Tombstone Territorial Park vista (looking west toward Tombstone Peak in far distance)

Across the Continent (part 8 of 10) 

Anchorage to Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories 

14-18 June 2022

After my frustrating flight delays in Utqiagvik, I was in a hurry to  get back onto the open road. I first picked up my car from the Nissan Dealer in downtown Anchorage, where I had dropped it off for a check-up. Then gathered up my stored gear and food at David Sonneborn's home and I packed my car.  For more than three years I had dreamed of driving to the far northern community of Tuktoyaktuk on the Arctic Ocean via the Dempster Highway in western Canada. Now I was going to actually do it! To me this was the most challenging and exciting part of my big trans-continental drive. I was eager to get into it... 

    Vista from the "Top of the World" Highway from Tok to Dawson City 

It was late afternoon when I finished packing my car in Anchorage. I stopped off at the Fred Meyer to load up my cooler with fresh food for the next ten days of adventure. Then I got on the Glennallen Highway and headed northeastward toward the Yukon border. At midnight I stopped to camp at the Dry Creek State Recreation Site near Glennallenn. It had been a long day, traveling from Utqiagvik. 

     Here is an Orange-crowned Warbler where you can actually see the orange on the crown...

The evening drive to Glennallen was an unalloyed pleasure after being stuck in Utqiagvik. The scenery was stunning--snowclad mountains, glaciers, deep gorges, spruce forests... Passing through Sutton-Alpine I was reminded of Jackson Hole... and  I was savoring the freedom of the open road! There's nothing quite like it. Alaska Highway One followed the gorge of the Matanuska River, which is gorgeous.  The low evening sun on the Matanuska Glacier pouring out of a steep valley was awe-inspiring. I slept in the car because I didn't want to set up tent out in the swarming mosquitoes. Of course, it was not dark at Midnight, but in spite of the light I slept the sleep of the dead.  

     a spruce glade at the edge of the tundra on the Dempster Highway

On the 15th of June I breakfasted al fresco in Tok, looking south at the great snowy mass of one of the snowdomes of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains. Then I headed out on the Top of the World "highway" to Chicken, crossed the border into the Yukon, and by the end of the day I was at a sprucy campsite on the banks of the Yukon River, just across from Dawson City. This is a famous drive but I found it disappointing--the road conditions were poor, the vistas were so-so, and there was no wildlife to be seen. I was happy to be in Dawson City, ready to take on the Dempster Highway...

    another vista in Tombstone Territorial Park, on the Dempster Highway

The highway from Alaska to Dawson City lacked one thing--a bridge across the Yukon. One must take a ferry, which crosses every twenty minutes or so... Free and easy to get... After birding the White Spruce woods of the campground (Townsend's Warblers, Canada Jays), I spent the next morning in Dawson City on my bike, shopping for stuff I needed for the big drive to Tuktoyaktuk. Dawson City is small and cute and very touristy--but in a good way. It stands right on the banks of the Yukon, and features lots of historic gold-rush buildings plus a lot of recreated ones as well. I did my laundry, bought bear-bangers (small explosive projectiles used to scare away bears), and other odds and ends.

     American Golden-Plover on territory atop a high tundra ridge in Tombstone Park

Now fully provisioned, I return to my camp, packed my car, crossed the Yukon by ferry, filled my tank, and headed out to the bottom of the Dempster Highway, which originates just east of Dawson City on the Koldike Highway. Departing the town, I passed by high and elongated mounds of rough gravel--the product of industrial dredging of the Klondike. I had seen similar devastation along the Bulolo River in Papua New Guinea. It is amazing what a terrible mess gold-miners make when harvesting their gold. 

     a boar Grizzly eyes me from the roadside on the Dempster Highway... would a bear-banger stop this guy? I wondered....

After just a few hours drive (100 miles--one of the shortest driving days of the entire trip) I arrived in the heart of Tombstone Territorial Park, one of the Dempster's gems. I set up camp in the Park's main campground that is just a short walk from an excellent and fully-staffed Park Interpretive Center. This is the Yukon's answer to Yellowstone or the Tetons. The Dempster Highway is 559 miles of gravel road that crosses the Arctic Circle and terminates on the Beaufort Sea, an embayment of the Arctic Ocean. Tombstone is the only formal park along the highway, and one of the road's featured stops.

          Rough-legged Hawk, looking more like a Brahminy Kite

I spent two nights at the Tombstone campsite, because I had been told that the Peel River ferry, to the north, is closed because of high water. This gave me a chance to get to know Tombstone, which was picture perfect--blue skies, cool temperatures, few biting insects.

