Yellowknife continued.
The name of the city is not taken from a native chief as I had thought. The yellow knife is based on a copper powder knife used in the mining industry. It was important for the dynamite suppliers to use a copper knife because opening the powder cases with a steel knife could cause a spark.

We tried fishing in the Yellowknife river yesterday. This was supposed to be a great spot for jackfish (pike). It turned out not to be so for us, but we had a great time, with our bug suits to make sure the mosquitoes also did not bite! You will notice that some of our pictures are a bit hazy. There is a huge forest fire in Saskatchewan and the smoke is drifting northwest all the way up here. Last night is smelled as if someone was having a small camping fire nearby, though that is unlikely because the fire hazard here is marked as ‘extreme’. Even the sun late yesterday was red.

Tomorrow, Jun 28, we start our drive toward Whitehorse, but it will take many days and there are two days of just gravel roads. It will be a while until the next internet connection.

Here are two sets of pictures - and we should now be up to date.

08 NWT

09 Yellowknife

June 22. We crossed the 60th parallel as we entered Northwest Territories.
Two beautiful falls on the Hay River. We are camped by the Louise Falls – and met ‘Bulldogs’. They are flies as big as - and some bigger than - horse flies, and they swarm like bees.

June 23. Met a man from Alberta this morning who said he had just arrived but was going home. He had been delayed and now we are just at the beginning of the worst of the bug season. The mosquitoes and black flies are here and with the bulldogs we had to use netting gear. Then we saw the Mackenzie river! Wide, fast-flowing and beautiful. The bridge will be finished in 18 months so the ferry took us across in about 10 minutes.
And – just beside the highway as we left the ferry, there were two groups of male Wood Bison. This is the edge of their sanctuary and they apparently thrive in this environment. There are 100s of them in the park and the males weigh up to 1000kg; bigger than their prairie cousins.
We are still 320 km from Yellowknife and decided to camp at Fort Providence here by the river. Though our campground is beside the river, sadly there is no way to get down the 12 metre high/steep embankment to fish. We did get our licenses (free for those over 65).

June 24. The drive to Yellowknife took 5 almost hours; the road is less than perfect so we held speed to about 75-80 km/h max. About half the drive went through the Wood Bison Sanctuary and we have pictures of many families. The bulls are by themselves now and herds with calves and mothers also grazed and rested by the highway. We didn’t quite dare to stop because they can be aggressive and can reach 40-50 km/h in no time. Such dents would be hard to explain to the insurance company.

June 25-28 in Yellowknife. The city sits on the North Arm of Great Slave Lake. Here the rock formations suddenly changed to Ontario-like granite and the precambrian shield reaches up here too. The city has about 20,000 people (1/2 native), and 42,000 live in the Territories which has 11 official languages! NWT is the third largest producer of diamonds in the world (after Botswana and Russia), and the three mines have done great things for the local economy. The “Government Certified Canadian Diamond” is 100% mined, cut and polished in the Northwest Territories. Smart move!

The car has now travelled 6200 km from home and an oil change check was due. The rest of our first day went to general sightseeing and with Kyle. We found him courtesy of the info centre and he showed me how to get rid of the error messages that I have had on this blog. You are (I sincerely hope) now going to get words, map and pictures together. We still have 3 nights in YK as they call it here.


Here is the updated map.


View Cross Canada in a larger map

Jun 17 & 18. Fort McMurray where we stayed overnight in a hotel. Arrived after lunch and toured the Oil Sands Discovery Centre to learn about equipment and processes. The oil sands are literally that – very fine grains of sand (hydrophilic = absorb water) coated with a micro layer of water and one of oil. By adding hot water and stirring, the bitumen separates and can be removed. Two barrels of hot water to make one barrel of oil; 90% of the water is recycled. The sand that remains is incredibly fine and is used in the tailing pond reclamation process. Interestingly, Suncor announced when we were there that no new tailing ponds will be built and the current number will be reduced. We saw their facility on a bus tour the following day, and I hope we can post some pictures for you to see as you read this. The two days were extremely interesting and well worth the long drive.
Correction to the last posting – Fort McMurray is at 56.5 deg. latitude. We shall be much further north when we reach Yellowknife; the border between Alberta and NWT is at latitude 60.

