After Yellowknife, we drove to the Saamba Deh Falls Territorial Park and spent two days. It is known as Trout River Falls in English.
We walked up to Coral Falls, which is named for all of the fossilized coral to be found in the limestone riverbed. Stone exposed by the river as it eroded its way through the landscape. The limestone is the ancient floor of a Devonian Period sea that once covered this part of the earth.
The river was very low, but even with low water, the power of the falls could be felt as the water rushed down over one 30 foot precipice.
Olive and I walked down about 3/4 mile to the “fishing hole” below a series of falls and we caught about 16-20 Northern Pike in the span of about an hour. I cleaned three of them and we ate them for dinner with rice.
The fire haze was horrible at Saamba Deh, a fire just Southeast of the campground and a Southeast wind brought the smoke in heavily to the campsite.
We were happy to move on to the Blackstone River Territorial Park, which is about 200 Kilometers from Saamba Deh. The campground is at the confluence where the Blackstone River runs into the Liard River. It is located in an old growth pine forest and the area abounds with Grouse, Lynx, Bison and even Grizzly Bear.
On our second day there, we had 3 Bison swim across the Liard River and wander through the campground.
Olive found a covey of about 30 grouse living in the heavy brush between our campsite and the Liard River, so we spent the afternoon watching the boy grouse strutting around to show off for the girl grouse, who didn’t seem all too impressed by their would-be suitors.
Then there were the Gray Jays. Also known as “Whiskey Jacks” or “Camp Robbers.” You can see them in the photo, checking to see if we might feed them as soon as we moved into our campsite.
They left us alone after they realized we were not going to be messy with, or give them any of our food. We keep a clean campsite and never feed wild animals, especially in Grizzly country. They might have gotten a few crumbs here or there.
All of the Territorial Park campgrounds in the Northwest Territories are well maintained and a very good deal for the cost. They have shower facilities, drinking water and are quite clean.
The fire haze at Blackstone was not as bad as it was at Saamba Deh, but it did keep us from seeing the Nahanni Butte across the Liard River from our campsite. The Nahanni National Park Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Nahanni Butte should have been a sight to behold from our campsite.
Unfortunately for us, the fire haze made it difficult to see across to the far shore of the Liard River at times. A video of our “Not View” will be posted on our YouTube channel.
We pretty much had the campground to ourselves during our stay, but then we moved on. It was time to start heading west toward Yukon. And to do that, we had to cut down through British Columbia.
We left the NWT, drove down into BC and eventually connected with the Alaska Highway, just about 20 miles from Fort Nelson, BC.
At first, BC didn’t look too different from the NWT, but as we drove West, the forests began to open up and change from more evergreen to more aspen and birch. Then the rolling hills became the Northern Rocky Mountains.
It was breathtaking. I knew of the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, but I was not as well versed in the Northern Rockies of British Columbia, it was spectacular.
Summit Lake, Stone Mountain, Muncho Lake were particularly beautiful areas. We had hoped to camp at Muncho Lake, but after being spoiled by the solitude (and decided lack of needing reservations at NWT campgrounds) we found all the BC provincial campgrounds full.
It was strange to have traffic and so many other people around. A lot of small pullouts that used to be used for boondocking (camping for free in undesignated areas) were now posted “No Camping.”
We finally found a tent site at a private campground in Fort Liard. It wasn’t great, but it was fine for a night and we had the tent camping area to ourselves, because everyone else left after a black bear walked through the campsites a few hours before our arrival.
The owners told us about the bear. We asked if it bothered anyone and they told us that it had just walked through, so we decided to stay. It immediately became clear why the bear liked the campsites; there were raspberries everywhere. We didn’t see or hear anything from the bear while we stayed there.
We got up fairly early and headed from Fort Liard, BC to Watson Lake, Yukon this morning (07/20/2023). We saw herds of Bison and three black bears on our drive. The wildlife is amazing.
In Watson Lake, we visited the world famous Signpost Forest, which was started by a homesick US Soldier in 1943 who was helping to build the Alaska Highway, and has now grown to over 90,000 signs. It is cool to walk around and see all the creative ways people commemorate their travels through the area.
We posted our own Umingmaq-Magolan family sign! They encourage you to do so, but for liability reasons, they stopped letting people use their ladders (there are some really prime sign spots at the top of many posts in the forest).
Not one to be cowed by a small problem, I borrowed a ladder from the Ferris Wheel operators at the carnival that was just getting started in Watson Lake and got our sign mounted in a nice prime spot at the top of a post facing the Alaska Highway!
Since the carnival guys hooked me up with the ladder, we bought some ride tickets to pay back the favor. Olive and Petra got to enjoy a few carnival rides since they were lamenting the fact that they were missing all the County Fairs back home in Wisconsin.
We are now camped at the Watson Lake Government Campground just outside of town and about 150 yards from the lake itself. We were able to swim and enjoy some time at the lake today. I’m hoping to catch some Grayling by fly rod from the canoe tomorrow morning.
We are staying here for the 20th and 21st of July, then we’ll keep heading West Northwest toward Dawson City and the Dempster Highway.
We’ve gotten some requests to update everyone every day, so we will start doing that again, on the road trip to Tuk. We’re glad folks still want updates even though we’re not canoeing daily.
I’ll be posting some more video shorts on our YouTube Channel.
Thanks for reading.
~Umingmaq