     Short-eared Owl, patrolling the tundra

I drove north on the 17th of June, departing the campground around 4am. The benefit of rising early is the wildlife. I saw three Moose and a big boar Grizzly along the quiet road. Hours passed before I encountered another car... The road took me though uplands and lowlands and a wide range of geological terrain--it is raw landscape with big vistas. I breakfasted at Eagle Plains Hotel, happily filling my gas tank. For a long time was worried that the stretch from Dawson City to Eagle Plains was beyond the capacity of my gas tank. The worry was for naught. There are few gas stations along the Dempster, but they were sufficient for a typical SUV like the one I had. All the guidebooks recommend packing a spare container of gasoline on the roof of the car. I did not, and was happy for that fact...

    a singing male Smith's Longspur in the low tundra grass near Jensen's Corral--about an hour north of the Tombstone

     campground.

The 17th of June was a long day for me. I crossed the Peel River by ferry, then the mighty Mackenzie by ferry. Ever northward... I had thoughts of camping in Inuvik (the largest town on the Dempster), but because it was a local weekend holiday, all of the campgrounds in Inuvik were full.  Frustrated, at 5pm I simply got back into  my car and continued driving north along the Dempster extension, northward to Tuktoyaktuk. Since there were no campgrounds, even though the hours ticked by, I kept moving, until I found myself, at 8pm, in a parking lot facing the Beaufort Sea--the very end of Beaufort Street. I had completed my drive to the Arctic Ocean!

     a furtive male Smith's Longspur This songbird was one of the tougher species to locate in the vast tundra landscapes...

The afternoon drive up to Tuktoyaktuk was mainly through lonely low tundra, mostly treeless. The weather had turned cloudy and drizzly, and aside from some jaegers and waterfowl, I saw very little wildlife. The road was in poor condition, and, frankly, I was worried about where I would spend the night in this far northern corner of Canada (now I was in the Northwest Territories, by the way). 

     Unlike Utqiagvik, here at Tuktoyaktuk the tundra was mainly snow-free, but the sea was still pretty much iced over

I was now on the North Slope, just east of the vast Mackenzie Delta. That was a known breeding grounds for Hudsonian Godwit--the bird that ostensibly drew me to Tuktoyaktuk. But I had no means to get into the Delta. I had not carried out the due diligence to figure that out (presumably it would involve a helicopter, which is always an expensive proposition). 

     The end of the road! Here I am, where the sun never sets, a mere 4,530 miles from Bethesda, Maryland. 

I had spent months daydreaming about Tuktoyaktuk during the covid years, during which I could not travel to Canada. And now I had finally made it to this mysterious and distant destination with a bunch of other adventure-minded travelers, all corralled in a gravel parking lot. We were made welcome. There was a large covered structure with a set of picnice tables which was perfect for setting up for dinner. This I did with a couple from Newburgh, New York. There were probably fifteen other cars or RVs in the large parking area that served informally as a campground. Most were arrayed out along the shore.  

     A friendly couple pay us a visit with their two children (who are playing on the ATV out of sight). Trevor, fron Newburgh,

     NY, on right. My dirty car in background...

We were visited by a number of curious and friendly Inuvialiut residents, who had nothing better to do that evening. They arrived in cars and ATVs, and asked us all manner of questions...they wanted to socialize with these long-distance visitors... I chatted while working to make a dinner for myself. By 9pm the parking lot was buzzing with cars and people. It was like any other small town on a summer evening... A single Pomarine Jaeger flew by... 

     dawn in Tuktoyaktuk

As it got later and later I tried to ignore my new friends and eat my dinner, and I started worrying about where I would sleep and whether I would set up my tent in the parking lot or not... By 11pm I decided to sleep in the car, which I moved over to the others parked near the shore... By then it had dawned on me that I had not adequately planned for Tuktoyaktuk. But I was too sleepy to worry much about it. Cars passed through the parking lot through the night. 

            Drier hilltops supported tall White Spruce, which towered over the Black Spruce, creating these curious forests

The next morning I rose early. It was rather gloomy and most of wht I saw there in Tuk was post-Industrial. Tuktoyaktuk was formerly an important military installation for the Cold War. Right on the DEW Line, with radars of the "defense early warning" system, poised to detect Soviet ICBMs headed to NYC and DC. All that serious hardware is still there, but it is now superseded by space-based surveillance. So Tuk is a mix of indigenous village and decaying military installations. That morning, in the gloom, it did not offer me much solace. Without much thinking, I headed slowly southward, stopping to identify all the birds I saw in the many ponds and lakes I passed. I searched for shorebirds and looked for possible habitat for the vanishingly-rare Gray-headed Chickadee...  

Installment #9 will feature more of the natural history of the Dempster Highway, NW Territories