Gold, Bison, and Hot Springs

On our last full day in Dawson City, we partook of a walking tour put on by Parks Canada. Parks Canada has tons of employees walking around town in period costume. It's the same idea as the Fortress of Louisbourg, for you east-coasters.


Our tour went all around town to a bunch of historic buildings and the tour guide was phenomenal. She'd been born in Dawson City and seemed to know almost everything about the town's history. Our tour group was a bit rowdy and we all actually ended up laughing so hard at times that we nearly fell over. It was well worth the $6 fee and we learned a lot of interesting things about Dawson City and the gold rush.

One interesting thing that Mark learned, after asking the guide, was that you can still stake a claim if you want to! She knew, because her father is a gold miner. It's only $10 to register your claim with the Mining Office, but the catch is that you have to physically go to the location and plant your stakes. You also have to do a minimal amount of gold mining work per year or else your claim expires. Mark was quite excited and wanted to go into the woods and find an area to stake his claim, so I had to spend all afternoon convincing him not to. Instead, he settled for buying a pan and going to the claim owned by the Klondike Visitors Association where anyone is allowed to pan for gold. He came back later with some authentic Klondike pebbles and dirt. He says his gold fever has been quelled (for now).


Well, we finally had to say goodbye to Dawson City. It's an amazing place and I hope someday we will return, although I'm not certain we'll be able to.


We drove off to Whitehorse and spent another afternoon wandering around town. A few of the things we were interested in, like the transportation museum (which tells about how they originally built the highway through the sub-arctic Rockies) were closed for the season, so we cut short our Whitehorse adventure and pressed on.

The next morning our day's goal was to spend some time at Liard Hot Springs, just south of the Yukon border. We said goodbye to the amazing Yukon, and the Yukon gave us a spectacular farewell in the form of a huge herd of Bison on the highway. We stopped to admire and take pictures, and Oliver growled and went on as though he could have done something, which was a complete joke. He was about as big as one of their hoofs.


On that high note we made it to Liard Hot Springs. These are natural springs in a provincial park and they're VERY cool and well worth the stop. We'd been to Takhini Hot Springs in Whitehorse, but ended up leaving after looking around because they were not our idea of what hot springs are. When we arrived there were a bunch of old ladies in bathing suits wandering around, and a bunch of screaming kids running around among them. The fee was $10 so we wandered around the back of the building to see what we were paying for, and what I saw was: a cement swimming pool. Okay, so maybe it was a WARM cement swimming pool, but still. We didn't stick around.


Liard Hot Springs, on the other hand was natural and gorgeous. It was a 10 minute walk on a boardwalk through marshland, and the hot springs themselves were natural and beautiful. I'm glad we didn't pay for the cement swimming pool at the other place!


We stayed for a while and then continued on our trip, feeling warm and at ease. Aaaaah.

We made it as far as Fort Nelson, where we stopped in one of those truck-stop campsites that are almost just gravel parking lots. They're the ones we go to when we pull in at bed-time and plan on leaving first thing in the morning, and that's exactly what we're doing this time.

Onward, to Dawson Creek tomorrow!