Top of the World Highway -  Heading to the Yukon, Canada

While driving the "Top of the World Highway" for some reason it felt like you were on top of the world.


 

 Dawson City - Yukon - Canada
Sunday, July 2, 2006.  We are in Dawson City and it is so much fun. There is always something going on. The visitors center has deals on site seeing. I would say this is a must to visit. Love it here. Denis also has gold fever. He wants to spend his summers here looking for gold. We also met up with our friends Judy and Pierre, of all places to meet. His brother Rejean and Sylvie were visiting with them.


A view of Dawson City along the Yukon River and the Klondike mining area to the left.

 


This was the Territory Building when Dawson was the Capitol. It is now a Great Museum that gives a good idea why there was such a good deposit of gold in the region.. I learnt to do "Gold Panning" here.
This shows how people were living during the gold rush.


 
This shows what people had after the gold rush.

 

 

After the gold rush.		 You have to remember that Dawson City use to be the Territorial Headquarters at one time. Now it is Whitehorse. So some of the building are amazing.

 

Dawson City was 30,000 strong in its hay day now it's about 1,800. They were almost a ghost town in the 60's... 600-800 pop. The pictures were sad. To be so grand and then a near nothing. Pierre Burton's from here.
This was the Grand Palace powder room for their star lady performers.

There are also some really neat stores here. They don't pave the roads and the sidewalks are wooden, just like the old days.
Denis feels that the streets were paved with gold in 1896. There is gold in nearly all the stores but it is for sale, gold nuggets.

 

  
Because of the "Permafrost" you really have to know how to build a house here.  This is what happens when the frost melts away... you sink!

This is a log cabin that Robert Service wrote poems in, about the Klondike Gold Rush. I have enjoyed reading them.

 

 On the right and left is one of the fanciest post offices I have ever seen. The boxes even have bevelled glass.
This is the original post office built in 1901. It's beautiful.

 

 


A picture of the original building.

 Parks Canada has spent a few dollars here to restore and reproduce some of the history. I think it is all worth it. There is a lot of history to tell here. For example:

On the right is the Palace Grand Theatre, a restored building, since the Permafrost destroyed the original one. There was a lot of entertaining and bellying-up to the bar with your poke of gold, and "Arizona Charlie" was the brains behind it.

I gambled $9 and won $94. I was so excited that I picked up all my quarters and left.
Carvings done on moose horns.		 Entertainment at Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall.

Right is: Ruby's Place. Opened as a boarding and laundry in 1903, the building was taken over by Mathilde "Ruby" Scott in 1935. For 27 years, this former Paris Madame operated a brothel here, finding a ready clientele in the seasonal workers from the gold dredge camps. She operated with the tacit approval of local officials until 1961.Ruby was charged with keeping a bawdy house and closed as the last brothel in Canada.

 
This is a model of dredge #4 that we had toured. These machines were put into rivers and creeks and it's job was to remove all the gold from the gravel beds. This one was the largest. I paid itself in the first month of operation and ran until the mid 50's.

This is one of 69 buckets on dredge #4.  this chain of buckets would run 24 hours a day and process all the gravel from the rivers and banks. Parks Canada is currently restoring this dredge.

 

 

 

 
They have starling bird houses everywhere to feed off of the mosquitoes. What a neat idea.
Now if you look at the hills in the back, you will see the sand/gravel has all been dug up. The gravel is removed to the bedrock and feed into machines e.g. large screening and sluicing machines. The gold being 19 times heavier then gravel should be at the bottom of the wash. But tons and tons of earth have to be washed to get a minimal amount of gold. These are the modern gold miners, called placer miners and we were very fortunate to have met one such group.
We met up with Richard and Luce last Fall on the Natchez Trace and being from Dawson, told us to "look e'm up if we're in the 'hood". Well...they gave us a really good tour of a modern gold mine placer operation. In this picture is a shaker/sluice with racks/rugs on which the gold is separated from the gravel. Look closely... in this picture, is a bunch of gold under Denis' hand which he is trying to grab.

 

 

 

 

This is a Woolly Mammoth. A lot of times it is placer miners who uncover their remains - the ivory tusks. A lot of them have been given to museums but there is so much that a lot gets bought up and are then beautifully carved.


 
Here we have a brain of a Woolly Mammoth. The picture does not really show the enormous size of the animal.
 
Denis is holding part of a tusk.


 

Here I am trying my hands at panning with no luck. But look next door and you'll see what did come out of this gravel pit.
 
This is a very, very, very good days pan. A once in a life time catch.
With a little help from his friends, Denis was able to leave Dawson City with a small "poke" of gold, about 1/4 ounce, after panning the pit for hours in the c-o-l-d rain. Told you he had gold fever.
We are very grateful to the wonderful people we met in Dawson and the owners of this placer gold mine, as they really helped make this part of our journey very memorable.

 
The Klondike
Read all about it... Denis got the gold bug and had to get it out of his system by writing a recap of the Klondike.

 

 Mayo and Keno, Yukon
Monday, July 10, 2006. We are now at Five Mile Campground (CG). We're about 200 kms south of Dawson and 50 kms off the highway. This is a municipal CG that is only 2 miles from the town of Mayo. Mayo is a government base for central Yukon. There is a nice swimming lake here an a lot of the towns people come here to swim. So far they are very respectful of the campers and leave early so as not to disturb us and we get a really good night's sleep. but the Ravens are quite amorous and act as roosters in the early mourning. From here we travelled up an old mine road to the City of Keno. Keno houses 15 residents, but it's population use to be 800. Keno was incorporated in 1902 making this a city.

