FAQs

Here's an effort to respond to the most common questions we have fielded about our upcoming trip - listed roughly in decreasing order of frequency.

Yellowknife...that's in, um...the Yukon? No, but you're close. It's the capital of the Northwest Territories, immediately east of the Yukon. So from west to east, you have: Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. (I realize that expecting Americans to know Canadian capitals is like expecting a Canadian to know the capital of, say, Kansas.)

Seriously, the Great Slave Lake? Why would it be named after slaves? It's not. That's a mutation of the local Slavey peoples and languages, more accurately called the Dene-tha, part of the greater Na-Dene language group that includes native peoples of northern Canada, much of the US and Canadian Pacific coasts, as well as the Navajo.

How cold will it be up there? The average temperatures are roughly the same for all the places we're visiting, from the Rockies to Edmonton to the NWT: average high around 70, average low from 45 to 50 at night.

Just how remote are these places? The NWT is slightly smaller than Alaska, or about two thirds the size of Mexico, with roughly 40,000 people. Plus below that is the very sparsely populated portion of British Columbia and Alberta which never even appears in your atlas. Some of the towns we're stopping at in the NWT are described, with great precision, as having populations of 182, 90 and 69 in the travel guide. The roads are pretty much all packed gravel. That said, those of us in the West know that in sparsely populated areas, a small town boxes above its weight. A place like Yellowknife - a capital city with 15,000 people - will have robust public and commercial services because it's still the main population center, no matter how small. Even the 90-person town has "a range of services including gas stations, restaurants, accommodations, a grocery store and a native crafts gift shop."

How long will the days be up there? Is it land of midnight sun? Today, the sun rose in Fort Simpson at 4:27 am and will set at 11:50 pm. By the time we get there, sunrise will be around 5:30 am and sunset around 11 pm. Bear in mind that at those high latitudes, you gain or lose five to eight minutes of daylight each day, because of the huge swings between winter and summer. So in a two-week stay, the length of the days changes by nearly an hour.

What if the dogs get sick? Well, yeah, they are old. And even though we hope this will be fun for them, even good stress is a stressor. In the NWT, the only veterinary hospital is in Yellowknife. So we hope they don't get sick of course, and it would be stressful if they do - but we're sure that vets up there know a thing or two about dogs. Our own vets have said that there are actually fewer parasites to worry about up there, because they can't survive the winters. There is one particularly nasty form of tapeworm that they would only get from eating raw bison or caribou meat. So...no gnawing on bison carcasses. Check.

Will you stay in touch while traveling? Once we get far north, we'll have cell phone service in Yellowknife and Hay River, but not outside those areas. There are wireless cafes and such, and we're taking the laptop with every intention of checking email and posting some stories and pictures where we can.

I hear they have huge mosquitoes up there. Yes, we hear that too. Having read many first-person accounts dating back to the 1850s, I am struck by how consistently they all mention the bugs, and with the same horror mixed with wonder; people actually died from mosquito exposure. We have insect repellent and mosquito netting, and the nice lady at the NWT visitors' bureau basically said: Yes, they're bad, but not as bad as people make it sound. So we'll see.

You're going for a month? Did you quit your jobs or something? Nope. We're just taking vacation and some leave without pay, which employers seem happy to give at the moment...

Got other burning questions? Post below!