N.W.T. Trip – 2005 Fort Providence

Next morning we were back on the Mackenzie highway, headed for Fort Providence…

We had left the Liard River behind when we turned off at Checkpoint – the Liard joins the Mackenzie River at Fort Simpson – so are now following the mighty Mackenzie river and you can see how  very flat this country is….

this is another series of those ‘panned’ shots, to give an idea of the size and scope of the country…

This is typical of the many large pull outs and rest areas encountered.  Always spotlessly clean.  If there are washrooms, and most have them, they are always spotless and well stocked…it made us wonder just how far the attendants had to drive to maintain them and how often they must do it because you could drive for an hour or more and never see another vehicle or any sign of civilization….

here I’m standing in the middle of the highway, the pull out is on the left hand side….

this was typical of the many little roadside lakes…many of these had dirt roads leading off to them where, if you weren’t towing something, you could no doubt pull in and set up camp….one of the reasons for our trading in of the trailer this past spring…next time, with the truck camper….we plan to do just that.

a view of the other end of the lake – a perfect spot for tossing in a canoe or kayak….

these survival cabins are found periodically along the highway….stocked with a stove and wood, which you are asked to replace so there is always a supply if needed…

more muskeg as we were nearing our destination…

and here we area at Great Slave Lake…there was a picnic site at this location, called ‘Dory Point’,..

there were Common Merganser here and also black headed gulls, can’t remember if they were Bonaparte or Franklin…I think Bonaparte…

Great Slave Lake is a massive lake…this is just the southernmost tip of it, which is the headwaters of the Mackenzie river…..I wish I’d seen all these places back when I was in school….it would have made geography a little easier to learn….there is nothing like actually being there and seeing for yourself!

to cross the Mackenzie River to get to Fort Providence you have to take this free ferry…..now in the Milepost edition I have, it mentioned that there is supposed to actually be a bridge constructed at this site, due to open in 2010….so I went on line to see what I could find out…and yes indeed….see below…

….this gave me a chance to use my ‘snipping tool’ that I learned about thanks to ‘Wandering Willie’!

took this shot while waiting for the ferry….this is looking westward, that being the Mackenzie river….in the foreground are the skids used to pull the ferry up on when it is out of service for the winter and between the skids and the river are piles of dirt covered snow, this was in early June….I should also note that there were occasional ‘icebergs’ seen floating down the river…

we’re now at the campsite at Fort Providence…unlike all the other campsites we’d been at so far, this one was full….we had to squeeze both units into the last available spot…it wasn’t full of tourists – no the attraction seemed to be fishing for Northern Pike in the river…

this view is looking southward, back towards the spot where we had crossed on the ferry…..

Ernie had been talking to one of the local’s, asking about the fish….and a bit later the fellow came to our trailer with several fillets of Northern Pike and some of the ‘secret recipe’ he used for batter….I have to say that it was the best tasting fish I’ve ever eaten!

and I’ll finish off this entry with a bird….another one of those Eastern Phoebe….there was a screened in gazebo in the picnic area at this campground, and a pair of these birds had a nest on the top of one of the ‘window’ sections….obviously occupied with nestlings as they were busy packing food back and forth….