Driving The Dempster Highway With The 2015 Ford F-150, Part 2

Continuing onward to Inuvik. Our hero, tucked in with the big boys at the overnight stopover at Eagle Plains.

Driving and shooting. No camera bag should be without bags of carrots and chicken.

Crossing the Arctic Circle.

Waiting for the ferry and then enjoying the crossing.

Arriving at the end of the Dempster, the town of Inuvik.

Getting Wild At The Eagle Plains Hotel Bar

Why go to the wild when the wild can come to you? Add in alcohol and everyone and everything can start to look attractive, after a certain hour. You're never alone at the Eagle Plains hotel bar.

Watch out for the corner hogger. The light out the window? What 11 pm looks like in the summer near the Arctic Circle.

A bighorn is at the bar entrance to greet you. "Spotlight on me!" Who's walking on walls?

Bear with its own table.

Skunk(?) on the way to the rest rooms, good product placement. Heap o' trophies.

Wild coffee station.

Stopping At The Eagle Plains Hotel

If you don't feel like driving straight through from Dawson City to Inuvik (or the reverse routing), you've got one option for where to stay. Welcome to Eagle Plains. There's a motel, a place for gas and auto repair, whatever you need to recharge and get you on your way along the Dempster highway. Looking for small town charm? Keep driving.

Down a hallway, strictly utilitarian from a time period decades ago.

The place isn't that big, but between exhaustion from a long drive and not knowing the area, one could feel a little lost, as if in a rat maze.

Two more disorienting looks.

Flinty patron in the lobby.

Driving The Dempster Highway With The 2015 Ford F-150, Part 1

If you live in Inuvik, NWT, Canada, and you need supplies, time to hitch up a trailer and head to Whitehorse or Fairbanks. Three days for a gallon of milk and some lumber? Ford decided to see what the drive is all about and sent its new pickup to have a look. James went along with a video crew to record the experience.

The F-150, cruising the Dempster highway.

In Canada, it seems that dogs not only ride in trucks, but also drive them.

Revealed: What's at the end of a rainbow.

The trusty camera department. You want a layer of mud? Drive a kilometer and you're all set.

The crew, watching the light, not the road.

Along The Dempster Highway In Canada

Way up within the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories of Canada sits the small government town of Inuvik. The lone road to other towns and supplies is the Dempster Highway, a forbidding traverse through beautiful scenery, but miles and miles of unsupported land. Drive the Dempster and prepare to fend for yourself.

A typical view.

A few rivers to cross, ferries provided. The main town at the south end of the road, Dawson City, where the Yukon and Klondike rivers merge.

More scenery.

Stuff out for decay and stuff flowering.

Crossing into the Arctic Circle.

Mama grizzly and her pup.