Yukon Territory: June 12-16, 2005
Journals
Sunday we did an easy drive from Walker's Continental Divide Campground to White Horse, Yukon. Sure is nice to be back on some better quality roads! We're thinking twice now about doing the entire Dalton Highway (highway that runs north out of Fairbanks, Alaska for 450 miles to the Arctic Ocean-dirt and gravel all the way). If we do decide to drive the Dalton, we'll be leaving the trailer behind somewhere. It takes 4-5 days to complete the Dalton, so we'd have some other interesting options if we don't do it. Also, we'll drive partway up it no matter what to at least reach the Arctic Circle-as if we need more sunlight! More on the Dalton after we reach a decision. We camped outside Whitehorse on Sunday and Monday nights at Takhini Hot Springs-nice pools and campground. We did errands in Whitehorse on Monday and just relaxed a bit. Tuesday morning, we turned north again off of the Alaska Highway and on to the Klondike Loop which consists of 3 different roads. The Klondike Highway runs from Whitehorse to Dawson City-we did the first 200 miles or so of this moderately rough road on Tuesday, and spent the night at a Yukon Provincial Campground-middle of nowhere, but nice. Wednesday we only had about 100 miles into Dawson City, where we decided to stay at an RV park right in town-the other parks were a few miles out of town, and not too nice looking. Kind of expensive, but worth it because we checked out town on our bikes. As Tuesday was our anniversary (couldn't really go out to eat where we were), we went out for dinner on Wednesday evening in Dawson City. After that, we headed out to Diamond Gertie's Gambling Parlor where they put on a nightly cancan girl show, supposedly historical. $6 to get into a casino because of the show! But, they had $2 blackjack tables-I could play all night with that limit! I did play for a while on $20, but was down to only about $5. Lisa never plays, but she was watching the action and when a couple people left the table, she sat down to play. I pulled out another $20, and we played for quite a while. After a couple of particularly good hands, we got up-ahead only $6, but she helped pull me out of the rut! We left the casino around 12:30am, still totally light out. I think we walked over there about 10:30pm, sun still shining brightly-needed sunglasses! We wanted to spend two nights in Dawson City, but the campground was super expensive, and one of those RV parks where there is only enough room to park, and barely put out your awning-not our style. However, we explored on Wednesday and found a very nice provincial park on the other side of the Yukon River from Dawson City-$12CN. Problem is, you have to take a ferry across the river as there is no bridge! Since this is our route into Alaska anyway, we decided to fuel up the truck, ride over on the ferry, and stay right on the river in very nice sites. The ferry is free, and runs all the time, so there was no problem heading back to the other side on Thursday for a good bike ride. Plus, now we are reading to roll on Friday morning up the Top of the World Highway 67 more miles into Alaska, and then down the Taylor Highway to rejoin the main Alaska highway. Check out the ferry photos-small ferry, but they load even the biggest rigs on there! We plan to reach Tok, Alaska (rhymes with poke) on Friday, where we need to decide about the Dalton. If we do decide to do the complete Dalton, we'll be heading into Fairbanks after Tok. If not, we'll do something different. Hope everyone is enjoying the summer wherever you are!
Click any of the above photos to enlarge the image!