CARMACKS TO DAWSON CITY, YUKON

Yesterday we walked the boardwalk along the Yukon River and checked out the historical buildings in Carmacks.  Carmacks is located in the traditional territory of the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation.  Over the years, the First Nation people settled permanently on the north bank of the Yukon River while the business section of Carmacks developed on the south bank.  Carmacks is named after George Carmack who built a trading post and started to mine coal from the hill behind the post just before the Klondike Gold Rush.

The visitors centre was built in 1903 at Big Salmon as a telegraph line station.  It was rafted to Carmacks in 1915 and located by the High Cache.  In 1991 it was moved to its present location and completely renovated as the visitors centre.

The Minto RCMP Barracks was constructed in 1949 as a residence for two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Minto Landing.  The Barracks was moved to Carmacks in 1954 and now houses the post office, a cute little coffee/pastry shop and an archive of old photos.  If you're in the area, be sure to stop into the Barracks and stay overnight at the Sunrise Service Center.  No hookups and no charge, the people are friendly, the Barracks is next door and you'll have internet for free.

After our self-guided tour we headed out towards Dawson City and drove about 90 miles to Tintina Trench rest area to spend the night.  The Tintina Trench, which extends hundreds of miles across Yukon and Alaska, is the largest fault in North America.   It is bright outside all night and we've had to put cardboard in our bedroom windows to darken the room in order to get a good night's sleep.

This morning we drove 30 miles to Dawson City looking for a campground.  We settled in at Bonanza Gold RV Park which is a Good Sam Park.  Even with our discount, the price of $81 for two nights is much more than we're used to paying.  We needed the internet, RV/car wash and full hookups to catch up on all those mundane things that need to be done and Dawson City looks like a place we want to tour for a couple of days.

We just learned that this park has 80 megs of bandwidth for the entire park and they limit us to 20 a day.  What that means to you is I can't send any photos with my post until we move to another area, sorry, we have some great shots to share with you.

That's all folks!  Thanks for stopping in.