The Cambell Part II

Woke up this morning nice and toasty after 10 hours of very good sleep. Its always tough to get out of the tent when its still dark and you are actually warm in your sleeping bag! But get up we did, around 6:00. I cooked some grub while Pete rearranged the truck in an attempt to better accomodate my 6'4 frame in the front seats. We got things squared away and after about 20 minutes of getting the Jeep up the rest of the hill we'd come down yesterday we were on our way. Again another gorgeous day after the fog lifted. The road was great and we got some good shots of it for all to see. The jerry cans came in handy again as we had to top up an hour or two down the road.

 

  

On we went and took the turnoff to Ross River where we filled up all the tanks and headed to the start of the Canol Road. After hearing so much about this road we really wanted to head down it, but learned that all the old equipment was near the NWT boarder, quite a distance. We crossed the Pelly River anyways and drove a couple hundred metres until it turned into nothing but snowmobile track, passable but extremely slow. Slightly disappointed, but knowing that we needed to make some distance on our ultimate goal, we turned around and got back on the Cambell.

 

We next arrived at Faro where we drove around looking for a lunch spot. Its a very odd town, somewhere between a ghost town and a thriving small community. Its there because of the zinc mine, but that has been closed since '98. Houses and appartment blocks are boarded up and driveways are unplowed, yet the parks and facilities are quite impressive, though mostly closed. We did manage to find an open restaurant after several false tries, and had a decent lunch. Afterwards we took a drive up to the minesite, which, as we found out, is still employing people to do water treatment and other environmental work; didn't sound like it would be reopening. I asked the security guard if they had any P&H shovels but she just gave me a blank stare... Apparently not!

After the very uninformative security guard turned us away from the gate we headed back to town to fill up and carry on. Having not seen a gas pump, we enquired. at the hardware store and received a toothless chuckle in response, "you have to go to Ross River for that!" Its only about a 100 km round trip!

We figured we had more than enough fuel so we carried on. The rest of the Cambell was mostly two lanes and paved, quite civilized really! We were lucky enough to see a linx cross the road and pause long enough for a good look, beautiful creature.
We fueled up at Carmacks and are now well on our way to Dawson City where we hope to find a motel and a shower (going on 3 days now...) Who knows what we'll find though, may have to camp again! We've been getting intermittent signals so have enjoyed reading everyones comments on the blog and on the forum.
Well my thumbs are killing me from typing on this Blackberry so I'm signing off, till next time...
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