… To Yellowknife — Fostering Adventure

Autumn Splendor And The 60th Parallel

Hay River to Yellowknife

After making it out of the park and back to Fort Smith, we continued on our way to Hay River and arrived in the early afternoon. There we took on some fuel and then started the long drive up to Yellowknife at around 3:45pm. It’s a drive you can do in one day in a vehicle that can travel at full highway speeds, but once again our tortoise pace meant we’d do it over a two day drive.

Our route was a circuitous one, but aside from taking an airplane, it’s the only way to get there. We didn’t drive for long before we started looking for a camp spot. By 5pm we found another disused gravel pit just off the side of the highway and set up for the night. The spot was near a small body of water called Heart Lake, appropriately named because of its shape.

The intersection at Enterprise where one turns left for Alberta, or right to further into the NWT.

Sometimes the most interesting scenery are the clouds.

Our camp location near Heart Lake.

Arriving near evening, we decided to leave taking photos of the camp until morning. No bugs at that time of day.

We found a level spot alongside a gravel pile over in the corner of the clearing.

Different directions yielded different combinations of autumn colour.

Despite the highway being only 30 metres behind the truck, we had no noise during the night.

After a peaceful night we got underway the next morning hoping to see some of the natural wonders that are written about in the tourist literature. The first of which was about an hours drive down the main highway. Unfortunately, it was not unexpected to see our hopes dashed.

The sign out on the highway.

What we saw after driving 8 kilometres.

Two of the best natural features were large waterfalls, around which Territorial Parks had been established. But because of the seasonal park closures throughout NWT, we couldn’t see any of them. What added insult to injury was that none of them had closed signs on the main highway billboards. So we had to drive up the side roads toward the falls, some as much as eight kilometres before we got to a locked gate. It was disappointing to be sure, but moreover, it was inconsiderate and even disrespectful to the visitors by the NWT Parks and Tourism ministries.

We had a well paved road most of the way to Yellowknife, but there were some rough sections that really needed repaving.

A half hour further down the road found us at the junction where we could either drive straight through and head west over to British Columbia, or turn right and head to Fort Providence, several First Nation communities and eventually, at the end of the road, Yellowknife. We made the turn and carried on to see Fort Providence before heading to Yellowknife.

As we got close to Fort Providence we started to see more day use areas on the side of the river. So we pulled into one for a look see.

These areas were all deserted which was surprising considering the amazing sunshine and warm temperatures.

There wasn't a real beach or anything here, but a trail could be used to launch a kayak or paddle board.

The size of the MacKenzie River is really overwhelming. Not surprising as it drains one fifth of the land area of Canada.

Standing on the edge of the MacKenzie River.

We saw this bird flying in the distance, but couldn't make out what it was until it got closer.

Once it got overhead there was no mistaking a mature bald headed eagle.

While there it gave us a little acrobatic show.

The area was well appointed with a dinner shelter and playground.

Information signs about the bison are everywhere.

This gave an explanation of the exclusion zone for the bison which acts as a control to protect one herd from the other.

Our first glimpse of the bridge that crosses the MacKenzie River.

Commercial vehicles must pay a toll to travel on this highway. But it's free for everything else.

The Dec Cho bridge is modern bridge that had to be engineered to withstand the river ice in the winter.

Since there is such little traffic on this highway the bridge is only two lanes with a separate pedestrian and bike lane.

A good view of the river and just how wide it is.

Running off the bridge and right into more autumn splendor.

We surmised that this arch was for reading the permits on the commercial vehicles to ensure they pay the toll.

This is kind of an understated sign when considering how many bison we saw on the roads. We stopped counting at 200.

This pull out at the side of the river explains in detail all about the bridge.

An information billboard about the river.

An impressive plaque about the bridge.

The monument with the bridge in the distant background.

Not far to the first town on the Yellowknife stretch of the highway.

Fort Providence, on The MacKenzie Headwater

Is it coincidental that the first thing you see in a town founded by missionaries is the church?

Located on the bank of the MacKenzie River, very near the source where the river forms from Great Slave Lake, Fort Providence is a small town of a little over 600 people. Founded in 1860 by missionaries it became a more formal town when the Hudson Bay Company moved its nearby trading post into the town with the mission. Most of the inhabitants are indigenous.

We came upon Fort Providence soon after we made the turn to head towards Yellowknife.

A church that's been here for a very long time...well, at least the church missionaries have been here since 1860.

We drove straight on to the the lookout by the MacKenzie River.

The river splits around a sizeable island in the middle just opposite the town.

The dust coated on the bike cover is almost the same colour as the truck.

The MacKenzie River varies in width from 1 to 2 kilometres, and has numerous islands in the middle all along its 1738 kilometre length.

