N.W.T. Trip 2005 – back to the 60th parallel

The morning we were to leave Fort Smith and start the homeward stretch of our trip – the sun finally shone!

this scene was taken just a little way out of town…

another Buffalo or Bison…..just because…

another look at one of those Raven nests…this one with at least a couple of youngsters in it…

That’s either mom or dad on the ground….

and back to the Mackenzie Highway, this time headed south.

a stop to take a look at Louise Falls….

and an even closer look…

and back to the 60th parallel….a little different than where we had crossed from B.C.!

This picture shows just part of the visitors center…

Reluctant to leave the Territories just yet, we decided to spent the night at the campground that adjoins the visitor center….

so here is our final ‘territories’ campfire (in fact I think our ‘only’ territories campfire!

This Hermit Thrush had been running around at the edge of the campsite…

I was interested to find this ‘white’ Wild Rose, growing along side a number of normal….

pink Wild Rose….after all Alberta was just a few feet away and Alberta is ‘Wild Rose Country’.

N.W.T. Trip – 2005 – Wood Buffalo Nat. Park

Leaving Hay River, we turned onto Highway 5, traveled past the junction of highway 6 which goes to Fort Resolution (left for another time), towards the entrance of Wood Buffalo National Park, approximately 90 km from Hay River.  This is a huge national park…totalling 44,800 Sq. kilometres, about 1/4 of which are in the N.W.T., with the remainder in Northern Alberta.

Just after entering the park, we found a large rest area and signage regarding sinkholes, of which, there are apparently quite a few in this type of topography…

and here is the sinkhole….

back on the road…and you’ll notice it is now gravel, or actually ‘mud’ as it had been raining again…what else do you expect to see in ‘Wood Buffalo’ National Park…but ‘Wood Buffalo’ and boy did we ever see them…not sure how many times we had to slow to a crawl or even stop as they meandered all over the road.  Notice something else in this picture?  Electrical Pylons!  Yep! You would almost think we were back in civilization.

there was a good crop of young calves here as well.  When we were in Fort Smith and went to the visitors center….the attendant said that “if we were lucky” we might see a Buffalo on the road….we informed her that we had been dodging them the whole way!

and those hydro pylons….well every second or third one of them contained a Raven’s nest…..

there was even a sign about them…

Wood Buffalo National Park contains the nesting site of the world’s only migratory population of Whooping Cranes.  The public isn’t allowed any where near where this actually happens….the following signage best explains…

Hopefully, if you click on this closer shot you will be able to read it (although I’ve noticed that the click on to enlarge doesn’t work as well when you use ‘live writer’

I know I took photos of the general wetlands habitat that was at this location….but they weren’t on the two CD’s and I can’t find them in my computer….I guess if I dug back far enough I could find them…suffice it to say that it was a wetland area, typical of the same sort of habitat used by the Whooping Cranes.

As it was raining at the time, we didn’t take the turn off to the Salt Plains but headed directly to the town of Fort Smith….as it turned out, a good choice as I definitely would not recommend towing anything on the access road to the Salt Plains!

The big attraction, at least for birders, at Fort Smith are the American White Pelicans that nest, by the hundreds, on the Slave River. 

Before searching for Pelicans we headed to Queen Elizabeth Park Campground….a  campground, close to what proved to be a very nice little town and that over looked the Slave River.

Here is the view of the Slave River from the campground….they are hard to see but those are the ‘Rapid’s of the Drowned’ out there…a charming name!

here is a look at the campground…

and there are Pelicans…all those white things are Pelicans…

Pelicans close by…

Pelican’s swimming upstream…

and Pelican’s feeding.  We’ve seen Pelican’s on lakes all over Alberta, we’ve seen them in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and there are even breeding colonies on lakes in the Chilcotin area of British Columbia….Fort Smith is the only location where they are known to breed on a river…and it is a very large, very turbulent river.

