Tuktoyaktuk
09 July 2018
“Looks like a caribou”
Photos:
I could have headed back today, but it seemed like it would be way more interesting to stick around Tuk for a little while. After all, it isn’t often that I come across a place where so much is different from what I am accustomed to. The first step was to investigate the outhouse at the Point, and not just for the usual reasons. The outhouse itself was worth looking at. They had started with 2 standard blue portapotties, taken off their doors, and then fully enclosed them in a nice wooden building with real insulated doors and external connections for the sewage truck. Years and years of portapottie design on the inside, arctic grade durability on the outside. Neat! Futhermore, this is where all of the local events had been posted on the door, most of them fishing or hunting related. They also had a list of all of the places that were serving food - most of them weren’t real restaurants, but people just serving out of their own kitchens. Maybe in a few years they’ll grow into actual restaurants.
The Germans from Vancouver were heading out that morning, so I saw them off and again thanked them for the chili. They invited me to stop by Vancouver if I ended up down that direction and even went as far as to offer me a shower. After that, I went and talked to their neighbors. This was a family travelling in a toyota tacoma with canoes on top, a dog in the back, and one of those Australian style camping trailers that had a tent on top, storage in the bottom, a water tank, fuel tanks - all on a rugged suspension with an offroad trailer connector. I think I want to build one of those now, they look very nice for camping. Anyway, they were from an island just up the coast from Vancouver and were all prepared for an adventure. He had guided river tours for years all over western Canada and was looking to try something new - canoeing in the Arctic Ocean. They were watching the weather carefully and were thinking about loading up the canoes, parking the truck somehwere in town, and just going out for a couple weeks of paddling and camping along the coast. He wasn’t real sure how much distance they could cover in that time, but he figured they could at least get out far enough to see some whales and wilderness. I really enjoyed talking to them, it isn’t often I run into someone who is so self-reliant that they would even consider doing such an impromptu excursion. After we got away from talking about canoeing, he got out his Backroads Mapbook of British Columbia and pointed out a slew of roads that I should check out on the bike as I made my way south. I’ve gotten them written down…somewhere.
Next I wandered up the point a little bit to a shack nailed together out of random scraps of plywood. I looked inside - there was a small fire burning on the floor, and fish hanging from the rafters. This was someone smoking fish. I was a little nervous about the method of cooking, so I didn’t buy any. (It didn’t help that the guy in the next tent over from mine had food poisoning from something…) But it sure was interesting to see!
Once I got out of camp, my first stop of the day was the visitors center, which also might have been city hall. It was the headquarters of their budding tourism department. They had an arrangement of locally made crafts for sale, stickers stating you made it there, and even little cards for the first motorcycles to make it up the new road. I chatted with the lady, Donna, who was dealing with all of us invaders. They clearly were still working out how to do tourism, but it seemed like they had a good start. Even though it looked like chaos out on the Point, they were keeping a watchful eye on us all - even noting when we came and went. I bought a couple of the “I made it to Tuk!” stickers, signed their book, and kept on going.
I had lost my warm fuzzy hat somewhere around Whitehorse, I’m not really sure where. And now I was in the Arctic, where it was pretty much guaranteed to be cold sooner or later, and being a little bare up top, it is wise to have a warm hat for sleeping in. I decided to take some time and go find a new hat. It seemed easy - the RCMP (the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, aka the Mounties) had a poster in the entry of the visitors center showing off the swag they were selling and that included a warm looking hat. I strapped on my shoes and started walking that way.
Walking through Tuk is a little different than most of the towns I’ve lived in. The streets are dirt, there’s none of the usual storm sewers or stoplights. I’m not even sure there were stop signs. A good portion of the traffic was on ATV’s, and most of the yards had a good collection of what might be junk - or spare parts for a community a long way from a warehouse. Most of the yards also had a snowmobile (snowmachine, if you’re from Alaska), parked in them too, waiting for the short summer to be over. At one of the houses I walked past, the water truck was delivering fresh water. The guy had a hose hooked to an input pipe, and was filling it with water until water came out of a vent pipe on top. Pretty easy, I guess, especially if you can’t have underground pipes.
The RCMP station was the only place in town where there was a cluster of buildings that all matched each other - blue with white roofs, all the same height off the ground. I figured out which one was the front office and asked about a hat. They didn’t have any left, but would be happy to sell me a regular baseball hat for $30 CAD, cash. That wasn’t quite what I was after, so I declined and kept walking.
