July 4th - July 6th

We spent the last several days in Dawson City.  What a unique town of about 1900 permanent residents.  The roads are still gravel, the sidewalks are made of wood, and the taps in your house must be left running in the winter or they will freeze. 

We stayed in the Downtown RV Park which was a little expensive but provided an ideal place to operate from.  We could walk the entire town in about 15 minutes… that is a WD walk, not a BA march!  In fact we walked from one end of town (our campsite) to the other (the Health Center) which was a very nice walk but didn’t do anything for my elbow.

Most of the buildings have either been restored or when new ones are built, they have to resemble the original Dawson buildings.  Today all of the buildings, new or refurbished, are built above the ground on pilings of a platform.  The reason for this is to prevent the building heat from melting the permafrost which is about 2’ below the surface… it never thaws.

There is also a prime business opportunity for Mary here… better hurry before it is grabbed up!  

  

We took a tour at Dredge #4 where N.A’s largest wooden-hulled, bucket-lined gold dredge is now stored.  It was built for about $200,000 over 2 years but paid for itself in 2 months once it went into production.  The enormity and ingenuity that went into some of the old tools/process is amazing.  It was retired in 1954 and is now a national monument.

We also spent time at Diamond Tooth Gerties which is a casino, bar, and stage show.  It was BA’s idea as you know her gambling habit but this time she was lucky as she walked away with $120… she was happy.  I also got to see 3 different shows which were very well done.  While some of the talent is brought in from other parts of the country, many of the performers were local people.  They did a great job!

We took a ride (truck) up the Dome to see the midnight sun.  Of course we didn’t see it first because we went at 10:00 PM and second, it is very seldom seen as one has to be at or above the arctic-circle to see this.  It does give a very good view of Dawson, the Yukon River, and surrounding area.  Unfortunately it was somewhat hazy when we were there… we actually went to the top twice.

It really is hard to explain daylight just about 24 hours a day.  As you can see, Arda is sitting by the picnic table at 1:00 AM and it is light out.  One loses all of the queues that we become accustom to.  For example, we find ourselves eating dinner at 8:00 PM while thinking it is only about 5… really strange.

On Monday, (the 6^th) we headed for Chicken, U.S.A.  Chicken got its name from early settlers who wanted to call the town Ptarmigan which is a common bird here in Alaska.  Many people had trouble pronouncing the name so they used the bird’s nickname which in Alaska is “Chicken”.  

It was only a 107 mile trip but it took us about 6 hours to come across the Top of The World Highway.  Well, I can tell you that highway is a misnomer.  For a few miles after taking the ferry across the Yukon River, it was paved but with many pot holes.  Then there were long stretches of road that are referred to as “maintained gravel”.  We these weren’t bad compared to a lot of the so called paved sections but the dust was terrible.  Then we crossed the border into the US.  The roads were even worse than Michigan if you can believe it.  Twenty miles an hour was about the fastest we drove with the speed limit being 50 MPH.  We had to stop once and re-screw the kitchen table down as all the screws holding it in place had come lose.  All of the cups were also up-side down in the cupboard but nothing was broken.

We learned something else today… watch out for the rental RV’rs.  The roads are narrow with soft shoulders as the rental RV’s are normally fairly wide, at least wider than a car so I am not many of the renters have experience driving larger vehicles on smaller roads.  We know one who didn’t.  I saw him coming and said to BA, he needs to get on his side of the road thinking that he would.  We he didn’t and we kissed mirrors.  The mirror on my truck was/is cracked.  BA & I walked back to see if everything was OK in the other vehicle but they were too busy trying to put their mirror back together.  They didn’t even say anything to us but we thinking it is because they couldn’t speak English.  Oh well, another thing to fix on the truck when I get home.

Now for the feature section… Did you know?  In 1905 the Dawson City Nuggets competed for the Stanley Cup in Ottawa, ON.  The 4400 mile trip took 23 days and cost $3000 for the entire team.  They arrived 1 day before the games started and lost both games by a 9-2 and 22-3 score.  Ottawa’s one-eyed Frank McGee scored 14 goals the second game setting a record that exists today.

Keep your loops open.