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!

A Sourtoe Cocktail

The weather in Dawson has been fabulous. It's been sunny and warm every day we've been here and it's made the town seem just magical. I think I could move here! But then I think about the winter with no sun, and the -40 weather, and then seeing it in the summer is enough for me.


Dawson City is still a rough-and-tumble place. They still have authentic gold prospectors and sled dogs, and they have a delightful drink called the Sourtoe Cocktail. Trivia: the Sourtoe is in part a play on the word "Sourdough", which is what they call a person who has lived in the Yukon for one full year, and has seen the Yukon River freeze and then thaw. Well Mark got it into his head that he HAD to "do the toe", so we went off to the bar to get one. I couldn't have people asking me why I didn't do it when he did, so we both had one. Do you have an idea of what it is yet? Well let me tell you. A Sourtoe Cocktail is an alcoholic beverage, served only in Dawson City. It is made using a shot of Yukon Gold Whiskey and a pickled severed human toe.


Yes, a real toe.


Yes, really.

So we went off to the bar and each had a Sourtoe. The toe is plopped into the drink, and then when you down the whiskey, the rule is that the toe has to touch your lips. There have been toes that have been accidentally consumed in the past, but the current toe is pretty big and I think you'd have to be pretty loaded to accidentally swallow it. They threaten that if you swallow it you have to provide a replacement. I think they're joking. Kind of.

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.

Whitehorse, Carmacks, Dawson

WHITEHORSE

We arrived in Whitehorse on Friday afternoon and spent some time wandering around the city. I love Whitehorse! It's beautiful and clean and has so much interesting stuff in it. I bought a kick-ass pair of winter boots and we visited lots of touristy shops (and bought nothing in them). There are some fascinating art galleries with beautiful things made of gold, different types of wood, porcupine quills, and other natural materials found in this territory. We might yet end up buying some hand made arty stuff for xmas presents for friends/family.

Whitehorse had a surprising amount of green space and we took the dogs for a walk in a park along the Yukon River, and as we were walking a little train tooted by. It was cute.

We will definitely spend some more time in Whitehorse on our way back down.


CARMACKS

After leaving Whitehorse we drove for the rest of the evening and stopped for the night in the village of Carmacks, which was named after George Carmacks, the guy who set off the gold rush by panning ONE TONNE of gold out of the Bonanza River in a single summer.

Carmacks is a teensy town. How small is it, you ask? Well, Hotel Carmacks, the place where we stopped for the night, is obviously a hotel and RV park. What other services does it provide for the town, though? It is: the town hotel, RV park, restaurant, bar, gas station, general store, AND it houses the Health Services office. It seems to be the hub of the village and many locals were hanging out there in the various areas when we arrived.

As we were walking through the parking lot to the general store, we saw a fox. He was walking around in the middle of the parking lot so we stopped to see what he would do. He started coming closer to the building and went around the corner towards the general store. At that point I though something was odd and stopped approaching him. Mark went over to see what he was up to and I had visions of rabid foxes chewing his face off. Around the corner of the building was a gang of local teenage girls. One of them threw a blue candy near the fox and said "eat this, fox!" He did, and sat down patiently to see what else they had. They continued talking amongst themselves, occasionally throwing something for the fox to eat. I wonder if these kids know what kind of unique upbringing they've had, living so close to nature. I know it's probably not the greatest thing that the fox is getting used to people, but it was a remarkable sight to witness.

We walked along the banks of the Yukon River for a while with the dogs, and went back to the RV park for the night. We were the only campers there and had the place to ourselves. Oh, and I think I saw some northern lights! Yay!


DAWSON CITY

The next day we made it to Dawson City, they final destination of our entire road trip! The road was the roughest we'd been on yet so we took our time, but the sun was shining and we made it at last. Along the way we sighted our first Grizzly Bear.

