TOURING DAWSON CITY, YUKON

I'm a few days behind on my blog because the internet service has been almost non-existent.

Two night's ago we went to Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall.  The floor show starring Diamond Tooth Gertie and her cancan girls was fun and entertaining.  We were sitting at a black jack table to watch the show and I was amazed to see a young man sit at the table, plop down $800 and start playing.  If I was a gambler, that would be the game of my choice.

Yesterday was a full day of touring the city.  We have been debating whether or not to buy an annual Parks Canada Discovery Pass which gives us free access to more than 100 national parks, marine conservation areas and historic sites across Canada.  We learned that they would credit us for the parks we’ve already visited and paid for if we had the receipts. We paid a total of $82 for the pass after a credit of $60.  It turned out to be a good deal because our entrance fees would have been $23 and we’ll be traveling back through Canada and into Quebec before the year pass expires.

I hope you enjoy the brief synopsis and photos of the historic sites we visited today as much as we enjoyed them.  We visiting the Old Post Office,  drove to the top of Midnight Dome to see a great viewpoint of the town, surrounding landscape and gold mining areas.  We went to the farmer’s market along the waterfront and purchased the largest head of green lettuce I’ve ever seen, some tomatoes, cucumbers and beet greens.

The S.S. Keno was the last steamer to run the Yukon River when she sailed from Whitehorse in 1960 to her present berth on the riverbank.  The S.S. Keno is a 130-foot riverboat built in Whitehorse in 1922 by the British Navigation Company.  She represents the fleet of sternwheelers that plied the Yukon waterways for over half a century.

The Robert Service cabin is a historic site and we enjoyed a 60-minute narrative about how he immortalized the gold rush and brought Canadian literature to a worldwide audience.  A costumed guide recited some of Service’s most meorable poems, including “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.

The Palace Grand Theater is another historic site and is a exact replica of the original theater built by Arizona Charlie Meadows and opened in 1899.  The original theater’s foundation was not built to survive the harsh winters and permafrost.

We experienced the elegance of the Commissioner’s Residence, Yukon’s government representative.  The house is really a mansion with three floors.  The first floor has been renovated after surviving both fire and flood.  The second and third floors have not been renovated but you can still see them.  After a fire at St. Mary’s Hospital, the house was occupied by the nuns for a while.

Our last stop was Dredge No. 4 national historic site.  Dredge No. 4 is two-thirds the size of a football field and eight stories high.  The dredge moved along on a pond of its own making, digging gold bearing gravel in front, recovering the gold through the revolving screen washing plant, then depositing the gravel out the stacker at the rear.  The dredges were a very efficient means of mining for gold.

Love this photo - saw him on the road to Dredge No. 4

This morning we attended mass at St. Mary's Church in Dawson City and then got in line for the free ferry across the Yukon River.  The wait was less than a half hour.  If you've never driven a 38 foot motor home with a vehicle in tow onto a ferry, you just haven't lived.  And we weren't the only ones on this tiny ferry boat, we had two cars and a pickup truck for company.  But the 7 minute ride across was uneventful.

Interior of St. Mary's - this is the second parish we've been to with a Nigeria priest

Now the adventure has begun.  Everyone has been telling us how awful the roads were going to be and we were prepared for the worse.  The drive along the Top of the World Highway was in pretty good condition.   We crossed the border into the United States and got on the Taylor Highway.  Now we know what everyone was talking about.  The roads are awful ... unpaved, gravel, dirt, mud, potholes, narrow, no guardrails, steep cliffs, etc.  Two hours of hell for 50 miles but at least we weren't that poor lady standing by the side of her 5th wheeler waiting for her husband to return.  We arrived safe and sound in Chicken with very muddy vehicles.   Downtown Chicken lets you park for free and even offers free internet.  The Chicken Gold Camp across the street wanted $14 for a back-in site without hookups.  So we used the $14 we saved for a BBQ chicken dinner and piece of apple pie.

That’s all folks!  Thanks for stopping in.  I promise the pictures are coming soon!