There is something sad about turning around. I had reached the end of the line. Inuvik. The Northernmost point you can drive to in Canada. No more road. No further North. Nada. The thing about turning home is that, once you do so, nothing else seems important. You want to be home. Forget all the intervening space. So I set out to visit to my brother Ted and my sister in law Donna on the way back, in Vancouver.   Visiting family is the only way to assuage the need to be home.

The first leg, yesterday, from Inuvik south to Eagle Plains was a struggle . Yes, I had done it before in the dry -- no problem. But now it was raining - regular North Slope freezing rain. The stretch under construction South of the Peel River crossing was just mud. I didn't fall, but that's 'cause I went so slowly, with the bike wandering all over the place. There was a fun moment, after the worst of the mud was over. I stopped to eat something and looking up saw 4 bikes like mine coming up the road, headed North. We had met in Fairbanks in the lobby of the University dorm building at the University of Alaska. They were from Victoria and the Sunshine Coast on Vancouver Island. They told me about their gory bits, I embellished mine, and then we parted ways, each wondering how bad the road ahead really was?   I think I got them. The stuff I had been through was stickier than what they had done.

Today was clear and dry. After a great sleep at the Eagle Plains hotel, I drove straight and hard hoping to get out before the next rains came . But the scenery is too much. I found myself stopping every now and then to take a shot, including a moose posing happily in a freezing stream. I missed the two foxes hanging out in the middle of the road, who sauntered off as soon as I pulled the camera.

On arriving at the end of the Highway I stopped by a couple taking pictures of the Dempster sign. They were from Milwaukee, riding two - up, headed for the Arctic Circle, but surprisingly ignorant of where to stay or what to see. They asked that leading question -- should they go to the Circle via the Dempster, or the Dalton? Ahhh... Having done both in the last month, I seized my moment and treated them to a 20 minute treatise on the Dempster Highway, complete with mileage chart and travelogue booklet and personal experiences. I loved doing it. I think they appreciated it -- they didn't doze off or anything as I waved my hands and regaled them with impressions. And off they went. Dempster 1, Dalton 0.