Yukon: The Dempster Highway, the Arctic, and why you shouldn't drink with Greta.

Armed with a mudmap in my travel book courtesy of Becca, I had been implored - both in person and by annotation on said map - to make the trip to Tombstone at least, and Eagle Plains as well, if for nothing else than to prank her sister and go to the Arctic Circle. As fun and bizarre as Dawson City was, Greta and I were completely amenable to the idea of driving for two days to do this.

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.

Yukon: Dawson City - Diamond Tooth Gertie's

"Oh, Gertie's will still be serving food. It's just over the road. Can't miss it."

The barmaid at Triple J is helpful but conveniently neglects to offer any sort of description of what Gertie's actually is. Perhaps this is deliberate. Dawson has a very, very strange feel to it. A few people had recommended it to me in my travels, "oh you'll like it..." or, "it's the gold mining town, you just have to go" but beyond that, everyone has been pretty scant on details. In our ten minutes driving around looking for something that looked like it would serve food we pass blocks of houses straight out of the 1800s. Two tone pastel paint - often times horrendously matched - sit eerily by hardpacked gravel streets. There's no signs in the modern sense, everything is painted on. Greta sums it up perfectly with an astounded, "it's like the set of a movie."

The town is a timewarp. The only sign of modernity are cars... and even then a lot of them are pretty long in the tooth.

We meander over to Gertie's and are met by a female bouncer who is dressed oddly and wears that universal gruff expression that security loves. There's a ten dollar cover charge but from the foyer we both note that there is something going on inside. Curiosity overpowers my baulking at paying to have the privilege of then buying some food to eat. Upon getting in we are assaulted by too much to take in. There is a burlesque show, indeed, under the proscenium arch is a plump red head in a corset, strangling a cat to "The Saints Go Marching In" in front of four gorgeous girls. It's somewhere between the opening scene of Temple of Doom and the burlesque show in Blazing Saddles.

There are waitresses in period inspired uniform ferrying drinks to tables. Croupiers are similarly attired. Around us are slot machines, antlers and frontier memorabilia. Finger still on the pulse, a murmured, "no one is going to believe us" escapes Greta.

I'm too busy looking at legs to really respond.

This place is just astounding.

Dinner runs us to not much as slices of pizza (which are quarters of pizza) are a dollar fifty. Over the course of four or so hours we both wind up a little ahead on the slots and blackjack so it matters little. The final show for the evening - commencing at midnight - is predominantly rock and roll covers, the only time the illusion of 1898 or whichever year it is meant to be is really broken.

... not that it really bothered me.

Alaska: Chicken and the Top of the World Highway

Leaving Tok there are two ways to the Canadian border. One is to follow the Alcan - the most traveled route - while the other takes a turn to the north on the "Top of the World Highway". It's a gravel road that goes for eighty or so miles, most of them on the US side and broadly speaking, it is a lot like the pointy end of this video:

With Greta's attitude toward things being a mixture of "if I'm bad enough at it the first time, I won't be asked to do it twice" and "well, you didn't die, did you?" it was with some relief (and I won't lie, a great deal of excitement) that I was behind the wheel for the section of road that was most likely to be outrageous fun and/or kill both of us. The road traverses ridgelines and spurs to skirt around ravines of the sort of depth that you don't consider walking away from, should you wind up visiting one.

The last place of note on the American side of the border is a small gold mining town of 39 called Chicken. The site of a minor gold rush contemporary to the Klondike find at the turn of the nineteenth century, the town owes its name to the ptarmigan bird. The locals - at least initially - wanted to call the town Ptarmigan as the bird was plentiful in the region and reasonably delicious. However, the problem that prevented this was that no one could spell it, so instead they settled on Chicken, as it kind of tasted like that. It's clear to me that by extension none of these gents counted the pterodactyl among their favourite dinosaurs.

Upon leaving Chicken we were - stupidly - racing the clock. The border shut at 8pm and we were pushing our luck as far as making it was concerned. Making matters more interesting, the road got a little more hairy as hairpins and sheerer drops were introduced as we passed through 5000 feet above.

Arriving at the border with mere minutes to spare, the Canadian official takes umbridge to the fact that I do not have a work visa while Greta does. I misread this as mock offense but over the course of a few questions become quite aware of his sincere disappointment that I am - at present - not prepared to work in his otherwise fine nation. After a few more questions we have to surrender our BB gun as it exceeds the firepower for such weapons allowed in Canada without a license. I joke that he just wanted to play with it over the campfire that night with his mates after work.

The joke sinks. He hands me a certificate outlining the weapon that I've surrendered and we depart, bound for Dawson. Safe in the knowledge that not much will be coming the other way for the remaining distance - knowing that the border is now closed - I open up a little more on the road and am suitably disgusted and terrified when we meet an RV upon exit of a particularly enjoyable switchback. Fun truly scuppered, we eventually roll down the hill, cross the Yukon River on a ferry that struggles against the current and get into Dawson City; site of the Klondike Gold Rush. The Klondike find spawned possibly the largest gold rush in history and almost certainly the most ridiculous in terms of conditions and remote nature. At any rate, it's now a little after ten which is just in time for most of the town's kitchens to be shut...