit card and then pump the gas. Also, there is no competition, so the prices are quite high. We paid $5.24/gal at the tank at Stewarts Landing.
We drove through an area that had a recent wildfire. We were worried they would close the road, but with the recent rain the fire was mostly out. We did pass some areas that were still smoking.
We arrived at Dawson City around noon and stopped at the visitor’s center to get fresh water and the general store to get some food. Dawson City is the heart of the Yukon gold rush. It is still a mining town, but they have restored some buildings from the gold rush period to focus on tourism. There are also many National Historic Sites in town.
Our original plan was to spend a couple of days in Dawson City before continuing north to the Arctic Ocean. However, we check the weather forecast and the forecast in the far north was warm and sunny for a few days. This type of weather is pretty rare, so we changed plans and quickly left Dawson City to drive north on the Dempster Highway. We will return to Dawson City in a few days to see more of the town.
The Dempster Highway is known as the Road to the Arctic. The road goes from Dawson City to the town of Inuvik and then continues to the village of Tuktoyaktuk at shores of the Arctic Ocean. The total highway is 547 miles of dirt/gravel, one way. The road to Inuvik was finished in 1979, but the last 90 miles to Tuktoyaktuk and the ocean was not completed until 2017.
We left Dawson City at 2 pm with the goal to make it halfway to Inuvik before camping for the night. It is funny that the time does not matter much as the sun will go down, but not far enough for it to get dark. It makes it easy to drive for as long as you want and then still find camp in the light.
It was raining as we started our trek on the Dempster. We stopped at a provincial park at 40 miles in and the lower half of the van was covered in mud.
After another 60 miles the entire back was covered. We had heard that it takes $20-30 at the car wash to clean off the mud from the Dempster.
The highway starts in the mountains and forests following several rivers. We camped ~210 miles from the start and the terrain was rolling hills with short scrubby trees. It had stopped raining a few hours ago and it was a warm evening.
Corey & Eva's Travels 