Tuesday, June 29, 2010
This is day 21 of 58. We started our day with a travel briefing about the Top of the World Highway. We start our drive on a ferry across the Yukon River to a dirt road for a while. It’s supposed to be pretty much paved until we get into Alaska. We were warned to drive carefully and stay off the soft shoulder because once you get in you may have to be towed back to the road. The rest of the meeting was taken up with the RV park owner giving us a talk about Dawson City.
Dawson City was a large gold boom town. Pat, the owner, said that there were 65,000 miners here about 1895 to 1899. Then all the miners moved on to Nome, Alaska. Now Dawson has about 1,900 year round residents. And then there are a lot of maroon jackets running through town. The town is a national historic place and quite charming. The buildings are being restored to the 1900 era.
Erv and I took the drive up to the Midnight Dome. It is a fantastic sight. You can see where the Klondike River comes into the Yukon. You can even see the mixing point where the clear Klondike and the muddy Yukon merge. You can see forever from up there. We could see the Top of the World Highway for maybe 15 or 20 km. We got back in time to go on a walking tour of Dawson City
Our guide was Gabriella. She was dressed in period clothes. She was very knowledgeable. She talked about the saloons, banks, and brothels. It was a different time back then when there were only gold seekers and the people who took their money. We learned a lot about the times and most of us decided that we probably wouldn’t have made it as a merchant or a miner. She was an interesting woman in her own right. She raises sled dogs up here for fun. She came here twelve years ago to learn about dogs and dogsleds. She decided to stay and loves it up here.
We ate lunch at Sourdough Joes and went back to camp and got ready to head out to the ferry. Erv, Ivan, and Barry all wanted to play golf at the Dawson City Top of the World Golf Course. It is a beautiful course to look at, but it is just like the roads up here. It’s all frost heaves. Shirley, Monique and I, Trecia rode along with the boys. We even got to drive the carts. We all had a good time. The three golfers had the most fun. It was suppose to be a midnight game, but the nine holes were finished at 9:45. We all decided that we would be asleep at midnight. We’re dry camping here in the courses lot for tonight. In the morning we head off to Chicken, Alaska our first day in the fiftieth state.
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