Mayo was once the shipping depot for the local silver mines. In this picture you see sacks of silver concentrate waiting to be shipped.



 
Just relaxing by our campfire. Look at the skinny but dense trees.
There is an area towards Keno called the Thermokarst lakes, where the Permafrost has melted and the banks of the lakes collapse and trees topple over. They're also known as the "drunken forests".
We in Keno now, and drove up a summit road, elevation 6600, just past Keno where there's still snow in the middle of July.

 


 

There is still flower here, I am sure due to the long daylight hours.

 
 
The plants you see here is called horsetail. It is a beautiful reddish color when at it's peak and sways with the wind. This plant is deadly if eaten by pets or animals. It does not degrade and is like glass which will cut-up your insides.

So many beautiful old log cabins in Keno.
A lot of art and most about mining.

 


 
Art even on sides of buildings.



 
Thursday, July 13, 2006. We are staying at Frenchmen Lake off Frenchmen Rd., off the Campbell Highway near Carmacks heading towards Whitehorse. It is such a beautiful 14 km. lake, we feel like we're in 7th. heaven. The campgrounds in the Yukon charge $12 and they supply the firewood. The campgrounds are very spacious, and most have wild roses planted nearby. The people are nice and very helpful.

This is the five-fingers rapids of the Yukon river, where the Steamers
had to navigate through with supplies and the gold miners of the Klondike.
View of Frenchman's lake, and the dock at midnight!
 
   

We have a lake front view again. This is great.
Can it get any better.

 
Denis says, eah....Pike. He hates pike and sends it back on it's marry old way. There is Lake Trout here but you have to know how to catch them.
A pictures from our window of the kids going swimming at 10:30 p.m.. Of coarse it's still light out.
 
The Yukon only has a population of 31,000 and it has a lot of beautiful lakes. The people are just like Northern Ontario folks. Friendly and helpful.

Fishing license is $25.00 for out of province and it's for the season. You cannot use barbed hooks or live bait though. In fact they do not have worms in the Yukon because of permafrost. No pickerel either

On the right is a sign at the campground. Denis is always trying to convince me to drink the water almost everyplace we go. Just because it is crystal clear he thinks it's all right to drink, and I say if we do not need to then why take a chance.

Denis thinks I am being a candy-ass.
Because it stays light until after midnight boaters get to stay on the lakes much longer.
Monday, July 17, 2006. We have enjoyed staying here so much that we hate to leave. Denis keeps saying "can it get any better" but we must. We have decided to start heading to B.C., we should get to Whitehorse to-day and replenish on food and maybe a haircut. I looked into a haircut in Dawson City but I refused to pay $25 - $27 for a cut. $20 is my limit.

 

Monday, July 17, 2006. We have decided to stay at Fox Lake CG, just north of Whitehorse. It is such a beautiful campground. So far the Yukon has the most beautiful CG, especially for families, someone has put a lot of thought into them except they do not have dump stations or potable water.  Up to now we have only been comparing parks with Ontario Parks. We do not like the Ontario Parks and the main reason being that reservations are required, and there are very expensive, and I do not think they are very large/privates sites like we have seen in the Yukon.
This was our campground at Fox Lake, right on the water and mountain view. As Denis says "can it get any better".

The Yukon Provincial Parks are $12.00 per night with no Sani-dumps and sometimes there's a hand water pump. You have to go to a regular trailer park and pay a fee to dump your black water and get potable water. We paid $3.00.
 
Tuesday, July 18, 2006. We are now on our way towards Watson Lake and then we will go into British Columbia (BC) on the Cassiar Highway. We stopped over in Whitehorse as Denis needed a new tire on the trailer. It went bald on us! Whitehorse haircut = $35. I guess I will let my hair grow for now.

Well our plans have a way of changing. We met up with our Quebec Connections, Pierre and Judy, south of Whitehorse. They also were in Whitehorse doing some maintenance before going on the road. With luck we met and decided to go fishing with them in Tagish Lake. Pierre says he is determined to get his trout. As it turns out, Pierre also had to buy a new trailer tire, and he was at the same shop I was at, only earlier same day. No wonder we keep on meeting on this trip!

 

 Side trip to Atlin and Snafu Lake
Wednesday, July 19, 2006. On the Atlin Rd. in Snafu CG.

 


Emerald Lake along the way to Tagish Lake. The combination of Coral and Lime create the emerald green coloring in the waters.
What a beautiful sight.

 


The four of us decided, democratically, that the fish is not in Tagish Lake so we went to Snafu Lake on the Atlin Rd.  We will visit Atlin from there. This is what the lake looks like. Denis and Pierre spent most of the day fishing. Rub-a-dub-dub-two-men-in-a-tub.
Denis left his tackle box in the canoe overnight at Snafu Lake CG and someone stole it so he will have to slowly build it up again. Now you know what to buy Denis for Christmas.

On the road again. We're on the road again. Pierre why are you so serious in your pictures.  You have such exquisite taste in foods I wish my dad would have been able to meet you. He loves to cook for people and have them taste it.

This is a view from the town of Atlin, beautiful, isn't it. Almost makes you want to move here. It is the middle of July and it's only about 17 or 18 degrees here. We are camped about 75 km. north of here which is in Yukon but Atlin is in B.C.
Friday, July 21, 2006. We head east towards Watson Lake, Yukon and then down the Cassiar Highway into B.C.

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