Van Life Canada- 1000 Mile Dirt Road to the Arctic Ocean [S7-E45]

551 miles! Eagle plane unfortunately does not have a tow truck anymore. Is there occasionally patrol cars around? There's no one! Let's play by ear! Would we make it to there? Look at this view! The top of the world highway continues, and we're still on top of the world! Oh my god! There's snow! I think the kids are hysterical that there's snow! Can you imagine how much snow there is in the winter, when you look how deep that is compared to Trudy? And this whole thing would be completely covered, that's why it's only open in the summer. It's really hard! But there's a lot, actually it looks like it's just going to landslide on me! Oh i don't think it's good for sledging! You can't sledge! Look at the bottom! You're trying to kill your kids! And we know there's no more cars coming because the border's closed! What do you reckon? Not bad at all! Wowzers! You can hear the water! Oh i'm loving this! Absolutely fantastic drive today! Top of the world highway! I would definitely do it! The Alaskan birds have headed over to the Yukon, because the mosquitoes here are savage! I'm so itchy! Can i just show my snow graffiti? So whilst the kids are having fun, Marianne was doing snow graffiti! Look at this road! You can see it's going on for miles, and it goes all the way down there, off into the distance. There's still bits of snow up on the side of the hill! This is incredible! I've loved driving today, it's been fantastic! So they just radioed to say something was in the road, is something falling off your van? An aerial? Our aerial is still there! It's the handle from our waste pipe, the one we cable tied on this morning, it's gone! The good news is it's open! Oh yeah bring it! Oh thank god you were driving behind us! Don't worry, if you can grab it that's wonderful, and we'll see if we can get them to like glue it back on or something. She's getting it! The good thing is the drain's open, so it's not going to fill up and then we can't empty it, but it's going to be open forever more. We'll have to put a bucket under it! It's all going on! Okay we're driving back! Marianne's having a quick wee, so we'll have to park behind us! Thanks for me handle! That's all right, you wait till you see it, it's pretty manky! I think you left something behind! Oh that's all right! Yeah that's all right, I don't know how it worked. Yeah but we cable tied it up in two places this morning. Thank you! Pleasure! Tom Tom is .... Oh bump! Bump bump! There's a big bump! Slow down! There's a big bump! Oh Dawson City! Dawson City! Look it's right there! So the Tom Tom is saying 2.8 miles to the ferry to Dawson City, we have no idea what time the ferry stops. It is 8.44 in the evening, so it's pretty late, but the view down there is spectacular! Okay we are just coming down to the bottom of the road, look at the size of that river! That is massive! That is the Yukon River, and yeah we need to try and get a ferry, and hopefully it's still running! Wow that's pretty impressive isn't it? Lightly impressive! Okay so we've arrived down at the ferry, so there's a car, get the ferries over there, there's a car getting on it, I think, I don't know, if not I guess we're spending the night here, but we'll give it a little bit of time. So here you go, check this out, this is the road that goes on the ferry, loading and loading is at your own risk, and Dawson City is on the other side of the river here, the Yukon River, but I'm pretty sure that the ferry is still running, because I can see a car and movement on the ferry. So I think we're all good, I think we're good! So we've just arrived down at the stop line, the ferry has come from over there, and it's literally got really pushed down by the currents. Chris is filming it outside there with the mosquitoes, and here is the ferry coming back. Holy shmoly! It is working hard! Okay the ferry has arrived, the cars have just been offloaded, and then we're on the ferry. Wow look at the lady with the bicycle, she's got two like husky dogs that are pulling her. That's amazing, that will keep her going. We're on! We're not yet! Hi! How are you doing? To the right! This is crazy crazy fast this river! So we were just chatting to the gentleman on the ferry, and he says that it runs 24 hours a day, and it's not as fast as it normally is. Okay we're off! I'm just going to pull in and just check the damage a minute. Oh did you scrape? It's the exits this side, just so you know. So apparently Sam and Andy just scraped the front coming off, but well yeah they're a little bit longer than us. We're 19 foot, I'm going to pull over there, we're 19 foot and they're 20. That side of the road, like you're going back to England! Okay they just said on the radio that it's all good, just a minor damage. So I think it's where this camper van is over there on the right. Okay Dawson City is looking pretty nice, it's old school look! This is looking like a lovely city, it's not really my definition of a city, but it looks like a lovely town. Yeah absolutely, looks really good. So after a long driving day, what a day! It's half past nine, we've parked up in Dawson City, we found this little car park right in the centre of the city, that we're going to park up. There's loads of other RVs and overland vehicles here, but the the vans are looking a little bit grubby today after that drive. You picked up a bit of mud there Andy, and a bit of our van, yeah thanks for that! And you scraped a bit of the back on the coming off the ferry, it was a bit low wasn't it? But yeah all is good, right we'll see you tomorrow. So here you go, this one says Northwest Territories Visitor Centre, Dempster Highway and Western Arctic Information. How exciting! So in this centre, they've got lots of different information about the whole area, this is the Northern Territories here. So here's a question, answer! How many gas stations are there? Are there any gas stations on the way? Where are you from? England, where the gas stations are five minutes apart? Yes, these are five hours apart, five hours! I love that! Because the pandemic is over, and I'm sending everybody to Tuktoyaktuk, to the Arctic Ocean. Petrol stations? Yes, okay, Eagle Plains, yes, Fort McPherson, yes, Anubis, yes, Tuktoyaktuk. That's a lot of gas