Hello pavement!

Sunday, August 5, 2007

DAWSON CITY, YUKON — We made it! We’re back from our trek along the Dempster Highway in one piece, and are comfortably installed once again in our cozy trailer at the Bonanza Gold RV Park just outside of Dawson. We have now earned the right to wear the T-shirts we picked up in Inuvik — they’re a dirty brown colour, and stenciled on the front in scratchy letters it says "I drove the Dempster Highway!" A fitting souvenir indeed.
Some travelers have paid more dearly for that accomplishment than others. That includes the couple we encountered about 80 kilometres south of Eagle Plains this morning. They had set out some bright orange hazard triangles on the road, and the woman was waving her arms as we approached. Their sturdy Toyota had a coating of dust and mud on the sides, two kayaks on the roof and it was propped up with the front right tire off. Both the tire and the spare were flat!
Graham, the husband, said they’d had one flat, and they hadn’t driven more than a hundred yards after putting on the spare before he felt the pull to one side that indicated it, too, had gone flat. They had been stranded since half past midnight last night! They were hoping for a ride to Eagle Plains, where there was a tow truck, but we were heading in the opposite direction.
Their tires weren’t the same size as ours, so we couldn’t help that way, and they didn’t need any of the food or water we offered them — or even bug spray for all the mosquitoes that were hovering around. We were too far from anywhere for cell phones to work. So Sarah, the wife, wrote down their particulars on a paper for us and we said we’d stop at the first place that might be able to send help. As we drove away, Val said to me that they shouldn’t have even started driving the Dempster without heavy duty tires and decent treads. All they had were lightweight city tires.
Long before we got to anyplace that might have had a communications link to call for roadside assistance, we passed four or five vehicles heading north toward Eagle Plains, one of which was a big transport truck, so we felt comfortable that they would have gotten help from one of them. A little further on, we passed a tow truck heading north with flashing lights, so Graham and Sarah were undoubtedly rescued from their predicament. It was only after seeing this incident that I believed the advice we had read about bringing two spare tires on any trip up the Dempster. Val had prudently checked the condition and inflation of our spare before we headed up, and we have 10-ply heavy duty tires, so we were OK with just the one.
We had hoped we might see more wildlife on the return journey — and we did, if you count the half dozen snowshoe hares, three or four ground squirrels, two or three ptarmigans and half dozen ravens that we passed. But no grizzlies, moose or caribou this time. We did drink in the huge vistas of mountains, streams, tundra and colourful wildflowers and grasses. It’s a drive we will long remember.
About 10 kilometres before the end of the Dempster, we hit pavement again. What a feeling! No more bone-rattling lumps and bumps, no more plume of brown dust behind us — just smooth grey asphalt and being able to speak at normal conversational volume. Civilization was not far off!
Once we confirmed a spot at the RV park, we went to its car wash station, where loonies bought us several minutes of pressure washing to remove the dirt and grime. Soon the truck looked its wonderful shiny red self again, and we went to fetch the trailer across the highway where we’d been allowed to park it, plugged in, for the last six days. All our food was still nicely chilled in the fridge and freezer. We hitched up, pulled the trailer across to the wash station, and gave it a bath as well. Val wielded the spray hose while I scrubbed with our long-handled brush — boy, was there a lot of brown water flowing in the spray!
The outside was looking so spiffy that, once we were installed at our site, I hauled out the vacuum and did the inside as well. We still had quite a bit of dust inside from our trek through the Top of the World Highway last week, so now that that’s all cleaned up, we’re feeling quite fresh inside and out.
It was a treat to sit down for a nice dinner in our little home on wheels, followed by a restful cup of tea and a quiet evening of reading. Tonight we sleep in our own comfortable bed again.