Mackenzie River ferry crossing
We arrived at Inuvik today shortly after lunch. The afternoon has been spent getting set up in our campsite, and visiting a few stores in town. The weather does not look great.
We were close to the last vehicle to get across the Peel River ferry last night. This morning the ferry is closed, and we do not know when it will reopen, so don’t know how long we will be in Inuvik. We checked out a flight to Tuktoyaktuk, and could have gone today, but it was on too short notice. The weather forecast is very poor, and lots of rain is forecast. We’ll see tomorrow if we can get there or not.
We crossed the Mackenzie River just about 11:00 this morning. The ferry also made a stop in Tsiigèhnjik (Arctic Red River) where it let a couple of trucks off. One made a quick stop, and then got back on the ferry to continue on to Inuvik. There was also a man there from England, a former biology teacher, now teaching English as a second language (just back from China) who had ridden his bicycle from Alaska. He desperately wanted to see bears. We weren’t quite sure why Europeans are so fascinated by them. We would have been quite happy not to have had the encounter with one last night, though actually it is a good thing it happened, or we’d be stuck on the other side of the ferry. There definitely is no place I’d want to camp there, but several nice sites on this side of the river.