Whitehorse to Dawson City, Yukon Territory
Alaska Highway, Yukon, Canada Sunday, July 13, 2003
Drove just under 300 miles to Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon Territory through lots of pretty mountain and forest scenery. Another parking lot campground, but it has high speed wireless internet access at each site and satellite cable TV with lots of channels. Went out for a pizza dinner at a Canadian chain called Boston Pizza – pretty good. Unfortunately, the internet access doesn’t cooperate much – did some work, but it died when I tried to send out this journal.
Alaska Highway, Yukon, Canada Monday, July 14, 2003
Decided to stay the day here in Whitehorse and do some investigating. 
Took a nice boat ride through Miles Canyon, on the Yukon River. The water is that beautiful glacier blue/green. We then stopped at the fish ladder - a place where the salmon can go up the ladder around the side of a dam – we are too early to see the salmon though, they are still in Dawson City and don’t get here until mid-August. The salmon start off the west coast of Alaska and travel all the way up the Yukon River – over 1,300 miles to spawn. 
Whitehorse is real civilization – it has a Wal-Mart. The parking lot must have had 40 RVs camping for the night! Wal-Marts usually allow campers to stay overnight for free (no hookups) – I guess they figure RVers will spend lots of money in the store if they stay there.
Klondike Highway, Yukon, Canada Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Just outside of Whitehorse, we had to decide whether to stay on the Alaska Highway or take the Klondike Highway up to Dawson City to the Top of the World Highway and then on to the Taylor Highway which would rejoin the Alaska highway in Tok, Alaska. We decided to make the lengthy detour because we wanted to see Dawson City and travel the Top of the World Highway.
On the road fairly early to drive 323 miles to Dawson City. Saw a golden eagle and two foxes on the road – one red and the second was smaller and gray (maybe a coyote?) – he was straggly and carrying a ground squirrel in his mouth. We drove through an area where a major forest planned burn was carried out in 1998 – fields of bright pink/purple fireweed wildflowers were all over the hillsides among the blackened tree stumps still standing. 
Stopped at a lodge sitting all by itself in the middle of nowhere that advertised it had the largest cinnamon buns – we had to get one of those…it was a monster – think of an entire loaf of bread made into one, giant bun. We’ve been nibbling on it for three days, now!
Staying at another gravel pit campground about a mile from downtown – nasty places, but like Jack says, once we close the curtains and go to sleep, it doesn’t make any difference.
Drove downtown to investigate - this place is great – the town still has dirt roads and they’ve kept many of the original buildings from the 1898 gold rush. Stopped at the visitor center and picked up lots of brochures to plan our two days here.
Dawson City, Yukon, Canada Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Went back to the visitor center to watch a couple of short movies about the gold mining and Dawson City back in the late 1800s. Stopped at the local museum since it was raining, and then up to a gold dredge – the largest wood-sided dredge made – it has scooper buckets that revolve on a huge arm that digs down as far as 60 feet. 
Each bucket holds a ton a gravel that is then dumped into a hopper where the rocks and things lighter than gold (almost everything is lighter) is washed through and dumped out the back, forming huge waste piles of rock called tailings. 
Large areas surrounding Dawson City is made up these rocky mounds of rock where nothing grows – ugly. They used the dredge until 1959 when it sunk (resurrected in the 80’s as an historical site).
Stopped at the local Indian cultural center and saw a modern interpretive Indian dance by two women that was very good. Strolled around town, checking the shops and old buildings, had dinner and then went to a follies show.
The show is held in the small, Old Palace theatre and is a musical comedy (pretty hokey) about Klondike Kate and the 1898 gold rush. We sat in one of the boxes in the balcony with curtains and everything. We then went over to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s gambling parlor and show. 
Lost about $10 in the slot machines and saw the musical variety show with can-can girls (4) and a couple of singers. Fun, but long day. We left the show about 11:30 and it was still light as day – not just twilight, but light!
