The Dempster Highway leaves from outside Dawson and travels right up to the Arctic Ocean (I'm not interested in debating the veracity of calling it an ocean or a sea, if I say Arctic Ocean, everyone knows where I'm talking about so it is useful enough to say, plus if it boils the blood of a few people, then it's just like I'm there with you, right?). The weather is mostly inclement and the road is unsealed. Before long the car looks like it's gone ten rounds with the shit demon out of Dogma. Rather than be concerned about its state of uncleanliness, I'm excited. Now my bedroom as permanent blinds and I can sleep in a little longer...
... and y'know, it may actually get dark before midnight now.
Tombstone National Monument (why it's not a park is beyond me) is pretty. The terrain is broadly similar to that of Denali, ascending through glacier carved valleys we reach a plateau at about 4500 feet where it is mostly flat for long stretches.
Beyond the national monument is about two hundred and fifty kilometers of gravel to Eagle Plains. In instantaneous response to my musing, "I'm surprised we haven't seen any large mammals, this is exactly the habitat for it..." Greta claimed to see a moose. I'm not suggesting that she's not worthy of trust here, but the confluence of the immediacy of the claim and my inability to spot it (albeit while driving) hardly confirm her claim. There was also a very real part of me that didn't want to miss seeing yet another moose; two scampering off the road before I could really get a good look had aided the development of a growing and great frustration. The drive is pretty great though. This is one of those times where the destination - be it the Arctic Circle, Inuvik or anywhere in between - is really just punctuation to the journey. Traversing a swathe of ecosystems controlled by some mixture of elevation, latitude or both is always going to a greater reward than an isolated roadhouse on top of the world.
Eagle Plains is really just an outpost on the edge of the Arctic. There is no real special moment to be had crossing 66'33", it's rolling tundra and cold, even in summer. I suppose we were perhaps a little misguided to think much different, but it's something to lay claim to, I suppose.
Eagle Plains' bar - because that is clearly the most important room of any commercial hospitality establishment - is what I imagine a hunting lodge to resemble; animals here are frozen in time courtesy of some fine taxidermy. Their eyes seem to follow you through the room and it is an altogether ever so slightly unsettling experience. Not that I'd be the only unsettled person in the room, after spying a girl that looked a little like Becca, I inquired if I may ask her a strange question. Fending me off with, "oh, once you've spent some time out here there are no strange qu-"
"Do you have a sister in Homer, Alaska?"
"Whoa! What?! How do you?! You're right, that is a strange question!"
... and that's how we met Kate.
Greta and I continued our beer appreciation to bar close and - with the lure of some Arctic-car-temperature PBR - had Kate for drinking company in the five or six hours after close during which we continued to avidly endorse Canadian brewed products while otherwise talking a large amount of otherwise enjoyable shit.
The following morning we made the decision to drive back to Dawson. Perhaps more appropriately, Greta told me that she'd be driving back, as I was in absolutely no state to do anything much more than sit and wonder where the wheels fell off. I consider myself a reasonable drinker and although my hangovers are beginning to catch up on me, a lot of the time I remain functional the following day. Greta on the otherhand, has a superpower. For the second time in my life while matching her one for one in the evening and keeping my act together then, it was in the following morning where I was exclusively a wasteland (a third was to follow more spectacularly in Vancouver) and she was fucking rosy.
Drink with her at your peril.
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