Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada

Welcome to Part 2 of the journey. I've titled this one based on our intended destination of Tuktoyaktuk, NWT.

Where was I?

Day 4 kicked off in downtown Dawson City, relatively early, but without too much stress. This day we didn't have a daunting, or even relatively undaunting, drive ahead of us. We had maybe 20km to drive to the airport. For Dustin and I, this was a cakewalk. But for Mike, and his fear of flying, the next 3 days would be the toughest of the trip.

When we got to the airport, we discovered it had small town charm. And it definitely was cozy. There was no shortage of parking, but a few less amenities than we were used to in our respective travels. But that was all part of the experience. Flying in the north is fun because the airports are small, there is no security and the planes are almost always older than you are.  Oh, and the runways are not always paved. Poor Mike wasn't enjoying the uniqueness as much as I was. Regardless, we made our flight and headed north for Inuvik.

We arrived in Inuvik to discover a surprisingly big airport, but some horrific weather. The temperature had dropped to 3 degrees and the cloud ceiling was close to zero. This was obviously going to cut into the enjoyment of our time in Inuvik, but more importantly was threatening our trip to Tuktoyaktuk.

While Inuvik has a great airport, with may navigational features that allow landings in poor weather, Tuk does not. We needed clearer weather for our flight or we were fubar'd. More on that later.

Anyways, we had the rest of the afternoon to tour around Inuvik. With the rain and 60km/h winds, there wasn't a whole lot of outdoor activities that were available to us and frankly there aren't many indoor options either. So we did what many of the locals would do. We went to the grocery store. For me this was interesting because I was expecting to see a void of fresh foods. But I was surprised to see that the store was full of all the regular groceries you would expect and even had a department store, complete with snowmobiles.

We continued to wander around town, looking for souvenirs, stopping for lunch at Alestine's (a restaurant/bus), visiting the Town office, and seeing the sights that Mackenzie Street had to offer.

A few side stories.
1.  This is a vehicle of a couple that stayed across the hall from us. They drove the Dempster Highway, successfully, the day before we were meant to drive it. The day we were meant to drive was the day the ferries closed and the road was closed off. This is what their vehicle looked like after making it and sitting in the rain for a day. Needless to say, we made the correct choice in not attempting to drive the Dempster. This vehicle was built up for the road and still relatively new. Our car was not prepared and had over 300,000 before the trip started.

2. Because Inuvik is built on permafrost, which tends to heave frequently, the services that we would normally bury in the ground, are all found above ground and need to be heated. That results in these pipes weaved in between all the houses.

The evening turned out to be fairly quiet as we quickly ran out of things to do, and a desire to remain outside in the rain/wind. Plus the next morning we were hoping to fly to Tuk.

On that front, by nighttime we were almost certain we weren't going. We spent a large part of the day checking the weather and speaking with the operator of our lodge about the prospects of getting to Tuk. Turns out the bad weather had prevented flights from going up for a few days already and the forecast for our travel day was for more of the same.

Now, our original travel plans (which included driving the Dempster) allowed us to have a spare day to go to Tuk, in case of poor weather. With our decision to fly up, we lost our spare day and any flexibility for poor weather. We had one day to fly. If we didn't go that day, we weren't going. We went to bed hoping for the best, but already expecting the worst. We figured we had another day to spend in Inuvik.

After awaking, we headed for the airport to go through the usual bad weather protocol that had been outlined to us. Our flight to Tuk was scheduled at 9:30am. Weather reports were received by the airline at every hour. If the weather was bad at 9, our flight would be delayed. They would check again at 10. If good we fly, if bad we wait till 11. The last weather check would be at 12. Either way, we figured we'd be spending the whole morning at the airport.

When we arrived at the airport, we were immediately turned around. The weather was bad enough that the airline just told us to go back to our lodge and that they would call us at 12 for the final word (expected to be bad). This was actually worse news than we anticipated. Not taking that news well, I decided to go for a run. The weather was still terrible but I didn't want to spend more time in the lodge and needed burn off some energy. So I ran. And ran. And ran.

