Well after almost three lovely weeks at home and around southern ontario I am now back on the road.
As there may be a few of you interested in seeing some off the track locations in Canada I thought I would send out another update. A few of the locations are towns that I have lived in at one time or another during the great Northern Canada mining tour of the late 80's.
London, Ontario to Red Lake, Ontario
Finally got organised and packed to leave London and fly around the top of Lake Superior to Red Lake, Ontario. People in Red Lake are always friendly and I stayed in one of the top hotels in town named, strangely enough, The Red Lake Hotel with the lovely downstairs lounge called the Snake Pit. Red Lake is a great place in the summer time and has a few claims to fame (besides Drunken Duncan). Red Lake is apparently the geographic centre of Canada so a logical place to stop on the way to Yellowknife.
Red Lakes other claim to fame is that it was once the busiest airport in Canada in 1937/38 with over 100 plane landings on the bay per day. It is still one of the major float plane capitals of Canada with the largest collection of Norsemans still flying. Really amazing to watch them fly off the bay for the centre of town. Check out the photo of planes on the dock ready to go.
Red Lake, Ontario to Yellowknife, NWT
The next day I was off across northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan to Yellowknife. Flying over such resort towns as South Indian Lake, Puktawagan and Uranium City before finally arriving in Yellowknife approximately 7 hours later.
A lot of things have changed since I has last in Yellowknife in 1992. The only constant was the Gold Range Hotel aka Strange Range where some things will just never change. Pretty well everyone I knew who lived in Yellowknife at one time have now moved on the points unknown. All the girls I talked to said they were only nine when I was there so maybe they didn't remember me. But the town seems to be boomig with the diamond operations with gold pretty much dying off.
Some more float planes in Yellowknife but the boat houses in Back Bay are always interesting. See the attached pic. A bit of alternative living which gets around the property tax regime.
Yellowknife, NWT to Whitehorse Yukon
Took off from Yellowknife Saturday morning flying across the edge of Great Slave Lake then over the Mackenzie river (1800 km to arctic coast), over Nahanni wilderness area and the Mackenzie mountains on the Yukon border.
Spent the afternoon checking out Whitehorse and checked in the 98 Hotel for the night.
Whitehorse, Yukon to Dawson, Yukon
The weather was clear and sunny for departure from Whitehorse so I decided to fly up along the Klondike Highway and low along the Yukon River to Dawson. The fall colours along the river valley were great. For those of you who don't know, Dawson is a fantastic historic gold mining town. The town is pretty quiet this time of year but I managed to find some of the locals.
I spent the next few days in Dawson biking around which was great.
Now its time to get down to Vancouver, as I decided I wasn't game to fly into the US in Alaska on Sept 11 due to the hassle factor so I'll head directly south along the Rockies through British Columbia and Vancouver.
JB
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