Dawson City is amazing. None of the roads are paved and there are wooden boardwalks instead of sidewalks. It's quaint and pretty and again there are lots of hand-made things for sale, including jewelry made of Yukon gold and jade. We were in a jewelry store while the artist was cutting a stone for a ring, and we talked to him for a bit. Then some other local guy came in and the jeweler accused him of stealing his nuggets! They got in a bit of a fight and Mark and I retreated to the street. I felt like I was in a cheesy western movie. "You took my nuggets!" "I never took any of your nuggets!" Sheesh!!

Mark wrote a bit of stuff to put in this post. Quoth he:

So far Dawson City has been a blast. Julie spent some quality time with the lady from The Dog House – a kick-ass pet supply / gift shoppe. They bonded over stories of rescue animals, and Julie and I accidentally made her cry with the story of Oliver (our rescue miniature pinscher). Oops! She was very kind, and we ended up buying a bunch of stuff there. Very cool place.

We managed to score a spot at the RV place right in town, despite the baseball tournament which is apparently also going on right now. That’s pretty sweet, since they have a nice wifi internet connection, among other amenities, and are right in town – walking distance to all the good stuff.

That's all that Mark wrote. I have to add that the international outhouse races are taking place this weekend, too. They're tomorrow and we're gonna go watch.

Tonight we went to Diamond-Tooth Gertie's - a casino that also has live "burlesque" shows three times a night. We caught the early show, gambled a bit, and came back to the RV park in time to see some northern lights. It's late now so I must retire - more later!

Yukon Ho!

More animal sightings; we’ve seen dozens of caribou and buffalo/bison (not sure which; guidebook says bison and warning signs along the road say buffalo).

We’ve made excellent time and are now in the Yukon! We’re sitting at an RV park somewhere on the way to Whitehorse and “borrowing” a wireless internet connection we found that belongs to someone nearby named Rick. Thanks Rick!

Tomorrow we have a 300 km drive to Whitehorse, where we’ll likely stay for the rest of the day, and the next day we’ll reach Dawson City, our final destination!

So far the drive has been spectacular. Amazing mountains, caribou just wandering in the middle of the road in packs of 2 to 6, strikingly blue mountain rivers and lakes, and more extremely remote highways. We’re learning a lot about the construction of the Alaska Highway (which we’ve been travelling on since Fort St. John) and I can’t imagine having been a pioneer forging the way here, breaching the northern Rocky Mountains on foot or on horseback. It’s hard enough to drive this route, and we have hotels, restaurants, and RV parks to take a break in…it would have been a rough life, but I’m sure those people had amazing experiences. The pictures of the mountains here were taken from the truck as we drove at full speed. I think I'm getting good at drive-by shootings (ha ha).

We almost had a truck towing a big trailer hit us head-on earlier today. He was driving towards us normally and then jerked violently towards our lane and back again, and then seemed to have trouble regaining control of his vehicle. The road looked fine and we couldn’t figure out why he did that – maybe he was falling asleep? We both got a big adrenaline rush from seeing him coming towards us like that, and I think Mark was ready to put our truck into the ditch in order to avoid a head-on collision. Whew!

We also saw another pickup truck towing a large travel trailer catch air with the travel trailer’s wheels by hitting a large pothole at full speed. I bet that guy woke up in a hurry too. The highways up here are not to be taken lightly and we are both constantly watching our speed and the condition of the road, as well as keeping an eye out for wildlife.

That’s about it for now – we’re looking forward to Whitehorse and Dawson City!

Alaska Highway

***FURTHER UPDATE BELOW***

I'm sitting in the Visitor's Centre in Fort St. John, listening to an irate German complain to the counter staff about a "dental emergency" that they must get fixed TODAY because tomorrow is impossible for them apparently (it's 2:30 pm - have you ever gotten in to see a dentist with two hours warning?). They're yelling at the poor girl and making her call every dentist in town and in the next town over, too, in order to get them in to see a dentist, and it's NOT working - poor girl. They're also asking her medical questions and comparing Canadian dental practices to German ones, as if the girl cares.