At this time of the year there isn't a lot of activity on the river.

There was a small boat landing on the river's edge, with fewer than a dozen boats in attendance.

This monument commemorates the arrival of the Oblates in 1858 and the Grey Nuns in 1867.

These religious faithful were the ones to found the town in 1860.

This path led to a memorial to those children who died attending the residential school near this location.

The memorial is well tended and contains impressive granite engraving of all the suspected children buried in the neighbouring field.

The shoes placed at the foot of the monument represents the lost children.

The story and quantity of names is appalling.

One of the biggest problems in the north is the proliferation of giant, bird sized mosquitoes.

The boat landing area has a boat launch and concrete jetty where visiting boats can tie up.

The Deh Cho (big river) medical centre serves the town well.

We took a drive around the town on the very wide streets, and enjoyed the autumn colour.

There was a large playground here and a school nearby.

Most of the homes were "cookie cutter" duplications of a standard design. Simple, but effective.

Back on the highway after our Fort Providence visit, and heading to Yellowknife.

The Long Drive To Yellowknife

The newly visible rock alongside the desolate highway. If you want peaceful driving, come to the far north.

Once back on the road for a while we started to see small changes to the topography, with more rock present alongside the road. Up to now, visible rock has been scarce, aside from that which we saw at the river falls.

The settlements were spread quite a distance apart, and there was nothing between them except the wilderness and the odd band of munching bison alongside the road. We passed other vehicles only on an occasional basis, and most of them were either freight semi-trucks or heavy work vehicles.

On the way to Yellowknife, high up on the north arm of Great Slave Lake, we passed the native settlements of Edzo and Behchoko. We didn’t bother to stop, as we wanted to get to Yellowknife early enough to scope it out.

The highways are mostly long and straight.

A lot of the landscape is low and scrubby, but with some colour.

Bison is easy to spot this time of the year as their dark colour stands out against the autumn yellow.

A small family group resting in the sunshine.

Bison information signs are everywhere.

Colourful ground and skies, lovely to look at.

Rolling into a territorial park that's still open, mostly because it's small and right beside the road.

This is the north arm of Great Slave Lake.

A panorama of the lakeshore, with blue on blue colouring.

This is as close as we got to going into the lake.

An info sign about the north arm of the lake and the local indigenous people.

More bison knowledge.

Coming up on the bridge crossing the Frank Channel.

The first look at the bridge is that it's poorly maintained.

A closer look makes one start to worry a bit about its weight capacity. Everything is rusted up to the 8' height.

The Frank Channel that connects the North Arm to Mirian and Russell Lakes.

Looks like we'll make it all the way across. Yeah!

The landscape starts to show a lot more wetlands.

Ponds and lakes are everywhere up here.

The landscape also starts to offer up a lot more in the way of rock features.

Yellowknife, Capital of the Northwest Territories

The welcome sign seemed to be at odds with how we felt we were greeted.

Sporting a population of roughly 20,000 ethnically diverse individuals, Yellowknife is the only city in the Northwest Territories. Located on the north side of Great Slave Lake, it was founded in 1934 after gold was discovered in the area. The city was designated the capital of NWT in 1967 and gold mining began to wane. The city then shifted its focus to more bureaucratic purposes, but in the early 1990s diamond exploration and mining was established and the city started to revert back to its resource centric purpose.

We rolled into town in the late afternoon and headed to the visitors centre for some help finding a place to park up, and advice on what things to look at. However the visitor centre had just recently moved from the city hall to a shopping mall nearby, and when we finally found it and went in, the staff were basically useless. They had no literature to give us, didn’t know of any parks open and couldn’t offer any suggestions of private camping in the city we could try. They offered their only suggestion which was a parking lot at a nearby marina, but it was already full of boat trailers and the odd RV. So we had to move on. After driving around the town for an hour, with little seen to convince us to stay longer, we filled up with fuel, pointed the truck west and blew town with a rather dejected feeling.

It seems like every golf club has to have some claim on fame.

As we drove into Yellowknife, the first thing you really see is the airport, and more specifically, the cargo end of the facility.

As you come into Yellowknife, there's the airport on one side of the road, and Range Lake on the other.

As with most airports in the more rural areas, this one also had an antique plane up on display.

The welcome to Yellowknife sign was in kind of a nondescript location.

A fairly large power generation plant existed to supply the city with its needs. We weren't sure if all their power came from here, but we never saw transmission lines anywhere.

Yup, just like other reasonably large cities, Yellowknife has high rise building as well.

Coming into the downtown area we could see that even Yellowknife had an areal bridge between buildings.

We didn't feel the love...

OMG, rush hour in Yellowknife.

It was open, the lights were on, but there was nobody home...as the saying goes.

Only a few hours later and we find ourselves heading back out of town.