stations on the way! That's a lot of gas stations! That's all the way to the Arctic Ocean, they're spread out, it's only one. What's the distance between those gas stations then? The longest one from the Dempster corner to Eagle Plains is 369 kilometers. Yeah, 222 kilometers. Eagle Plains to Fort McPherson is 200, from McPherson to Anubis is 170, and from Anubis to Tuktoyaktuk is 144. Fantastic! Um the other question is, we overheard you saying to the couple there about 14 inch tyres, yes, is that on the vehicle, or if you're towing a vehicle? If you're towing a trailer. Okay, oh we're in a van, yeah we're in a camper van, and they're in a motorhome. Anything under 14 inch tyres, It's just like, okay, we're in a camper van, and a motorhome, two-wheel drive, would we make it to there? To the top, all the way to the top? You will, if smart cars can make it to the top. Oh okay. If the staple is underneath the paper here, yes, you know that. Oh yes, I love it! Okay, how many miles is it from here right to the top? 457 miles, or 736 kilometers, okay, so right here, and then from Anubis to Tuk Tiyak Tuk is another 90 miles. Tuk Tuk Tiyak Tuk. It's called the Tuk, Tuk, Tuk Toy, Yuck, Tuk, Tuk Toy Yuck Tuk. There you go. Look at him, that's why I married him, he's a genius. I've got it, Tuk Toy Yuck Tuk. Another reason I'm with him. Is there any fuel supply problems because of the fire? No, because in the Arctic, they ship their fuel a year before. I was worried, because by Stewart crossing where it's closed, I was thinking that you can't get the fuel up. Okay, so if you take this booklet here, in Anubis, they have tank farms. Okay, so you know what a tank farm is? Not yet. They have lots of tanks in fields that they store things in. Thank you, that's a tank farm. That's an intelligent reply, well done. That's why I married her. Okay, and I know everybody will ask you this question, if you have a vehicle mechanical problem, how easy is it to get recovered? Our vehicles are from the UK, so obviously we can't get parts in North America, the continent of. Exactly. But I'm sure they're a lot more, they're able to make do with a lot more basic things, so basically we have no excuse to not go up here, do we? You have no excuse not to go there. Okay, I've heard, we've heard it. I haven't finished with my questions yet. Are you coming? I've still got one more question, so I think I heard you saying to the other couple, along the route, is there occasionally patrol cars around, so that if you do break down and you have no signal, there's no one. so if we. Yeah. Okay. Yes, Okay. Yeah, stay inside and someone will see you. Yeah, if you're worried, you never do anything. I'm going to the top. Are you? I am going to the top. With me, or just on your own? You can come if you want. Are you going to make it as well, or are you just going to go? Are we going all the way to the top? Let's play it by ear. So we've always dreamed about driving to the Arctic Circle, and that is exactly what we're going to do. So we have two options, we can either go to the Arctic Circle sign on the Alaskan side, or the Arctic Circle sign on the Canadian side. So on the Alaskan side, we've got the Dalton Highway, it runs 496 miles from Fairbanks all the way to Prudhoe Bay. Or on the Canadian side, there is the Dempster Highway, which is 551 miles, and it runs from just outside Dawson City to, hold on a minute. Can you pronounce this Marianne? It does. Right at the top of the Arctic Sea. We've actually made the decision to go on the Dempster Highway, here on the Canadian side, and the reason is twofold. Firstly, the road up to Prudhoe Bay has lots of big trucks, and we've been told that the chances of getting your windscreen smashed on that road over in Alaska is pretty high. Yeah, we've been told that basically the semis, as they call them, own the road. Yeah, they flick up the stones. The other reason that if we do decide to go all the way up to the Arctic Ocean, Prudhoe Bay, there is an oil field. You can't actually drive yourself to the Arctic Ocean. Yeah, you have to pay for a tour that will collect you, and take a group of you along. So it's not quite as authentic for us. Yeah, but on the Canadian side, you can get to the Arctic Circle sign, and if we decide to go on, we could go all the way to the Arctic Ocean. So I think after that visit this morning, I think we'll definitely go to the Arctic Circle, and then we will see how we feel, and how Trudy's doing, and how the road is. Yeah, we've heard that the road is better maintained, but obviously we'll share that with you as we find it out for ourselves. Yes, and just remember, Trudy cannot get spare parts here in North America. So before we set off tomorrow morning, there's still a few other things that we need to do. We're going to check all our levels to make sure everything's correct. Okay, all the levels are good. Now we have a little leak on the roof hatch that we're going to fix. You can actually see daylight through here. I've got some Gorilla all-purpose sealant is going in there. So we've actually noticed that there's a good job we checked, because on this side look, you can see daylight all the way along here. So what we're going to do is we're going to seal it. We're going to fill that with silicon, it's obviously shifted. Okay, so I've siliconed all the way around here, and we don't have a clamp really, we need to clamp this to weigh it down, to squeeze it all in. So we've come up with a stick and a bag, to put some weight on, and it seems to be working all right. And I'm also going to just seal around here, because there was a bit of water coming through. What we will do, is when we stop back in Vancouver Island, and we're static for a little short amount of time, we'll find an RV repair shop, and we'll get the window completely removed, cleaned off and we'll reseal. But it is just something that happens, the cold, the hot, the cold, the freezing, the really hot 45 degrees, it just degrades the silicon and the sealant. So it's just something we've encountered with these extreme temperatures. Make sure you join us next time, where we embark on the most epic adventure we have ever done. Will we go all the way to the Arctic Circle? Or maybe the Arctic Ocean? Subscribe to make sure you find out! See you next time.