Norm and Deane had reached the Arctic Circle last summer in Nunavut, but we flew the last 900 miles to get there, whereas this time, we rode motorcycles ALL THE WAY from Albuquerque! And Kay was with us, having driven the motor home, pulling the trailer, all the way from Albuquerque!

The distance we have ridden from Albuquerque is just over 5,000 miles! Of course, we took a little detour in going up to Yellowknife, NWT.

The day started a little colder than yesterday, about 30^o F, for a very cold start to our riding. After 50 miles or so, it gradually warmed up to about 37^o F or so. It gave me pause to think "Do reasonable and sensible people really do this kind of thing?"

We rode through snow covered mountains, and crossed the Continental Divide again. In doing so, we rode in horrendous side winds of 40 mph or so, so the chill factor was way down there. We had a hard time keeping the bikes on the road, made much more difficult by the ridges of loose gravel in the road. Yes, that's right - it snowed yesterday, August 26th, in the Yukon.

Then after crossing the Arctic Circle, we rode another 200 miles north, to Inuvik, where surprisingly, the temperature was the highest we'd seen all day.

Inuvik is a community of about 3,400 population, partly of people native to the area (Gwich'in) and partly oil and gas companies and their employees.

Today's scenery was quite varied, although not as varied as yesterday's. We rode through areas of partially tree and partially bush covering, and through areas of no trees but only "taiga". Taiga is the name for low growing bushes and grasses, with no trees.

Tiaga is similar to Tundra, except that in this area, Taiga is quite a dry type of vegetation and Tundra is more wet and "squishy" vegetation.

We crossed two rivers on Canadian ferries, the "Red River" and the Mackenzie River. The Red is fairly small, but the Mackenzie is very broad, very deep, and carries a tremendous amount of water, as it gains the input from other rivers on its way to the Beaufort Sea and ultimately to the Arctic Ocean.

Inuvik is "the end of the line" for the Dempster Highway, and is the farthest North one can go on any all-weather road in Canada. To go farther North, one has to wait for winter and drive one of the "Ice Highways". No - We're not going to do that!

	Deane, Norm, and Kay's Motorcycle / RV Trip to Northern Canada and Alaska