I had covered all of Inuvik and was looping around a lake when my phone rang. It was around 11:30am. It was Dustin. Somehow the weather had cleared enough to fly. Our flight was going!! This was great news, but now became a major logistical problem.

It wasn't 12 so I wasn't expecting the call. No one was. Dustin told me we had to leave in 10 mins. Unfortunately, I was 15 mins from the lodge and covered in mud. I told him I would go as fast as I could. I headed out for the highway and in an amazing turn of luck, the second car that passed me pulled over. The driver door opened and I saw the lodge operator step out. She told me to get in the car. She was rushing back to the lodge to pick me up and take us to the airport. She was just as surprised to find me as I was to see her. The ride back saved me. I had enough time to grab my pre-packed bag and change out of my running clothes.

I was high as a kite on adrenaline. I had run over 17km in a new town, half watching for wildlife, and now after 24 hours straight thinking we weren't going to accomplish our goal of going to Tuk, we were going.

The next hour was a blur. We walked into the airport and immediately got on an airplane and headed north. Poor Mike. This plane was even smaller than the last, but somehow it was another smooth flight and before we knew it, we were safely in Tuktoyaktuk. Once in Tuk, we took our Day 5 photo.

We were picked up at the airport by Aileen, our local guide, and our tour of town began immediately. We went to her house, where her husband Billy started to share stories from their yearly trips spending months in the bush trapping. This included explanations of traps, pelts and various pieces of clothing that he'd created from fur. The most interesting was of course polar bear pants and mitts. It sounds crazy and looks even crazier.

Following all the learning from Billy, we went inside where Aileen had prepared a traditional Inuvialiut lunch for us. This lunch caribou soup, donut, beluga whale, dry whitefish and muskox. Not all of the items were things that I would normally eat, but after a 17km run in the morning, I was hungry.

After driving around town some more, the next major stop on our tour was to visit Aileen's smokehouse which had a great beachside location on the Arctic Ocean. This meant that our desires to get to the Arctic Ocean were a success. We'd made it. But that wasn't enough for us. We had to go in. Dustin and I had discussed this earlier and had planned accordingly. We were going swimming. We had to. We would never be back at the Arctic Ocean again.

We brought our swim trunks, our towels and Aileen was nice enough to let us borrow her smokehouse as a change room. The change room was necessary, not because of modesty, but rather because of the still terrible weather conditions. Temperature was 3 degrees, still, wind was gusting to 70 km/h off the ocean. And it was raining. With the water temperature around 0 degrees, we wouldn't have long to stand outside in the cold and wind before we had hypothermia. So we borrowed the smoke house to fend off the wind/rain.

Mike, being the oldest, and now seemingly the smartest, decided he was only going to go up to his knees in the water. We did this first and took a phenomenal group photo. This turned out to be a great idea because it allowed Mike to head back to shore and capture photos of us freezing in the water. Here's what it looked like. For context, Mike left all his other clothes on and just rolled up his pants. This gives an idea of what type of clothing was necessary to stay warm outside, in comparison to what Dustin and I were wearing. Somehow, we managed to get out of the water, changed and back in the warm van safely. What an experience. It was awful, freezing and completely exhilarating.

The rest of the day we spent viewing the rest of town. Here are some photos that give you an idea of what Tuk looks like. We even managed to climb one of the pingo's in town for a better view.

The day went by extraordinarily fast, but at the same time we took in so much more than we ever thought we would. It was great to learn from locals about their way of life, their relationships with government and their history. Every time I spend time in the north, I'm always fascinated by how different their everyday life is compared to mine.

We were also surprised by how amazing it was to just look at a map showing us where we were. We were on top of Canada.

Too quickly, we were back at the airport, waiting for our flight back to Inuvik. After getting back, we headed out for pizza to celebrate our successes. We made it to the Arctic Ocean.

Sleep came easily that night. The next morning, we had our final flight of the trip, back to Dawson City and back to the car. It felt like we had been away from Dawson for a week, but it'd barely been 2 full days. We even got to see some sights out the window including the Mackenzie River delta and snow-capped mountains.

That's it for Part 2 of the trip. Part 3 starts in the afternoon in Dawson City.