Day 12 (crossing into NWt) to Day 15 (arriving in Yellowknife)!

Day 12 – June 16 – Today we crossed the border into the NWT! Yahoo! We decided to take the chance & go up the Liard Trail. A risk (due to the fact that it's a few hundred kms of gravel road, and the spring thaw has made it an impassable mud pit, without four-wheel drive), but it cuts SO much distance off! If we didn't go that way, we'd have to go WAY down into BC & Alberta, and then back up again. An extra 200+ kms i believe.

First stop, Fort Liard, just a short distance into the Trail. Everyone is aboriginal, and we stopped to get some lunch at the gas station. THANKfully, btw, there WAS a gas station, because we needed gas, and didn't know if there would be gas on the Trail. (There WASn't, and we would have run out of gas if we hadn't filled up. As it was, we were running on fumes by the time we DID hit one). Can you imagine running out of gas hundreds of miles into the NWT, in the middle of nowhere? *shudder* Hehe.

Anyway, lunch. The BEST french fries i'd had in years! You know those limp noodle fries that most people hate? (in fact someone had left an entire huge portion of poutine at one table). Well anyway, i LOVE that kind of fries, so i was in deep-fried heaven!

Sambaa Deh Falls

Ancient sea creatures

Camped at the Trout River Campground, and took some pics at the Sambaa Deh Falls (really nice). Found all kinds of ancient sea creatures imbedded in the rocks. Very cool. Apparently the area used to be a tropical sea. Now it's the sub arctic. Amazing!

Alexandra Falls

Day 13 – June 17 – Today we stopped near Enterprise, where we THANKFULLY found gas (as i mentioned yesterday). Saw a cool rainbow at Evelyn Falls on the Kakisa River. And on the way to Hay River (our destination for two nights.. we were meeting a new friend who lives there), we stopped at the Alexandra Falls. Now THAT was nice... with coffee, cocoa & cream coloured water!

The Great Slave Lake.. from Hay River

The Hay River Campground was very nice. We got an RV site (with power, although we didn't use it) with its own crescent driveway, so it was really private & far away from everyone. The tent sites were nice, but closer together, and considering these smaller no-power sites cost the same as the big sites... we of course stayed with the big one. It was just steps away from a beach that looked like the ocean, but it was Great Slave Lake! Very nice!

I forgot to mention the 'Rock Graffiti' that we saw en route! People would spell out their names or initials, some with hearts & declarations of love... out of stones and small rocks on the sides of small hills along the highway. A few even painted their rocks bright colours to make them stand out! It was a very interesting & non-destructive expression of 'art'. I liked them. But then again, i'm an urban graffiti fan. This was just a northern extension of it!

Day 14 – June 18 – Today was Saturday, so we went down to Fisherman's Wharf for the Market & fish fry. I got some awesome Lake Trout, caught the day before in the Great Slave Lake... pan fried and AWEsome! SO yummy! The bannock was not that great though. Baked into a muffin shape & cold. I prefer my bannock hot & freshly deep-fried in a flat shape, with butter & jam. Mmmm. Oh well. The awesome fish made up for it. Murray had deep-fried fish & chips. Not nearly as good. It's WAY better pan fried! Ok... i'm getting hungry now!

Toured around tiny Hay River until we basically knew the place! I mean, we were even starting to recognize people! My friend has been expounding the virtues of Hay River for a year, saying that Yellowknife is a dump. But... *ahem* Hay River is nice enough for a tiny town, but... now that i've seen Yellowknife... you simply can't compare!

Day 15 – June 19 – Today, we're on our way to Yellowknife! We take the ferry across the MacKenzie River, where we see the bridge that's supposed to be finished for this fall before the winter freeze. Ain't happenin'! Turns out it's been a fiasco since day one, when they started the project before they even got the engineer to sign off the plans! Urgh. It's going to end up a couple of hundred million over budget... crazy. Oh well. I was hoping to be able to cross the new bridge next spring (or this winter) when i leave by bus, but... i'll probably end up flying anyway.

It was cool... a bunch of bison were congregating at the base of the bridge. I can imagine they'd be in the way of the workers. Counting these bison, and the herd we saw shortly afterwards, we saw about 150 bison during our trip up!

We have arrived in Yellowknife!! Yay! After miles and miles and HUNDREDS of miles of JUST small trees... as one comes closer to Yellowknife, the terrain finally changes. It becomes dryer (it's supposedly a 'Polar Desert'), and there are more and more rock outcroppings.. with cute, tiny trees growing out of it. Yellowknife is really quite a pretty city! I was very pleasantly surprised! Those outcroppings of Precambrian rock are everywhere in Yellowknife! It's where the gold & diamonds are! Well, the gold is/was here (Yellowknife started out as a little Gold Rush), but the diamonds (the NEW gold here in the NWT) are about 40 miles or so north.

Our Campsite

Our campsite at the Fred Henne Campground is very nice, and right by the lake (just through the trees). It's noisy, with people playing at the beach nearby, and the 'skeeters' were a-howlin' though. Gotta have the bug dope! We ARE in the north after all! I WAS warned! Murray was especially hounded by them. He said that he doesn't think he could live here, because he would go mad with the bugs! I say, the season is short, and bug dope is plentiful... Hopefully it's worth the hassle, when the snow starts flying.