Saturday in Dawson City

Saturday, August 14 - After a slow start this morning, we headed into town. Collins is having a problem with his water heater, so he and Marilyn went off looking for parts.  Our first stop was at the Jack London Museum, where a replica of his cabin has been rebuilt from the original logs (there is one of these in Oakland, California as well). He came here as a prospector, but many of his writings are set in this area, I understand. 

He kept his food and furs in the cache on stilts, and the museum is on the left.  Then we drove to the Dawson City Museum, a pretty impressive building.  Much of this town has been renovated and it is in pretty good shape.  The streets are all dirt, and the sidewalks are made of boards (boardwalks).  We toured the museum, then the parade came by so we got to watch it.

This was certainly not the Rose Parade, but it had some very unique entries, representing the interests of the area.  We liked this -- a soccer team came down kicking soccer balls.

Here are some of the floats.  The parade probably lasted a half-hour.

This was my favorite, followed by my second-favorite.

And of course, Joe found himself a new woman!

I'm pretty sure she is a floozie, with questionable reputation.  He gets worse later in the day.
There is a gambling hall here, Diamond Tooth Gerties, and here is her float.  You'll see these gals again.

Cody, here are some of the entries for tomorrow's mud bog that I called you about.  You would have enjoyed these, especially the first one.

 It was unlike any parade we had seen before but what can I say, everyone loves a parade!

We headed downtown next and luckily met up with Collins and Marilyn, so we grabbed some lunch, then went into some of the shops.  The General Store is a grocery store, and I'm sure Lucille will think she was farming at the wrong time when she sees the price of watermelons here.

(We didn't buy any.)   We next toured an old sternwheeler, the SS Keno, which is a national historic site.  It was the last steamer to run the Yukon River when she sailed from Whitehorse in 1960, and she is now permanently parked on the riverbank here.  The National Parks Pass we purchased on our way through the Canada National Parks in May/June got us in many of these things free, and free is always good!

We headed back toward the campground but there was a road called the Dome Road that gives you an overlook of the town, rivers and area, so we drove up there.  It was quite a climb (for the car), but the views were awesome.  The elevation at the top is 2,911, down below we are at 1,066, according to Lucille, our GPS. 

Here's Dawson City below us.

We finally got back to the RV and grabbed a bite before heading out to Diamond Tooth Gerties for the show.  Joe had some maintenance to take care of again, our tow hitch is getting bent from the frost heaves in the road, and he found a new one here, so he replaced ours.

 Collins didn't have any luck finding water heater parts (we think it needs a new motherboard, what we replaced on ours in Soldotna).  So that will probably have to wait until Whitehorse.

We headed off to gambling hall for the 8:30 show.  They had blackjack, roulette wheel, poker, and slot machines too.  I actually came out $14.00 ahead on the slots (more than we've made gold panning!).  It was a good show, and Marilyn and I went back to the second show at 10:30 p.m. (past our bedtime).

Even Mazie found a new man (Dave didn't come with us).

Finally, we called it a day, but we had some rowdies in the campground that made noise until probably midnight, so none of us got much sleep.  We are staying another day in Dawson City since there are still things to do here (gold panning, mud bog race, Collins and Marilyn haven't driven up to the Dome yet).  So we'll see what tomorrow brings to Dawson City.