We reluctantly left our spot beside the Arctic Ocean at around 10am. It’s supposed to rain for the next few days and we didn’t want to get stuck in the mud.

It was about 4pm by the time we made it to inuvik. We filled up with fresh water, fuel, and dumped our waste and rubbish. We were going to stay the night at the campground here, but rain is forecast so we decided to drive as far as we could.

We drove back a lot faster as we knew there weren’t any major potholes in the road. Mike was doing 90 km/hr for some of it. Our main aim was to get past the 2 ferry crossings as these would be a nightmare when wet. Also I saw them as weak points which may cause us to be stranded up north.

It was a beautiful drive back. They’d already had a bit of rain and it wasn’t quite so dusty, and the clouds made it cooler.

We made it to the Mackenzie river ferry and there was no wait this time. Just us and a big truck. We’ve just heard that this ferry is now out of action until further notice, so we are so glad to have made it back!

The next ferry crossing was an example to us of what the road is like when wet. The dirt was soft and spongy. The exit from the ferry was rough and steep and would have been very slippery and rutted if wet.

Having crossed both ferry’s our next goal was to make it to the campground we stayed at on the way up. We liked it as it’s off the road, up a hill on hard packed gravel.

With just a few kms to go, Mike was getting very tired, not enough to relinquish the driving though! He’d been driving ten hours and was making a few mistakes. We stopped at the Arctic circle sign for a quick photo stop, then found our gravel pit. Nobody else was here this time, so we had the place to ourselves!

We went straight to bed.