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Originally Posted by Pschitt
Any trip report to come? ;-)
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I arrived Thurs evening to find the "Quiet" camping area pretty empty, but a long uphill walk from the main area, and the "Not so quiet, but no party zone" (Overlanders have been known to party pretty hard, resulting in a lot of neighbors getting little sleep) I circulated around to see if any other SMB's were there, but only saw one (not actually a SMB but a nice conversion), so I parked nearby. By Friday night, all parking spots were full with overflow going up the hill. There were three days of vendors, seminars, trail runs, happy hours, and raffle prizes. I chose to skip the trail runs, I’ve had plenty of driving lately with lots more to come. I attended five or six seminars and learned something from each one. I went to “Heavy vehicle recovery” a Warn winch class, a Highlift jack class, advanced GPS, advanced tire repair and more, but I got most excited by the prospect of learning how to repair a large sidewall slice. It turns out that you can stich a sidewall gash back together with Kevlar thread, a huge patch and some shoegoo. Not recommended for extended use, but it beats hiking out of somewhere because you’re out of spare tires. The advanced GPS class went into the UTM grid system, an easier and faster way to find and plot a position on a map, rather than the Latitude / Longitude method I’ve used all my life. It’s a system I expect to use a lot more now that I understand it. There were free one hour four wheeler tours every day, but I’ve got plenty of hours on the seat of a 4 wheeler, so I didn’t feel the need to part take. Then there were all the overland vehicles to check out with lots of good ideas to steal. A large number of vendors were offering everything from roof top tents, winches, suspension kits, A/C, heat and refrigeration systems, awnings, recovery gear, solar systems, and plenty more, lots of stuff to empty your wallet.
Each evening there was a presentation and a raffle with ton’s of prizes. Ray (the organizer) told the story of being the first civilian allowed to drive the new all weather road to Tuktoyaktuk in 2016 (?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuvik...yaktuk_Highway
Previously, the only way to drive there was to wait for winter, and drive the ice road (think Iceroad Truckers) Now you can drive all the way to Tuck in the summer, I’ve always wanted to get to Tuck, so I could say I ate Mucktuk in Tukoyaktuk. I tried once on my motorcycle, but couldn’t carry enough fuel.
I don’t know how many folks were in attendance, but there had to be a couple hundred or more. All in all, I met some nice people, and got tired, inspired and sunburned, it was a great weekend.
So, who wants to drive to Tuktoyaktuk and the Arctic ocean in 2019?