Dawson City, YT 6/27/14

Day 56 of our summer trip.

Last evening, when we arrived, it rained pretty heavily, then cleared up.  Again, today, it rained in the late afternoon, then the skies cleared again.  It reminded me of Florida in the summer when there seem to always be afternoon showers. 

As a bit of trivia, we have put 8635.7 miles on the truck as of the fuel fill up here in Dawson City.  We have traveled on really nice highways, pot holed highways, in construction areas and on dirt and gravel roads in rain and dry dust-everywhere weather. Now we have mud and dirt all over the trailer and truck.  We’d wash them, but we will be on 13 miles of dirt and gravel road when we leave here, so why do it now?  All in all, we have had a mostly non-eventful journey, since we had the repairs made that I mentioned at the beginning of our trip.  We have seen lots of animals, except for the last few days, but hope to see more in Alaska.  The scenery has been gorgeous.  We have had some amazing things happen that I have talked about in previous posts and will describe at the end of today’s post.  We’re tired and will be taking some breaks in a few days. But, now, let me tell you about today.

We drove around Dawson City to do some sightseeing.  First, we drove to the top of Midnight Dome to get an overview of the town.  The first picture is of their industrial area.  Mining is going on on the hill and there are some other businesses there.  In the second picture is our campground.  I zoomed in as far as I could, so it is a bit grainy.  You can see our 5th wheel on the left side, about in the middle, above the line of trees.  There is a smaller, brown motorhome next to us.  It looks like not very many people are staying here, but by evening, the camp was full with three RV caravans joining the rest of us.  You can see that we are at the edge of the industrial area.








The sign below is our new sign for today.  We have never seen a sign for a hill that had a car on it.  Usually they have trucks on them.



Once we got back down from Midnight Dome, we had lunch at the trailer, then went out to explore, again.  Dawson City is still somewhat like being in the old times while still having modern amenities.  The General Store has just about everything you could need for groceries, inside, but outside, they have a false front on the building that you can see being held up with a bar attached to the roof.  There is a wooden sidewalk, too.  In fact, you can see false fronted buildings all around the downtown area.  Where there are sidewalks, they are all wooden.  The roads are all dirt roads except for the main highway that got us here from Whitehorse.  We saw the road scrapers running over the streets, in town, to smooth them out.  We aren’t sure how often that happens, but it seems to be a normal everyday activity.  The second picture shows a recycled clothes washing machine that was just down from the general store.



Dawson City is a town that is popular with the artists and writers.  There are some cabins of famous writers of the early 1900s that are here in Dawson City.  Below are the cabins of Jack London (left) and Robert Service (right).








There is a very old cemetery near these two cabins.  Those are wooden head markers.



There are old buildings and new buildings.  Some of the historical buildings have been repaired and are being used for new purposes.  There are also many historical buildings that are still in disrepair.  It appears to us that the town is having a rebirth, in away.  Here is a very nice home and a very old church.  Built in 1901, when the town was booming from the gold rush.  The church could hold 600 parishioners and had a pipe organ.  Now  it has signs on it that it is a dangerous and very unstable structure.  We saw many new or restored buildings.  Time will tell if this church is on the restoration list.  By the way, there is a geocache, very near the church, that we found.

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Now for the coolest thing that we did today.  I can’t say that it is the coolest thing we have ever done, but it certainly is something we can not do at home.  At about 11:25 PM, we went back up to Midnight Dome to see if the sun really was shining at midnight.  When we left the trailer, you can see that the sun was shining on the hillside near the trailer (our trailer hitch is on the left, near the hood of the truck on the bottom of the photo).  We got to the top of Midnight Dome about 11:40 PM.  There is a very nice wooden bench on the top of the hill.  Earl was getting the movie camera ready, at 11:50 PM, to watch the sun set.  As you can see, the sun is very much shining and making shadows.



The photos below were taken at 12:00 AM and 12:04 AM respectfully. The sun is reflecting in the Yukon River.  We don’t think the sun is going to set any time soon so we are going back to the trailer.  The first shot is taken from on top of  the hill, where Earl is standing, and the second is from near where we parked the truck.



Back at the trailer at 12:21 AM, there is still a lot of light in the sky.  The two photos of camp and the one of Earl are with ambient light, no flash or other tricks.  I did use the sunset setting on the camera for the two pictures of the Midnight Sun.  We thought it was really neat to actually see that the sun never set.  We knew that the sky was bright at night, but our trailer bedroom has been darkened so much that we didn’t realize how light it really was.  Soo… different from home.



Time for bed, even though it isn't dark yet.  More adventures tomorrow.

Whitehorse, YT to Dawson City, YT 6/26/14

Day 55 of our summer trip.  On the Klondike Highway.

 

We left the Alaska Highway and traveled north on the Klondike Highway to Dawson City, YT.  We passed the Fox Lake which is a long narrow lake to our left.  It is a popular stopping point, for waterfowl, during the spring and fall migrations.

 

 

This sign warned that elk were in the area, however, we saw no large animals of any kind today.

