Arctic Adventure - Planning Post 1

I can retire from my day job in a little over four years. I’m not quite counting the time down, but I am thinking about it more these days. Like many people who retire, I have plans. And there’s no telling how much time we get to carry out those plans. My plans are fairly specific, and I have a limited window of free time to explore them. 

My wife and I get along just fine, but we like a lot of different things. I’d go so far as to say that she dislikes a bunch of the things that I like. They’re just not her cup of tea. That’s why most plate geeks have never met her. She doesn’t come out to our swap meets, because she’d rather play in her sandbox while I play in mine. The one time she did attend a swap meet was in Ottawa in 2001, not long after we moved here. And since then, she’s had no desire to do another one, especially if it involves driving for a few hours. But it’s all OK. I’m a bit older than her, so I’ll be retiring first; she, three years later.

I have long had an interest in visiting remote places. As a kid, I wanted to see the Northwest Territories and Yukon, and not only to try and find plates. As an adult, I never found the right opportunity. Either I had the time to do it, but no money, or—as is my life now— I could afford it, but my time was earmarked for other things that revolve around work and family. And my time will again revolve around family, after my wife joins me in retirement. But I’ll be kicking up my heels for a little while first.

The yellow triangles are the stops I plan to make in my early planning. Of course, there will be others.

I’ll be buying a new class-B motorhome; that’s the kind that’s built within the footprint of a full-size van. I’ve started shopping around so that I’ll know what to buy when the time comes. It could be a Ram or a Ford Transit. Less likely would be a Mercedes, but mostly because I’d like to avoid a diesel engine. They’re full of sensors and if one craps out halfway to Inuvik, there’s nowhere to get that fixed. With a simpler gasoline engine, repairs and parts ought to be easier to access. So is my understanding.

My ideal ride, realistically speaking.

I must say that driving a Benz-based Storyteller-Overland would be epic. Facebook started throwing fancy RV ads at me over the summer, although it's a bit out of my price range and there are no Canadian dealers that carry the brand.

Not so realistic for me. But super-nice.

Once I’ve got my van, I’ll head west and sleep in it whenever I can, to keep costs down. I have a loose itinerary, but it’s subject to change as I get better ideas:

Sault Ste Marie, ON - Grew up there, and I have family there still. Nice trip down memory lane, plus a great launching pad for the incredible shoreline drive around Lake Superior. I took that route to Thunder Bay once in the late 1990s, but I have very few pictures, and the memory is fuzzy.

Kenora, ON - One of the few places in Ontario I’ve never been, just east of the Manitoba line. I’d like to drive the full length of Highway 17, seeing how I’ve lived right by it for most of my life.

Saskatoon, SK - My great-grandfather is buried there. By all accounts a fine man. He died in 1956. My grandmother attended Nutana Collegiate in the 1930s. I’d also like to visit Borden, where the family lived prior to moving to Saskatoon. I need to find out where in Borden they lived.

James River Bridge, AB - Presuming that Keith Murphy still holds his swap meet each year, I’ll time my trip to be there in 2031.

Jasper, AB - By the time I get there, I’ll have seen Banff already on a family vacation, but won’t have seen the national park there, so why not.

Watson Lake, YT - It’s right along the way to where I’m going, so of course I’ll stop by the signpost forest. They say people are encouraged to leave a sign of their own. I’ll bring one… The question is, will I bring an Ontario sign from my collection?

Whitehorse, YT - I’ll want to stop there for a couple of days to get the van serviced and double-check everything. It’ll be harder to fix things later if they break, and I'll have put thousands of Ks on the van already.

Dawson City, YT - I won’t be up this way again, so I’ll take it slow and check out the museums and tourist traps. I’m not expecting to find plates, but I will try a wrecking yard or two if I have the time, just to get one “from the rough” as opposed to an antique shop.

Wright Pass - The highway crosses this divide as it goes north from Yukon to the Northwest Territories, so it’s unavoidable. But I really want to see the rugged landscape up there in 24-hour daylight.

Inuvik, NT - The last stop along the muddy Dempster Highway. I’ll try to get a bear plate from a wrecking yard, assuming that journeying ALPCA members from down south haven’t cleaned the place out recently. But I'll be moving further north once I'm done there:

Tuktoyaktuk, NT - My ultimate destination. I want to drive to the Arctic Ocean. The landforms change significantly as the road passes the Mackenzie River Delta, and that’s very interesting to me. I particularly want to see the ice dome hills, called pingos.

My commemorative Inuvik-to-Tuk plate, which hands on my display board at home-- A reminder of where I want to go.

If I can get a plate from the rough in Tuktoyaktuk, that would be the icing on the cake, but plates are not my motivation for wanting to take this journey. I’ve spent my life teaching science in Ontario and reading about other places in Canada. I want to explore, and the most remote places have always been the most appealing.

I haven’t thought much about the return leg of my trip, other than trying to stay within Canada and take a different route home with as many unique stops as I can manage. I might detour over to Yellowknife, make a stop in Skagway Alaska, and make my way south to Vancouver Island. I don’t exactly want to dash home, since I’ve been waiting a long time to see these places, and I never wanted to just cheat and fly there. The beauty of the van is that if I get tired of driving, I can just camp anywhere I like for a couple of days before the itch makes me want to hit the road again.

I might get functionally creative with the plates on my van. After I leave Ontario, I’ll be travelling through provinces that require only a rear plate, so it won’t matter to anyone if I take the front plate off. I was thinking about attaching a mint Northwest Territories sample plate on the front end, so that it can get nailed by gravel, coated in mud, and dusted in, well, dust. That way, if I don’t find an “in the rough” NWT plate while on my trip, I’ll have the next best thing. Plus, it’s the closest I’ll get to running a NWT bear plate on my vehicle. Unless maybe I “lose” my “only” rear Ontario plate while plowing up the Dempster Highway. I don’t know what the rules are in NWT as far as registering temporary plates to people from out-of-territory. I’m sure someone has tried that before.

This website isn’t intended to be a travel blog, but there’s no better place for me to start logging my plans and considering what sort of equipment I’ll need to buy. I’ll want at least two full-size spare tires to go with whatever heavy-duty tires I put on the other four rims. I’ll also want a way to carry an extra jerry can of gas. There’s no telling what sort of wireless service might exist up there in four years, but I’ll probably look into that as well. Ideally I’d like to be able to call for help, but it would be cool to send pictures to my wife, and maybe even upload articles to this site.