Meanwhile, Mark is sitting next to me calling every service station in Northern BC and the Yukon, looking for a new part for the truck (again). It's not essential, but we really should get it fixed sometime. We'll keep driving with the problem but it will mean slightly worse gas mileage. Ah well.

We've had a few adventures, and I don't know where the road will lead us after today, but time is short and we must get to Fort Nelson tonight, if possible! I'll write more later - gotta get on the highway again.


***EVENING UPDATE:***

Halfway there!

As I type I’m sitting in our Boler in Fort Nelson after a long day of travelling from Hudson’s Hope, with a pit stop (literally) in Fort St. John.

To date we’ve had numerous sightings of each of the following: Big-Horn Sheep, Stellar’s Jays, foxes, black bears (eight in one afternoon!), moose, deer, and the largest darned black birds I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure what kind of birds they were, but they were black, and they were birds, so that’s what I’ll call them.

The truck and the Boler have both provided some fiascos. The truck has been to the shop three times since we left Victoria, and we’ve ordered a needed part that will be waiting for us in Prince George on the way back down, so that’s at least four times in the garage before we make it back home. Nothing that forced us off the road, mind you, but foolish worrisome things. The Boler out-did the truck by deciding to detach from the trailer hitch, at 100 km an hour, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains south of Dawson’s Creek. Like, four hours south of Dawson’s Creek, but five-ish hours north of Prince George, and not a whole lot of anything in between. We went over a strange and extremely bumpy area of pavement and poof! The Boler was emitting sparks and grinding down the road on its soft underbelly. We pulled over and had a little freak-out, but everything was actually pretty much fine thanks to our handy-dandy safety chains! I love safety chains. I watched for traffic as Mark re-attached everything and put an extra ratchet strap over the hitch to make sure there were no repeats. Then I nearly threw up. We’re pretty certain it was a fluke of our speed (too fast), the road (too bumpy in exactly the right spacing), and something to do with a fundamental frequency (Mark said to say that). Even still, the extra ratchet stays on and we’re planning on installing a larger tow ball at some point so that it’s a tighter fit. Here's a shot of Mark re-attaching the Boler in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

Passing trucks made the Boler visibly sway - not a good time to be underneath it, according to Mark!

In spite of all those fiascos, we’re actually making decent time and there have been lots of fun parts. We’ve seen some spectacular vistas and weird sights, like the gas exploration rigs, which shoot flames out the top and are in the middle of the wilderness. This part of the country is so remote – there is nothing on the highways between little towns except the occasional wide area on the shoulder with complementary litter barrels. You can drive for hours and see no sign of civilization off the highway at all – just trees, mountains, rivers, and an extraordinary abundance of wildlife.

There’s a chance we’ll hit the Yukon tomorrow, but I have to double-check my maps. It’s still a long way off! Canada’s big!

More later. Time to relax and rest up for tomorrow’s drive.

Day 4: Prince George

I'm sitting in Mark's brother's house in Prince George and Mark has just left to collect our truck from the mechanic. Yes, that's right, car trouble! The best part is, our car trouble started 15 minutes into our three week road trip.

Damn!

When we left Victoria we noticed almost immediately that when the truck was idling it was making some pretty intense "vroom vroom" racing noises. I was not so happy. We pulled in to a garage on the way to the ferry and even though they were booked up until 5:30 that evening (it was about 9am) once Mark mentioned that we were on our way to Dawson City, the mechanic's eyes lit up and he started telling stories about how he used to live up in the Yukon. As a result, someone was literally peering into our engine within 2 minutes of our arrival at the garage. (Thank you thank you lovely garage employees!) Their diagnosis was that the engine wouldn't be destroyed if we kept driving, so we kept driving. About 400 km later the "service engine soon" light came on. A harrowing 400 km after that, we arrived at Prince George and finally put the poor truck into the shop. I was waiting with baited breath for the diagnosis, which turned out to be: there was a piece of plastic in our something-or-other assembly, which thus had to be taken apart, emptied out, and re-assembled, and I blame the "mechanics" who did an oil change for us less than a week ago. You know how your car is great, then you take it to the shop for some innocent reason, and then every other part of the engine breaks down after the mechanics are done with it? What's up with that?