I might add that the whole time we were hiking through, not very well marked trails, finding the Pelicans, it continued to rain….so we’ll leave off for now as we’ll be spending another day at Fort Smith….

N.W.T. Trip – 2005 –back to Hay River

The problem with driving to Yellowknife – is you have to drive back from Yellowknife.  There is no nice ‘circle route’ or anything like that.  The morning we were to leave we woke up to rain…so hit the road bright and early…

and here we are…heading out of town…with one final look at that pink ‘pre-Cambrian’ rock… it was such a dismal day that we just didn’t stop….

or at least only briefly when we had to, to allow herds of Bison to cross the highway…

and for a fuel fill up at the large truck stop type gas station at Fort Providence…

then it was back to the ferry…like the ferries we encountered this past summer on the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers, these too have no ‘ramp’ but just run up onto the shoreline….

We made it across before Dave and Dianna, that is our trailer up there in the distance and these are the log skids that the ferry is docked on for the winter…..

Dave and Dianna are over there, on the far shore, in the gloom….

Our goal now was to head east, first to Hay River and then south east,into Wood Buffalo National Park, and ultimately Fort Smith…

The first stop, after getting back onto the Mackenzie Highway, was at Lady Evelyn Falls Territorial Park…it was now lunchtime and past time to stretch our legs…

You’ve probably noticed a recurring theme of this trip – Waterfalls – and in fact the Deh Cho Connection is known as the ‘Waterfall Route’.

and these are Lady Evelyn Falls as seen from the viewpoint.  It was still dull and drizzly, but that didn’t deter us from taking the rather hazardous trail…

this is only just one very small section….

to where we had a ‘water level’ view of the falls…

here is another section of the trail, with Wintergreen growing alongside…in fact the vegetation was very reminiscent of what we have back here on the ‘wet coast’

here is a closer look at one of the Wintergreen flower stalks..

I’ve mentioned before the facilities found in N. W. T. Campgrounds….and there was a campground located at this spot…just had to take some pictures….

Here are the washroom/shower facilities…complete with hanging baskets – real flower – not fake…

a peek inside..

one of the shower stalls….

and back outside…the Day Use building for if the rain or the bugs get the better of you – actually I haven’t mentioned the bugs lately, they hadn’t really been an issue in Yellowknife, and besides, after a while you just sort of get used to them….

We could have stayed here but time was going by and we had more country to cover, so headed back onto the Mackenzie highway, turning off of it at Enterprise, onto ‘The Great Slave Route’

we were now traveling through the area known as the slave lowlands.

that is Dave and Ernie out there, contemplating the ‘flatness’ of the scene…

and finally, by the time we reached the Hay River Territorial Park and Campground, in the late afternoon, the skies had cleared and the sun was once more shining.  This is part of the beach at the campground and that, of course, is Great Slave Lake.

this view would be looking in the other direction…there was a much more developed beach and picnic area over there….

I can’t remember for sure, but I think we must have taken advantage of the amenities this fairly large ‘small town’ had to offer….such as a Laundromat…as I had taken this picture of our wash hung out to dry..

there is April….enjoying the sunshine…and obviously, no bugs…since we had the screen door wide open!

we now had time to sit back and relax for a bit and evaluate how the rigs were doing….apart from this ‘sandblasting’ all seemed fine.

I had time to wander around and find another ‘Lifer’…this Tennessee Warbler….

and Ernie and Dave were thrilled to discover the Hay River Shipyards, and in there, a couple of boats they had both actually worked on when they had worked in North Vancouver.

It may seem strange for there to be shipyards here….but actually the railway comes to Hay River from Alberta, and from here provisions are shipped, usually by barge, to places all along the Mackenzie River, such as Inuvik.  In fact, when we had been in Inuvik, we were told that their years supply of fuel comes up the river, by barge, from Hay River, as soon as the river is navigable so the importance of this little town is immediately obvious.