Alaska Rejects

We went back to Diamond Tooth Gertie's again last night. That's one sweet gambling hall! It's all VERY themed to the gold rush era, with the entire building being made of rough wood; there's live old-timey piano music, and the "burlesque" shows (three per night) are so entertaining. Mark played some more blackjack but didn't do as well, and I discovered that over $5 in the slots (which I've never gone beyond before) is kind of boring. So it wasn't that late a night for us, but still pretty fun.


Today Dawson City held it's annual International Outhouse Race. It was HILARIOUS. Teams had to build an outhouse on wheels and race it around town, with someone sitting on the seat.


There were about six different teams, and we noticed that one of them, the only all-girl team, was made up of the dancing girls from Diamond Tooth Gerties. All the teams had different themes for the out-houses and only in the Yukon could a public family event occur in which people shoot hairspray between their legs and LIGHT IT ON FIRE (that was the dancing girls' team), moon the audience (the "Full Monty" lumberjack team), and sing team cheers which include repeating the phrase "f**k off and die" numerous times (that was the viking team). The burlesque dancers won the race, in case you're interested.


After the outhouse races we went to Klondike Kate's, a pretty darned decent restaurant named after a famous Klondike entertainer and self-promoter. Our meal was very kindly paid for by Kim & Justin, as a thank-you for our help with Linus. If you're not sure what that means go take a look at our Rescue Animals Blog. Thanks Kim and Justin! It was great!!

Speaking of dog stuff, Dawson City has a teeming population of free range dogs that seem to belong to people but spend all day wandering around playing with tourist dogs and doing whatever else they want. We've encountered tons of these guys and they are all polite to us and play well with our own dogs. One big surprise is that Arlo is much bigger than almost every dog in town, and huge compared to the sled dogs, who surprisingly average about 45 pounds. Maybe that isn't a surprise to you - I don't know - but when I think sled dog, I think 100-pound Husky / Malamute. Guess not!


This morning we decided to drive to Alaska. It was only 100km to the border, so we thought, what the heck! We had to cross the Yukon River first though. BC Ferries - take a hint here: The Yukon has a FREE ferry that goes across the Yukon River, seemingly non-stop, TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY. For free, as in no charge. Something for BC to think about, considering their ferries are supposed to be a part of the highway system but stop running at like 9pm and are hugely expensive.

So we got across the river and were officially on "The Top of the World Highway" which turned out to be a crappy winding road that was gravel as often as it was paved. But it was really on top of the world! We drove into the mountains and were soon above the tree line, and the road was pretty rough. One guy passing us kicked up some gravel that cracked our windshield, and when Mark had his window cracked open a tiny bit another car spun up a rock that hit him in the head!

Eventually we made it to the border but alas, they did not like the look of us and told us we could go no further. Wait, that's not accurate. They did not like that the dogs had no paperwork, so told us we could go into the U.S., but only a leetle teensy bit. We were allowed to park our truck and walk around near the border station and take pictures. Does this confuse anyone else? I thought it was an either "yes" or "no" type thing, instead of a "you can only go into the states as far as you're willing to hike" type thing. Ah well - making it to the border was our only goal as the nearest "town", Chicken (yes, that's the name of the town), was four hours away via rough gravel road and all we wanted was a stamp on our passports, which we got anyway. We also got some nifty photos of the border, and then we were off to our native land again.


On the way back over the Top of the World Highway, a storm brewed up and it hailed so hard that the ground and highway were covered. The storm soon passed though, and we made it back to Dawson City safe and sound.