We have a confession to make. After writing the blog entry for yesterday, we snuck out and went to the 10PM Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Show and what fun it was! Ruth even snapped some pictures of the gamblers!

After the show we walked around Dawson City for a bit. The light was just wonderful at 11:15PM.

The morning was very busy. We started with three huge loads of laundry and while the mobile windshield repair guy was climbing on the hood of the van, we did a thorough house-cleaning. After finishing up our chores we headed to the Dempster Highway Information Centre to show our Dempster passports that indicated that we had visited all the required sites and were now eligible for the grand prize of Canadian Diamonds. We are very positive that we will win this prize as there are less than 160 entries so far.

We still had a stamp to get for our Yukon passport so we headed to the Dawson City Museum. It shows the history and culture of the local natives, the Klondike gold fields and the development of Dawson City, including the establishment of the first banks in Dawson, one of which was a CIBC. Prior to the banks arriving, bills were paid with nuggets and gold dust.

Now we definitely had to leave Dawson as it was already 1PM. We crossed the Yukon River on the ferry and started the Top of the World Highway towards Alaska. It started out paved…. Soon it was no longer paved and the Dempster Highway was great in comparison. The border crossing had wonderful pavement and the scenery is absolutely beautiful up there.

We stopped at an abandoned traditional roadhouse that had been occupied off and on by different owners.

We arrived in Chicken, Alaska which got its name because the founders didn’t know how to spell Ptarmigan, a bird that looks like a chicken and is the state bird of Alaska.  It was just supposed to be an ice cream stop, but turned into a free night of camping and a lovely chicken pot pie dinner, followed by a blueberry/apple pie dessert, followed by a beer. We got to know Aaron, a student who worked at the restaurant to support his university education and talked to a number of the fellow campers and people at the saloon.