Yellowknife
June 28-29, 2008
Yellowknife was started about 1935 as a result of a gold rush in the
area, consequently nothing is very old. The town was started on a
peninsula sticking out into a bay of Great Slave Lake, but has since
expanded beyond the peninsula. The old town section is a mixture of
quaint buildings dating from the start, and newer, much more expensive
homes, with a fantastic view.
How would you like to live on this street with a name like this. This
street is in the old town; we didn't learn how it got this name.
Yellowknife is also a base for float planes that fly deeper into the Arctic.
The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife has an
excellent exhibit of First Nations art and culture. We saw a
fascinating video of this moose skin boat being constructed by Dene
indians, who then used it to travel down a river with some pretty
challenging rapids. It was constructed using the same materials and
tools as the tribe has historically used.
The Wildcat Cafe is a famous restaurant in town. It was opened in 1937
and closed in 1951. It was eventually scheduled for demolition, but a
group in town saved it and re-opened it as a summer restaurant in 1979.
The building is a log cabin, with what appears to be buffalo hair used
as chinking to fill the gaps between the logs.
Of course, we had to have dinner there. The food was very good, and the
ambience was interesting. The prices were expensive, but understandable
since all food is trucked in from a long ways south.
After seeing this part of the Northwest Territories, our plan was to
take the Liard Highway into British Columbia to connect with the Alaska
Highway near Fort Nelson. As we traveled north in Alberta we
learned that the Liard Highway was closed due to washouts caused by the
heavy rains earlier in June. We continued north anyway, with the
hope that the washouts would be repaired and the highway re-opened by
the time we got there. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, as we learned
today. So we have to backtrack down the Mackenzie Highway to Grimshaw
and then cut over to Dawson Creek to pick up the Alaska Highway. In
addition to driving over the same roads again, this detour adds 446
miles to our trip. Ouch! The one saving grace is that we can now drive
the part of the Alaska Highway that we didn't drive four years ago.
