We woke up late the next morning after spending half the night staring at the sky. Fort McPherson is a small town that we toured around briefly before filling up gas and departing. Interestingly, they had the lowest gas prices of anywhere on the Dempster and had prices comparable to Whitehorse. If you can make it all the way from Dawson City to Ft McPherson on a tank, go for it. We didn’t find much information online on gas prices, (and I’m sure it changes often) but were more informed for the drive back.

The drive from Ft McPherson to Inuvik was very dusty, but well maintained and you could easily drive the speed limit of 55mph at most times. However, as we found out, at those speeds, dust came in every crack in our van. We tried to clean it out and our bag of vacuumed dust weighed about 5 lbs. The dust was very dense and stuck to every surface. I’m sure that we will always have a bit of Dempster dust somewhere.

We didn’t spend much time in Inuvik, but it looked like a nice town to spend a night and to explore. We drove around and looked at the town a bit before filling up a small amount of gas (it was the most expensive of all gas stations we had seen so far). Side note: if you want to take the quick and easy option to the end of the Dempster, Inuvik has an airport with flights from Whitehorse.

The new highway from Inuvik to Tuk was smooth at the start but became more difficult driving further on with random pot holes that interrupted the quick driving and made for an inconsistent driving surface. In general, the Northwest Territories had much more gravel on their roads which meant faster driving without concern for potholes, but with the risk of gravel hitting your windshield and massive amounts of dust entering the van.