Carmacks to Whitehorse

Monday, August 16 -Today we have to remember Elvis, since this is the anniversary of his death, so I hope you all are wearing black.  We left Dawson City this morning, and it has finally sunk in that we have left Alaska. I have mixed feelings about leaving the state.  We've seen and done lots of things, and had a great time with our traveling companions, but it has been a long time since we've seen our kids and grandkids.  We are still hoping that John and Bridgette can meet us in Yellowstone (although it is looking very unlikely), but we have missed the entire summer with our grandkids.  They started school last Wednesday.

We've been able to do most of the things we had talked about doing in Alaska, and lots of things we didn't even know to do.  Certainly Prudhoe Bay was a biggie for us and Collins.  Catching some halibut was high on Mazie's list.  Collins and Marilyn got to show Marilyn's sister part of this great state, and they really enjoyed that.  Collins got to fish for salmon.  We got to drive down many of the side roads that we had to just drive past on our other two trips, and we got to spend a lot of time exploring the Kenai Peninsula.  The airshow in Anchorage was awesome, and we just lucked into that.  We saw a bear eating salmon, and a bear and cub trying to get into a tent.  And we made it to Chicken!  The gold panning was fun, even though the big nugget never showed up in our pans.  We wouldn't have wanted to miss a single day of this time in Alaska.  But we will never say that we would never come back here.  I guess our love affair with Alaska continues.

Our scenery driving through the Yukon Territory changed during the course of the day, but we still had beautiful mountains (not to climb) and rivers to cross.  Collins and Marilyn went out to tour the dredge in Dawson City this morning, and I took the opportunity to try to clean up the RV from our dusty drive across the Top of the World Highway, so it was about noon before we got on the road.  We stopped for a break at Moose Creek Lodge, but there was not much else on this road as far as civilization goes.

They do like their moose here, but we have not seen any wildlife at all today.  John and Bridgette, wouldn't all your puppie dogs like a house like this!  Think of all the chewing they could do on the moose antlers.

They had a cache that Joe thought they might have used to smoke fish.  The outside looked a lot like the one at the Jack London museum.

And you can see that you can make a moose out of about anything.

We crossed the Stewart River bridge at Stewart Crossing, barely a wide spot in the road.  The "Silver Trail" goes out of here, a 70-mile side road that goes through the silver mining country, but we didn't take it.  Maybe next time.

Then we came up on the Pelly River bridge, which was tented up for painting.  They had it down to one lane, but we did get through it.  Both of these rivers flow into the Yukon.

We found a government campground about 15 miles before Carmacks, and we pulled in there.  It doesn't have any hook-ups (these government campgrounds are like state campgrounds in the U.S.), but it was a very nice, shaded campground with firepits and picnic tables. 

 The Silver Streak is hidden in the trees to the left of the Brundiges' rig.

The last two days have been in the 80s (hot, hot), so we sat outside for a while.  Joe has found a new career since his gold panning pimp days are probably over.  He is now the Great White Hunter (small game only, he says).  He's had two kills so far, both bees, but he's still waiting on his first mosquito.  Mazie bought one of these weapons way back in Soldonta, and he's thought he needed one ever since.  We found him one in Dawson City, so he's busy now!

Sunday in Dawson City

Sunday, August 15 - We had decided to spend another day here, so I did laundry first thing, then we headed out.  We went back downtown and walked through the art festival tents, then walked back along the river.  We went into the General Store again, looking for a donut, and found a new vegetable there.

They told us it was like a broccoli/cauliflower combination and had a real buttery taste.  We didn't buy any but it looked pretty good.

Then we headed out to the mud bog races, not really knowing how this would work.  We had to walk in a little ways, and then find a rock to sit on.  I had the best rock, it was in the shade.  It got up to 82 here today, pretty hot for us who are now used to wearing raincoats all the time.

They probably had about 24 vehicles in the races, and a pretty good crowd on the hillside.  Here's the line-up.

The starting official came out wearing white shirt, white pants, red tie, and orange boots.  His pants were not white for very long, though.

Some of the trucks came out completely mudded over. 

We only lasted about 45 minutes after it actually started.  Joe's rock was too hard, Dave's was too cold.  And Joe thought it was lunch time.

We had lunch at the Jack London Hotel and Grill (pricey), and then stopped in at the Palace Grand Theatre.  We missed the tour but did get to walk inside and see the stage, the padded seats, and the box seats in the balcony.  It was easy to imagine grand performances on stage with a full house.

Then we drove out to the dredge on Bonanza Creek.  We got to tour this one, and it was quite different from the one we toured in Fairbanks in 2004.  This was the largest wooden hull dredge in North America.  One of the world greatest gold rushes took place in this area, and it is rich in history of gold mining.  Mining in all its forms remains the number one industry in the Yukon Territory. 

We had planned on trying our gold panning luck again just down from this dredge, but after our tour guide told us that most of the gold found in this area was the size of brown sugar, we decided it wasn't worth another night of back pain.  We did drive down to the creek and there were some other fools out there.

On our drive back from the dredge, Joe spotted a beaver pond that he had thought he had seen driving out, and lo and behold, a beaver slid in the water just as we stopped.  We watched him for a minute or two, but we didn't see him chew up any trees, so we drove on.

We ended the evening by going back for another show at the gambling hall (Collins, Marilyn, Mazie and me), but it turned out to be a repeat performance of the first show from last night, so it wasn't quite as exciting.  And I lost most of my winnings from the night before.  Guess we should have stayed at camp like Joe and David.

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.