In any case, car trouble aside, our trip's been pretty decent up until now. We haven't been covering any new territory yet, as we've been to PG before, but starting tomorrow it's all new. We'll be heading out of Prince George and the next destination will be Whitehorse. Yay!

So far the weather's been passable, with the notable exception of today's fishing trip. To get to the fishing spot we had to drive 20 minutes out of town, 10 minutes down a nasty dirt road, then hike about another 20 minutes down a VERY rough, steep, overgrown, wet path in the forest with two cliffs that we had to use ropes to transverse, and then another 15 minute hike down an uneven rocky riverbed. We finally made it, dogs and all, and the boys (Mark and his two brothers) fished for a while and cought NOTHING. Not a bite. They had fun anyway though, and we started hiking back to the truck.

Some lovely dark clouds had rolled in while they were fishing, and once we got into the forest (did I mention already that it was a very steep, very muddy, very wet path?) it started to rain. It was an absolute downpour and even under the cover of the trees we were soaked through almost immediately.

Then we lost the path.

As soon as that happened, it started to hail.



It wasn't fun any more at that point. Mark's younger brother had a run-in with some Devil's Club and ended up with some nice welts on his arm, and the rest of us really weren't doing that much better than him. We luckily found the path again before anyone started panicking and finally climbed, sopping wet, into the truck - which at that point started smelling like wet dog, sweat, and a few other things. The dirt road was pretty mucky on the way out thanks to the storm but it felt lovely to sit inside the cab and not be rained on.

As soon as we reached town, the skies were blue and the rain was gone - go figure!

Anyway, the journey continues tomorrow, with our fixed-up better-than-ever truck. I don't know whether we'll set a distance goal tomorrow or just stop when we want to - probably a combination of both. We'll have to put some serious mileage behind us each day until we reach the Yukon though, or we'll run out of time.

I'll put some pictures up when I get a chance. I'm not sure when I'll have access to the internet again but I'll try to collect some good stories to tell you.

Off we go, into the unknown!

Vacation approacheth

Our Yukon trip is exactly two weeks away.

We don't have an ironclad itinerary and we like it that way. We'll leave Victoria on Saturday and plan on arriving in Prince George on Sunday afternoon/evening to spend some time with Mark's brother Matt and his family.

Really, other than that, nothing's concrete. We're hoping to eventually make it to Dawson City and spend a few days there. I'm sure adventures will find us on the road whether we plan them or not. What do you think we can count on? Hmm...coffee shops...bears...deer...immature photographing of suggestive signs or random objects...we're hoping for some northern lights. Lots of hiking and of course camping in the Boler!

Oliver is ready for his northern trip:


And before you say anything amusing, don't. He gets so cold he shivers on cool summer nights, so extra warmth is a necessity for him. He weighs six whole pounds, has got almost no fur, almost no body fat, and therefore, he's accumulating a wardrobe. So just shuddup about it, okay? No, I'm not sensitive about it. Are we gonna have to stop talking to each other, or are you gonna change the subject already? Fine.

we bought "The Milepost", which is literally a mile-by-mile guide of northern BC, Yukon, and Alaska. (Do you say "The Yukon", or just "Yukon"? I'm not sure. And also, "Dawson City", or just "Dawson"? I'll tell you after we get back.) We've been leafing through the guide and I'm sure it'll come in handy as we travel.

Should be fun. I'm too tired to feel excited about it though - it was crazy at work today. Maybe tomorrow.