Shopping Inuvik

We spent an extra unplanned day in Inuvik . The closing of the Taylor Highway bumped our reservations at Eagle Plains. They could not accommodate us coming back, unless we stayed an extra day in Inuvik. We opted to stay and see the sites, rather than camp in Eagle Plains.

Catholic Church with unique dome

Inuvik

Gas station

The place to eat in town - The Back Room

Downtown Inuvik

We found a cappuccino shop and had a wonderful cup; we visited the grocery store and refilled our stash of fresh food. We found the liquor store and purchased a six pack of Lead Dog Ale from the Yukon. We did a little bit of clean-up: washed clothes, cleaned the bikes, lubed chains and cleaned out the filters.

Coffee shop - note all the buildings are elevated above ground because of the perma-frost

My motorbike is riding rough, I’m afraid there may be dirt in the fuel system or I might have bad gas. I’m hoping that I won’t have issues.  The wiring harness on the back of my bike fell apart; I no longer have a right rear blinker. The zippers blew out on my top trunk bag and can’t be salvaged.  Michael has blown a zipper on his Wolfman tank bag and his speedometer wires are giving him problems. We patched as best we could.

Main drag in downtown Inuvik - gift shop row

We visited all the gift shops – I got coffee mugs, and a nice fur parka for Poopy. Given the road conditions, I had the shop ship them back to Anchorage. 

My new coffee cups

Poopy sporting her new fur parka and mukluks

We found new stickers for our boxes. All this shopping and we ended up with a rare burden... change. Since we have no tax in Anchorage, we rarely collect change. And Canadian change is heavy.

$2 and $1 coins weigh a lot

We drove all around town to see what we could see. We considered a tour up to Tuk, but the airline fee was $1200 for both of us; we decided we would rather go to Hawaii.

The rest of the day was relaxing, visiting with the locals and getting caught up on blogging - a nice day. There is a large native gathering going on, similar I think to the Alaska Federation annual meeting. Next week is a large art show. Too bad we will not be around for that. We headed back to the cabin, the Arctic Chalet. We could not stay in the same place for two nights because of the conference. A nice long evening sipping beer and blogging was what I was looking forward to.  We broke open the Lead Dog.

I have no idea what they were selling...

Then Michael noticed he lost his phone. We ripped the room apart. We went through all the motorcycle gear, once, twice… three times. It wasn’t a big cabin. We took out the flashlight and looked under the beds. Nothing. We ripped the bikes apart. We spent an hour looking through everything… then we started again. We still did not find it. He came to the conclusion that it must have fallen out of his pocket while we were sightseeing. Do you recall that I said we covered all of town seeing the sites? We then left the cabin and putted at 10 miles an hour through all of Inuvik looking for his phone. I now know what every bush in Inuvik looks like. No luck. After an hour of searching town we gave up. The town was filled with way too many walkers… for us to find his phone. If he dropped it someone had found it. In his small case he carries his bank card and his driver’s license. On top of that, he does not password protect his phone and we are in International charging zones for any calls made on his phone. I feel a headache coming on. We go back to the cabin.

I call the phone company and suspend his phone. I call the bank and cancel his credit card.  5 minutes later he finds his phone in the window sill of the cabin behind the curtain.

He is not allowed to drink Canadian beer anymore