On a hot morning in July, 2022, we climbed into Griego and headed west. In this phase of our journey we would complete the northern portion of the Pan-American highway. We had three goals – dip our toes in the Arctic Ocean and explore Northern Canada and Alaska. When doing the Pan-American highway, it is a requirement to dip your toes in the Arctic Ocean, and again in the ocean at Tierra del Fuego off the tip of South America. As we are Canadian, we are doing the Canadian version of the trip which has us dip our toes in the Arctic Ocean in Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada. Americans would dip their toes in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
First we have a whole lot of driving west – around 4500 kilometers. There is plenty to see in that 4500 km but, since summer is limited in the north, we can’t afford to spend too much time getting to the Yukon border. For our sanity, we do have to balance driving for hours on end with some downtime, so we will make some short stops along the way.
July 3, 2022 – Sunny and 22C – Fairbank Provincial Park
After our first 100 km, we stopped for lunch at a rest stop and came upon our first problem of the trip – we had misplaced the keys to Seven. After some searching, we discovered the keys sitting on the rear bumper of the truck. I had locked the camper door, and placed the keys there while I secured the camper steps, and left the keys there when we drove off. We managed to drive for 100 km without losing them off the back bumper. Incredible luck!!
After driving for many hours we arrived at our first camp spot in Fairbank provincial park, Ontario. Here we discovered the second fail of the day. We had placed the kitchen garbage from our house into the truck and then forgotten to drop it into the garbage cans at the bottom of our driveway. Now we know what that smell was.
July 4, 2022 – Cloudy, 20C – Lake Superior Provincial Park
On day two we drove to Lake Superior Provincial where we had our first scheduled break. With a couple of days I did a full day hike along the coast of Lake Superior and we spent time reading on the beach.
July 5, 2022 – Raining, 19C – Old Woman River
July 6, 2022 – Cloudy, 20C – Coastal Trail Lake Superior Provincial Park
