Bonus Yukon Pics

Noteworthy pictures of our Yukon road trip that I have not previously posted, in chronological order. Hope you like.

We found this waterfall at a rest stop on the way to Dawson Creek. It was literally about 30 feet away from the parking lot of the rest area, so we had a picnic lunch there.


One of the gas exploration rigs, shooting flames and foul stenches into the air. They sometimes smelled like rotten eggs.


Traffic in the northern Rockies. Caribou.


Saw this sculpture outside City Hall in Whitehorse. Get it?


In a hardware store in Dawson City, we came upon this aisle of merchandise. In the foreground you can see a selection of different sizes of sled-dog harnesses. But wait, what's that further down the aisle?...


Wolf, fox, and lynx snares. A bargain at $3.95 and $5.95. Eeek!


The weather was beautiful in Dawson City and the dogs enjoyed lying in the grass at the campground. Here's Oliver.


And Arlo.


In another store in Dawson City, we found some little display pans with nuggets of gold in them. Less of a bargain than the wolf snares. (The ones in this picture range from $102 to $675.)


Most of the vehicles arriving from Alaska looked like this one. Across the border the roads are apparently very bad. Dirt, with lots of nice mud & dust, washboard action, and rocks for chipping windshields. We were told that it's much rougher going on the American side of the border. Yay Canada!


Oliver and I at Five Finger Rapids, right before I threw him over the railing.


A baby Bison. Small by comparison, but still too big to throw over any railings.


Here's Mark at Liard Hot Springs, doing his "Baraka Monkey" pose.


K that's it. Stay tuned for Mexico preparations...

back to our island

So we set out bright and (kinda) early from Prince George on Friday morning and found the Williams Lake SPCA without too much trouble early in the afternoon. We loaded up our kittens and they are CUTE! All five are from the same litter, but two look siamese-ish, one is white with an orange tail, one is a cute smokey grey guy and the last little one was fluffy and orange. All that, from a tortie mother!

We loaded them into the back of the truck inside their large crate, which also contained their litter box and a blanket to sleep on. At every pit stop we gave them food and water and the weather was perfect for them - not too hot but not too cool either, the entire trip!


As we slowly got closer to the teeming metropolis of Vancouver, the traffic got more stressful and the roads were the pits! Through Langley and Surrey, they were actually the worst road surfaces we had encountered on our entire trip - excepting only the half-paved, half-dirt Top Of The World Highway to Alaska. The difference was, on the way to Alaska, we could go whatever pace we wanted to because there were so few other vehicles. In the suburbs of Vancouver, through the clearly marked 50 zone we were driving in, we were going OVER the speed limit to try to keep up and people were passing us like we were sitting still. We were watching everyone cut each other off and do lots of rude and dangerous driving manoeuvers and I had visions of being rear-ended by some pompous pudgy businessman in an SUV. Eek!

We kept driving late into the evening just to get the Vancouver highways out of the way and, knowing we wouldn't need power or a pretty treed site, we simply stopped at a rest area along the highway that Mark remembered from a previous trip. Did we ever score! The rest area actually had a pretty treed area for RVs that was well off the highway, and they had indoors bathrooms that were open 24 hours a day! So we camped for free in relative luxury that night.

We put the kittens' crate in the Boler and let them all out onto the bed with us. They were shy at first but got used to us pretty quickly. They did well overnight - not too much noise, not too much stinking up the joint, and the temperature stayed mild all night which was great for the little bitty kitties.


The next morning we made it to the ferry terminal and after a long wait for a ferry and an uneventful crossing, we made it back to our island! Of course there were errands to run before collapsing. We had to drop off the Boler at home, take the kittens to the shelter, and OF COURSE get some take-out sushi, and there we were, home at last.

Well, I guess this is it for the Yukon trip, and from here on in I'll just be posting Mexico stuff. Wow. That's gonna be soon, isn't it? I hope you guys enjoyed our road trip - I know I did!


Later!

Prince George layover

We made it back to Prince George and I feel like the "adventure" part of our vacation is over. There will be no more desolate roads or northern lights. The Yukon is far behind us, and the drive ahead is familiar. Ah well, there's always Mexico.

We put the truck in the shop to have the part we've been needing installed, but it turned out that they can't do it. They're scared of breaking another part while taking the broken one out, and they don't have any extras of the other part in stock. We'll have to get the truck fixed in Victoria. Annoying!

While in Prince George, Mark's brother, who is a professor of physics at the University of Northern BC, gave us a tour of the campus. It's a nice university with beautiful wooden buildings and a sweeping view of the mountains and the town below. Here's a picture of the whiteboard in his office, which shows a lot of fancy physics stuff relating to a "quantum eraser". Um. Yeah. I have my degree already but this makes me feel stupid anyway.


Other than that, we pretty much chilled out in PG most of the time. Mark has a lot of family in this town so we visited with people, and we got to spend time with the niece and nephew. They're quite young and insanely active so we went to bed exhausted every night.

Mark's brother and his wife made awesome dinners every night we were there - home-made fish & chips, seafood portofino, and other spectacular dishes were in abundance. We also had some very good Indian food for lunch with Mark's dad's girlfriend one day. She was thrilled to be able to take us there - every other family member in town seemed to be stuck firmly in the middle of their "white-people food" comfort zone, thinking of ethnic food as scary. Although, to be fair, we took Mark's brother & his family out for sushi and his wife, who'd never had it before, ended up LOVING it! Mark's brother liked it too but has been to Japan, so sushi was not new to him. Look how cute our niece looks with chopsticks!


So basically in Prince George we've been bums, taking a break from the road. It's been fun visiting family, fun seeing the foster kittens in the house we were staying at, and fun just doing not too much of anything.

Tomorrow, which is Friday, we will be back on the road again for the last leg of our trip. In a small change of plans we're making a quick stop at the Williams Lake SPCA to pick up some kittens that will be transferred to Victoria for adoption. Williams Lake is a small town with a small shelter and they just don't have a lot of adoptions. On the phone the staff member told me that recently she went two weeks with only one kitten adoption. Wow! So we'll get five out of there and camp with the two dogs and five kittens tomorrow night. Is that crazy? Maybe. We'll see. Wish us luck!

Fort Nelson to Dawson Creek

We have become scavengers, pocketing extra sugars and peanut-butter packets at gas stations and truck stops. Napkins quickly disappear into our pockets, and "free coffee with fill-up" is never turned down. These skills will come in handy on our voyage to Mexico!


Today's trip was uneventful. We travelled from Fort Nelson to Dawson Creek, where mile "0" of the Alaska Highway is located, and are now camping at a little place with trees and grass and picnic tables, a far cry from last night's gas station.


The weather has gotten warmer at an alarmingly fast rate - Oliver didn't even need his sweater today, and it stayed warm overnight last night. That's a far cry from our Dawson nights, when we would wake up to frost on the truck! We're finally back to an almost normal sunlight schedule - in Dawson the sun would be up for another two hours at least, but we've only got another 20 minutes or so here. It's 7:15pm.

We've almost left the remote wilderness behind, but even though there are some buildings along the highways now, the people are shutting up shop for the winter. We drove for over three hours between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John before we could find a single restaurant that was still open for lunch. We therefore got lunch around 3:30pm today so we're having a very light supper at the campsite. Dawson Creek isn't all that interesting so I'll go finish some of my earlier posts and sign off for now.

Prince George (again) tomorrow, where they have FOSTER KITTENS!

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!