The next place that seemed like it might probably most definitely be selling a warm fuzzy hat was the Northern Store. Its probably the closest thing to an old time General Store that exists today. They had groceries, a section that was like the convenience store of a gas station (because they also sold gasoline), real furs, flat screen tv’s, coats, gloves, ATV’s, snowmobiles, snowmobile parts, oil - but no warm fuzzy hats. I bought a microwaveable calzone for lunch and kept going.
I circled back around to the visitors center, maybe they could point me somewhere. The pointed me to the craft cases in their front entryway. They had all manner of locally made items, including handmade, knit, warm, hats. They were a little expensive, but it seemed like the best kind of souvenier, and I really wanted to sleep well. So I got one of those.
After solving my warmth problem, I was free to explore a little more. Word was getting around The Point that the local fishermen had brought in their first Beluga whale of the season and were in the process of butchering it. I also wanted to see the sod houses, reconstructions of the houses that had originally been built in this area. I didn’t know how far it was, so I grabbed my camera, hopped on the bike, and started exploring the streets along the shoreline.
The first thing I found, only a couple of blocks away, were the sod houses. They look quite a bit like the sod houses used in the prairie in the US, a heavy wood frame covered in layers of sod for insulation. One of them was complete, the other was lacking sod. They didn’t have any lights in them yet, but the front door provided enough light ot get an idea. There’s a front entryway that leads into one big room that has four lobes, so the entire house is shaped like a plus sign. The ceilings are low (I hit my head twice - on the same beam), and it isn’t incredibly spacious. I bet they are cozy in the winter though.
I got back on the bike and kept putting along. Another couple blocks later I arrived at a place next to a beach where there were half a dozen cars parked with a big boat on a trailer out front, it looked promising. I got off the bike and wandered down around the house a little bit and there it was, three pallets covered in neatly cut beluga meat. There was a small campfire going, a big pot of tea with a stack of cups, and a young gal cutting up fat and throwing it to the crowd of birds that were gathered just off the beach. The people there were welcoming, offered tea, and didn’t mind when I wandered around to take pictures. Apparently the near black stuff is the meat, the white stuff is the fat. The meat is so dark because whales have an extra component in their blood that allows it to absorb more oxygen so they can hold their breath longer than us land dwellers. After a bit they finished with what they were doing and announced that the meat was going to bleed out overnight and they would continue with the next steps tomorrow. They then covered up the meat pallets with blue tarps, weighted the tarps down with rocks, and that was it. I was a little amazed that they could just leave it all on pallets and covered in tarps, you’d think there would be all manner of bugs and other critters that would be interested.
My next curiosity of the day was the DEW line station. As far as I know we’re not all that concerned about the Soviets attacking us by flying over the north pole these days, but from a distance the station looked to be in good shape. I got on the bike and started riding along the coast until I found a road that would take me there. The road I found definitly took me there - right up to the base of the tallest tower. There weren’t any keep out signs or anything that made it look like the government would arrest you for sniffing around. There is a small blue building on stilts right next to the tower and I could hear equipment running and the lights were on in the tower structure. As far as I could tell, its still running. Not sure what they’re looking for these days, maybe its for the weather.
Next, I stopped by one of the not quite abandoned oil facilities on the edge of town. Apparently its for sale, but there aren’t a whole lot of interested buyers. I didn’t want to trespass, so I just went in the front driveway. They had a big buoy looking thing out front that had “SEA GUARD” cast into it. I assume it wasn’t a mine, but maybe some sort of cathodic protection device? I dunno. It sure made a great lawn ornament though.
The last stop of the day was the End of the Road Restaurant, I wasn’t really in the mood to cook and it seemed like an adventure. The food wasn’t amazing, just a rewarmed burger, but it was better than anything else I could come up with at the moment. The thing that made the whole experience though was the two students from Edmonton. They had been up in Tuk for the last two weeks running science classes at some sort of summer camp for the local children. In years past, they had to fly up from Inuvik for that, but with the new road it was a little cheaper. This was their last night, they were taking a bus back to Inuvik in the morning, and then had a flight home the next day. Its always fun talking to someone who is still in college and see what their plans are for the future.
Eventually I made it back to camp. I sat around the fire for a bit, and then headed off to bed. I don’t know what time it was. The funny thing about the Land of the Midnight Sun in the summer is that the sun never sets, it just circles around in the sky. Since it was overcast, the light never changed through the entire course of the day. Midnight looks just like noon, 4pm just like 4am. It really starts to mess with your head for a bit.