Dawson City, Yukon

Chatting with some fellow travelers in the laundry room this morning, I meet a man from Kansas who is driving to Fairbanks to visit a woman he met on the Internet. Hope it’s all a success because he seems like a sweet and lonely person. We also meet a German couple driving a rented RV who have flown from Frankfurt to Whitehorse on a direct flight. Why is there a direct flight from Europe to Whitehorse, population 24,000? We can’t get one to Spokane!

This morning we drive out to Discovery Claim to take the dredge #4 tour. This is a historic site run by Parks Canada near the site where the Klondike gold rush began. Our tour guide takes us inside this massive mechanism to learn how the dredge crawled along the creek using a huge claw to take in soil, rocks and whatever else was in its path. Once inside, the debris was shaken and rinsed and moved through sluices then emerged out the other end (minus the gold), and deposited as the dredge crawled on. This particular dredge moved nine miles in 18 years sifting and scouring the creek bed and prizing out the gold. The gears are massive. The whole thing is three stories tall and ½ a block long, but it only took 4 men to operate it. One man patrolled the front, one the back, one prowled the whole structure looking for problems and oiling the gears and the fourth was the helmsman shifting gears that engaged the gigantic cogwheels. The gear shafts reached down from the third floor to the first and they don’t look easy to move. Our tour guide tells us there is a new gold rush going on right now and they believe they’ve hit the mother lode. Hmmm. We watch huge trucks filled with stones and silt, (and broken tree trunks) moving down the mountain heading for a modern-day sluice.

All along the Bonanza Road are swallow houses on tall poles painted in bright and cheerful colors. They are everywhere. I ask the tour guide at the dredge about them and learn a man in Dawson is trying to set a Guinness World Record. He needs to reach 3000 birdhouses and so far has set up 1500. He cuts them out and takes them to community gatherings and asks townspeople to paint them and screw them together and put them up if they have a place. The swallows seem to love them and him too, I’m sure.

There are two foxes along the road that trot out with great nonchalance. They aren’t red and fluffy, but are skinny and mottled. Hope they find some breakfast.

This afternoon we visit the Jack London museum. It’s small, consisting mostly of documents and photographs. The woman docent gives a talk about his life, focusing on his time in the Yukon. She really has a depth of knowledge and keeps our rapt attention for a good hour. London lived there only one year, prospecting for gold as a 21 year old enduring many hardships, (like a winter in the Yukon). He is quoted as saying, “I came looking for gold, and found myself.”  On the museum site is the cabin he lived in. It was brought into Dawson from the wilderness with the assistance of money from the Oakland museum, (he was born in Oakland). There was one caveat to the donation: they wanted the cabin. The compromise was such that there are now two cabins. The one in Dawson has the original logs from the bottom half of the structure and the one in Oakland has the original logs from the top half of the structure.

Just down the road is the cabin of Robert Service. Just like London’s, his is sod-roofed. Unfortunately, this cabin was “out of service” because of repairs being done on the foundation so we couldn’t go inside. “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold….”

We stroll along the dike on a path beside the Yukon River considering what it must have been like to live here during the gold rush days.

In the evening, Gold Tooth Gertie’s, beckons. This is Canada’s oldest gambling hall. We are enjoying a cocktail and the Can-Can dancers when one of them swoops Jim onto the stage for a dance lesson. He and three other victims try their best to keep up with the Klondike cuties. As a reward he's allowed to remove the purple garter she's wearing on her very long leg. I have it all on video. The whole experience brings him luck at the blackjack table and he wins back our entrance fee, (while I am losing it at the slot machines).

We cap the evening with a drive to the top of Midnight Dome. It’s seven miles to the top and the view is incredible. We enjoy it in the daylight even though it's way past 10pm.

Jack London's Cabin

Dance Lesson

View From Midnight Dome