km 1528, august 5. 10m, N 67˚27 W 133˚46. 6:30-7:30pm.

oooh, good town day. raisin bread and butter! slabs of butter! yum! tsiigehtchic was beautyfull. we met up with will again here and walked about town with him. i have really come to love these towns. though tsiigehtchic is on the dempster highway, it still requires a ferry to get to it, and i think many tourists must just skip that extra stop and continue on to inuvik. i appreciate the lack of extreme outside influence these towns have. the influence of roads. of outside people. these towns feel good.

emma went to check-in at the post office in case one of her friends had sent a letter there, and of all the sweet things, navi and sac dene had left us a note! it said they are sad they missed us here and wished they could’ve experienced the town with us. gosh, they are dear. we were feeling the same way.

we met some swell people in town, one was a young woman who worked at the visitor info center some days, just not that one. she was telling us about her kids – rose and douglas – who were about 3 & 6 if i remember correctly. douglas was named after his grandpa – who had passed on – and had a tendency to ask about him whenever he gets contemplative – on long road trips mainly. i liked that.

we only got about 2k away from tsiigehtchic tonight because the wind is horrendous and we couldn’t get very far for all the effort we were putting in. emma said the waves were about five feet as we crossed the river to the other side. i wasn’t watching, but they did feel huge. i hope it calms because at this point we are both tempted to hitch to inuvik to have more time on the way home to do fun things. a three day paddle from here, but it’s only about an hour hitch by road.

gratitude: raisin bread and butter!; not getting run over by the ferry when crossing the river!; note from nav and sac dene; visitors centers; not bailing in the swells. yay!

1st photo by emma.