Jun 19. We left our campground in Plamondon and drove to Joussard at the west end of Lesser Slave Lake, which is only 78 km long. Terry and Debbie who manages the Lakeshore Campground are super friendly. The following morning was Father’s day and we were invited to a great local community breakfast. Then on a fishing trip and caught 4 walleye. Anne-Grethe caught the first one and our two fishing partners donated the other three. The weather is fantastic and we chose to stay an extra day and relax.
I mounted a big sheet of plywood as an extra stone guard at the front of the trailer and Terry gave me some silver paint, insisting that I paint it to match the trailer!

June 21. 470 km north to High Level. We are within 200 km of Northwest Territories and have decided to visit Hay River and then on to Yellowknife. We got our fishing licenses for NWT today so we hope to try Great Slave Lake for a few days.

Jun15
Driving along highway 16 west of Saskatoon was a real eye-opener. Our GPS (which we named “Lorna” after a dear friend whose voice is similar) showed us to be 550 metres high on the plain. It felt like we were on top of the world with gently rolling landscape. Beside us we saw the Saskatchewan River valley, wide and beautiful with well cared for farms on the slopes to the river. There were no sharp edges to the land anywhere and we found it to be welcoming. Of interest to bird-lovers, we saw several magpies (‘skjære’ in Norwegian) which we had never before seen in Canada – at least east of Manitoba.

Battleford, about an hour west, is full of history. It was the capital of the Northwest Territories and thus Fort Battleford was the centre of activity for the Northwest Mounted Police (before they became RCMP). Large portions of the NWT were transferred to Saskatchewan when it joined Canada in 1905. Our treaty history with the local Cree Indians leaves much for us to be ashamed of.

June 16
Last night we stopped in Vermillion Alberta, about 60 km west of the border. Today we drove north through a beautiful landscape as we climbed still higher. The farms were large and well-to-do. Three hours to Plamondon, by a large lake called Lac la Biche and even the owner of the campground here is French. The trailer will stay for three nights. We shall not, because tomorrow night we drive the car to Fort McMurray (250 km straight north), centre of the oil sands projects. We have booked one night at a hotel and a tour on Friday. You don’t have to be a supporter of the oil sands to be fascinated by the scope of the place. Just imagine – it has greater oil reserves than any place on earth, except for the Saudi fields. I am skeptical about the dirty recovery process, but compared to the disaster in the Mexican Gulf - - ? More on our visit later.

Jun 17
Fort McMurray is a remarkable, modern, and friendly place. It is situated at the confluence of Clearwater and Athabasca Rivers, flowing north. We are at 58 degrees latitude and the evening sun lasts longer than at home. The drive north this morning was through rolling and some flat forest of mostly black spruce and aspen through 250 km. We saw the Oil Sands discovery Centre and tomorrow will tour one of the Suncor sites.

07 SK and AB

Updated map


Riding Mountain National Park is near the western side of Manitoba - a. beautiful National Park and we were surprised at the height of the terrain (750m / 2400 ft) so far south in the province. We spent a couple of days to walk a bit and see some wildlife including black bear, lynx, moose along the road and bison on a fenced range. We were told that Bison and Buffalo differ in the number of ribs they have and that Buffalo existed only on Europe and Asia. What we have here in North America is Bison. This needs to be checked out.

June 14th we drove from the National Park to Saskatoon – about 580km. Highway 16, the “Yellowhead”, runs north of the really flat part of the prairies. We were amazed that we could drive almost an hour with turning the steering wheel and yet go up and down through small valleys and over hills. Quite beautiful country. The large amount of rain in May and early June has left its mark. Every field has small and larger ‘lakes’ (up to 7 feet deep) and huge tracts of land are still to be seeded. Farmers say that if they cannot plant seeds by the end of next week (Jun 23) they will have to return seeds and fertilizer to their distributors! This may be a major disaster for these farmers.

05 ON west to Portage MB

06 Riding Mountain MB