 

 

We stopped in Braeburn, YT to purchase one of their “world famous cinnamon buns" at the Braeburn Lodge.  There they are, laid out on the counter, waiting for hungry travelers to buy and eat them.

 

 

 

You know, Bumble loves sweet things and this looks very yummy to her and, in fact, they ARE very yummy.  These huge cinnamon buns are almost as big as she is!  There is even a small airstrip across the street from the Braeburn Lodge.  It has a dirt runway.  The name and the airplane are quite cute, I think.  Think how big the cinnamon bun would have to be to fly like that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are conglomerate rocks or puddingstone  It is formed when volcanic mud flows and picks up smaller rocks in its path.  The composition of the mud in the flow determines the color of the cementing material around the smaller rocks after it solidifies.  I think that the granite that we have in our kitchen at home must be a type of conglomerate rock.  It is so interesting to look at all of the different rocks on our countertop.  Of course, the puddingstone below would look a little different and better, if it were cut and polished, but maybe it is not as hard as granite.

 

 

This is one of the many roadhouses that were along the stagecoach trail between Whitehorse, YT and Dawson City, YT in the early 1900’s  The roadhouses provided a stop for food and lodging for the passengers and driver of the stagecoach as well as rest and food for the horses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New sign of the day.  Watch for school busses entering from the left.

 

This area is called the Five Finger Rapids, named such by the miners because the four rocks form five channels for the river to flow through.  The safest route for the paddlewheel steamboats to navigate through the rapids was the closest one in these pictures.  A cable was strung along the shore and securely attached at each end, but with enough slack that the steamboats could grab on to it and winch their way through without being pushed into the rocks by the current.  See the looped line in the water part of the map?  The other line going through the green area is a trail that can be taken down from the view point to the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Close up of the channel near shore, in the left photo, where the cable was and a close up of the far shore of the rapids.  I’ll leave them close together so it is almost a panorama.

 

 

Now, of course, we do not seem to be able to avoid the construction zones and today was no exception.  They were building a bridge in this area and shoring up the river.  Massive boulders and massive equipment!  You can see how the man , next to the back hoe, compares in size.  The wait wasn't very long, just a few minutes. 

 

Moose Creek Lodge is an historic log building that is now a restaurant with cabins to stay in and a bed and breakfast.  Very interesting building.  Very northwestern, woodsy architecture.



Gravel Lake is "a place to rest, for a home or for special guests", according to the interpretive sign.  The guests, I believe, would be waterfowl and other water loving animals.  It is covered with water lilies.








We made it to Dawson City, YT about 8 PM.

 

We settled in and had dinner.  Tomorrow, we will explore the area.

Whitehorse, YT 6/24/14

Tuesday, Day 53 of our summer trip.

It had been raining this morning which made the dirt on our truck and trailer look even worse.  See the mud caked on the jack of the trailer.


We can’t get the Wi-Fi at our trailer site, so we went to the clubhouse for a while so we could pick up the e-mail.  They have quite a collection of figurines and toys.  Here is a sample.  One wall had some John Deere toys.  There are some reflections on the glass case that they were in.
 

They also have collections of Christmas items on one wall 


and other figurines on another wall.


Later on, we took a drive into town for some groceries that we needed to make dinner.  While we were there, we went  to the visitors centre.  Did I mention before that, in Canada, almost everything is bilingual English /French?  The visitors centre is no exception.  Here is the entrance with the sculpture of a mountain sheep.







We had intended to watch the movie, but it happened to be that there was going to be a canoe and kayak race along the Yukon river between Whitehorse and Dawson City, YT.  It is called the Yukon River Quest and it is one of the most spectacular paddling races in the world.  The length of the race is 470 mi. or 740 km., making it the longest as well.  At marathon rate it can be done in 48 hours, but many people just try to finish and it may take them several days to get to Dawson City.  It is a very grueling race.  Anyway, the race was to begin tomorrow and the visitor center was the check-in location.  All of those participants were using the visitors center as a headquarters.  They had taken over the theater where we would have watched the film, so the staff of the visitors center tried to use a televised version in the lobby, for those of us who wished to see the movie.   It was so noisy that we gave up and decided to come back tomorrow.  Likewise, there was a geocache on the grounds of the visitors center.  We found it and could see it, but there were too many muggles (non–geocachers who might see us doing something and would sabotage the cache) around.  We decided to come back later when there weren’t as many people around.  Instead, we went driving around to see some of the attractions of Whitehorse.

There are some historical buildings that are very interesting. One is the original first high-rise building, built in the 1940s during construction of the Alaska Highway.  There are four stories and it appears that some reconstruction being done.


The original Anglican Church is now a museum describing the introduction of Christianity to the Yukon.


After dinner, we went back downtown to see the Frantic Follies, a “Gay 90s” variety show.






It was very funny and fun with Can-Can girls,


humorous skits, first is a drunken clown, second is a couple of guys with cabin fever,


musical performances, the man is playing the musical saw, the lady is singing in the spotlight,






and there was even audience participation.


After the show, we went back to the visitors centre.  There was no one there, so we got the geocache and signed the log. 

Tomorrow, we will try to see some of the other attractions in Whitehorse.