Day 16: Eagle Plains to Inuvik NWT; Dempster Hwy, 400 kms

Did you that the Eagle Plains complex is located on the only bedrock on the entire Dempster Hwy?  It was built in 1974 @ a cost of 3.5M$ (when the cost of the average house was 49K$ ) and is exactly half way to Inuvik. It really is an oasis along the way. There are 36 guest rooms, a dining lounge, bar, gift shop and car/truck repair facility with gas.  It is located at the top of a ridge so the view is breathtaking. You can see for days.  Huh!

It had rained all night so there were some slick patches to the first of  objective of the day.  The Arctic Circle.

It actually was that warm

The sun dried up the road on our way to the NWT/ YT boarder.  The road is used as an emergency landing strip in a couple of places.  Beside the signs stating this, you could tell these areas because the road was extra wide & in excellent shape. Huh!

I dumped the bike coming off the ferry before Fort McPherson.  Getting on had been scary.  They had added lots of dirt to level the ferry landing. Unfortunately, the truck traffic created deep soft ruts which grabbed my front wheel. Over I went, in a slow motion dump.  No damage to me or the bike.  A native ferry worker helped me reconnect the clutch interlock so the bike would start (that is going to get bi-passed when I get home.) We had lunch in Fort McPherson by shopping at the COOP.  The two RCMP just laughed when we asked about a restaurant.

After "lunch" we boarded the last ferry before Inuvik.  It wasn't pretty, but no problems.  Now the road was 3 inches of gravel & dust.  The trucks created so much dust we almost had to come to a complete stop when they approached.  You couldn't see anything.  Dave who was leading, got pelted by stones several times.  He felt they were purposely slamming on their brakes to stone us. Ouch!

I was having a hard time keeping up to the guys.  I got into a tank slapper.  Each handle grip took turns trying to touch the gas tank.  The front wheel went from side to side.  I reacted quickly saying " I got it! I got!" Another voice said, " Are you sure?"  I responded,  "Yes I have it. See it straightened out." I was only going all of 50 kph.  Dave suggesting doing 70 kph to get the front tire floating over the gravel and I thought 50 kph was scary.  However, with a leap of faith I tried it.  The bike seemed to be better. No more tank slappers.

Late in the afternoon Peter's bike cover & chain lub fell off his bike in front of me.  I stopped to pick it them up. The guys circled back when they couldn't see me.
This wasn't near as dramatic as when the logging truck sucked my sleeping bag out from under the straps on my bike.  The sleeping bag floated up like a helium balloon, landed in the oncoming lane, did an triple axle onto the far shoulder of the road.  From then on the tie down straps went through the loops on each bag.

Finally, we hit 10 kms of pavement to downtown Inuvik.  We stopped at the first motel & booked the last two rooms in town. There was some sort of  NWT convention going on.  Imagine that?  We had seen a number of bikers heading South as we approached Inuvik and  wonder why they were heading back then.  I guess they didn't like the 200$ per room price.   They may just have been keen.  Afterall, the sun was shining 20 hours a day @ this point.

The temperature was 24 degrees!  We had to open the windows to let in a breeze.  Funny, how the farthest place North is the warmest!  Must be closer to the sun.