To Tuktoyaktuk and Back Again

Recently back from a 3 week, 7000+ mile road trip to the Arctic Ocean.

Two years ago my buddy and I watched a YouTube series about a family traveling to Tuktoyaktuk, located on the shore of the Arctic Ocean in northern Canada and decided we needed to do this. To this day we are not sure why we needed to do this but we usually don't let that get in our way.

We left from the SF Bay area on June 24 and beat our estimated return by a day, returning on July 14.

The route:

The waypoints:

We hauled it up to Eugene, OR on day 1 and found some dispersed camping east of there near an OHV rec area.

The next day we again hauled it up to Port Angeles, WA to visit some of my family and crash at their house. On day 3 we took the 7:00AM Port Townsend ferry to Whidbey Island and drove north to Sumas, WA to cross into Canada, then head east to Hope where we bought some Molson and some fresh produce. We finished the long day at 5pm at Lac La Hache Provincial Campground.

From here we headed north to Prince George and turned west towards the coastal ranges. The traffic started to thin out a bit and the closer we got to the mountains the better the view was getting. We made it to Kleanza Creek Campground and jumped in the creek!


Next stop was Salmon Glacier. We drove back north and turned onto 37, which was a gorgeous drive.

We hadn't really planned any camping spots as we were hoping that we might do some dispersed camping near the glacier but the weather and the construction/mining traffic made us to decide to head further north and hit Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park.



Great campground but the mozzies were getting fierce! Without the Thermacell's this trip would have been a lot harder!


Next stop, Whitehorse! Not many photos from there as it was a resupply and rest stop. Whitehorse is a great city with a lot of great food options. We also discovered that they had a Canadian Tire which my friend had not been to before. He's a convert now.

(I'm on the right)

After a nice couple of days in Whitehorse, we got back on the road to push further north.

About 6 hours later:

Little did we know, the hard part was still ahead of us. We camped a few miles up the road at the Tombstone Campground.

We met a bunch of nice people and hung out until very late which is when we noticed that sun wasn't really going down. This is 2:30AM:

The view from the next day as we headed north

Not many pictures as we were in a hurry to get to Inuvik and knew we had a long way to go with 2 ferry crossings. We did stop just north of Eagle Plains though:

We spent the night just outside of Inuvik at the Jak Territorial Park. It was quite warm (85f/30c) and sun never actually set below the horizon. At Midnight and one could watch the sunset and sunrise from the same window.

Next morning we headed to Tuk.


We had planned on staying the night but the town is quite small, there were a lot of overlanders/travelers there, and camping was $60/nt CAD (we have been paying $20/nt CAD at the government campgrounds and some of those had free fire wood!). After we had lunch out at roads end and took a dip in the Arctic Ocean we decided that we should get back south of Inuvik to give us a reasonable drive back to Tombstone the next day.

We stopped at Vadzaih Van Tshik Territorial Campground, made some chow, and did our best to avoid the clouds of mozzies.


We'll jump ahead a bit as we are retracing our steps. Made it back to Tombstone then to Whitehorse (we felt the need to give the Burnt Toast Cafe and the Sternwheeler Hotel some more of our money). It felt good to get off the Dempster...a thousand miles of dirt road took its toll!

After retracing our steps we headed to Watson Lake. Beautiful lake and a nice campground! In the evening we started to get wild fire smoke over head.

We had lost track of the days and didn't realize it was Friday. Campground was great until about 8pm and some folks I named Rick Racer and Moto Boys, showed up and it was 2 stroke smoke and cheap beer until about 4am.




Downtown Watson Lake has an excellent visitors center with a sign post forest.

On the way to Buckinghorse Campground we drove through Muncho Lake and its a shame there was so much smoke as its an absolutely gorgeous glacier fed lake between to ridgelines. Planning to go back there! The campground was empty when we arrived but people started tricking in after few hours. Met some nice folks there.




The drive from Watson Lake to Buckinghorse CG was a long one so the next day we did a shorter drive to Heart Lake. Took swim and relaxed though there was some anticipation from our next destination....Jasper National Park!



The drive to Jasper was busy as we had to go through Prince George again but a couple hours from there we started rolling up into the Rockies.


We stayed 2 nights at Whistlers Campground. It was fully booked but surprisingly quiet. Its not far from town and very close to the Whistlers Peak tram. We took the tram and hiked up to the peak, ate at some great restaurants in town and shared some beverages with some of our neighbors. Good times!




The drive down to Banff is one of the most amazing I've ever done. The weather cold and rainy so not may good opportunities for pictures but this should give a clue.


From here its all a blur. By this point we were pretty much ready to get home. We drove down to Banff and cut over through Kootenay National Park on our way to Eastport, ID. We had gotten an early start so our plan to camp near the border in Idaho was scrubbed and at lunch at a brewery in Bonners Ferry we decided to just go as long as we could. We made it to a KOA in Spokane which was OK (it had pool and it was hot) but at this point we just were looking to get some miles under us. I will need to go back to that part of Idaho as it was quite beautiful.

After Spokane we drove down through Bend and stopped for out final night somewhere between Klamath NF and Shasta NF.



The last great view was the last morning on our way to Weed, CA and I5 for the speed run back to the Bay Area. Shasta look magnificent!



Thanks for giving this a read. I will be updating as I rifle through more of the pictures and stumble upon any relevant gems.

Not sure I need to do this again but I am glad I did it.

 

Beautiful pictures and write up, thanks for sharing everything.

I can strongly relate to the “I don’t need to do this but I’m going to anyway” thing, especially in relation to the Tacoma lol

 

Just came back from Inuvik/Aklavik. Awesome up there, and I think I might want to also make the drive. Although flying and boating is fun!

 

I may bring the Mrs. up there and we'll fly. That said, if I were to make the drive again, I'd probably spring for the ferry from Vancouver to Prince Rupert.

 

Awesome trip. Great photos. Well done. Thanks for sharing.

 

Awesome! Thanks for sharing!

 

wow those are some amazing photos shots. That glacier one is beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Breathtaking

 

thank you!

 

Thanks for sharing -- got the hormones flowing (we're driving to the AK National Parks next summer).

What did you use to manage the mosquitoes? Any words of wisdom on those little buggers?

 

Thermacell Back Packer repeller. We used 3 of them pretty much constantly when in camp. The refills (we called them wicks) last about 4 hrs so bring plenty. We used the 16oz MSR fuel cans and they still have plenty of fuel in them after about 18 days of use. They worked amazingly. We brought a pop up screen room and never used it because the Thermocells worked so well.

We didn't have any of the portable Thermacell units and it would have be helpful if we did. Went to the outhouse one morning without having any protection and was mauled by the mozzies.

We also used a few cans of Off! to protect while setting up camp (lighting the Thermacells and giving them a few minutes to work) and for the occasional saunter to the loo.

 

Just wondering if trip could be done in an electric vehicle.I have a Tacoma of course but the wife wants to look into getting an electric vehicle for road trips. See any bears?

 

North of Prince George it can be couple hundred miles between gas stations and I honestly don’t recall seeing electric chargers though I wasn’t looking. I’d do some research. Also, unless it’s a Rivian or similar, the Dempster Hwy may beat the heck out a standard electric car and replacement parts might be scarce.

Yep, saw plenty of bears along the road.