Today we started driving towards Inuvik on the 737 kms of gravel road called the Dempster Highway. The morning began with a thorough scrubbing as we didn’t know when the next shower opportunity would arise. The van was dumped and filled with fresh water and fuel as there are very few services and fuel options on this stretch of highway. The first fuelling option is 369 km in!

After breakfast we spent 3 hours updating our blog since we were three days behind. We stopped at the Danoja Zho Cultural Centre and learned about the Tr’ondek Hwech’in people, the original people of the Klondike River. A 14 minute video introduced their culture and language and talked about their interaction with the white people that came during the Gold Rush. One focus of the museum is the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Residential School Program where young aboriginal youth were taken from their families and culture and forced to adapt to the culture and values of the white people, often enduring abuse in the process.

Next up was the Dempster Highway Information Centre where we picked up our Dempster Highway Passports and enquired about further information on tours to Tuktoyaktuk. We then went to buy bear spray and a bear bell just to be safe in bear country.

By now it was late afternoon and we had a quick chicken taco before setting off on our Dempster Highway adventure. A few kilometres into the trip we discovered a crack in the windshield.

Our campsite for the night is at the beautiful Tombstone Mountain Yukon Government Campground, 72 km into the highway. We celebrated with a fine home cooked dinner and called it a day.

First stop this morning was the Keno Mining Museum. This is truly worth seeing and is quite extensive considering the small size of the town.

On the way back to the Klondike Highway we stopped in Mayo and visited Binet House Interpretive Centre and had a long conversation with the lady at the museum. She turned out to be a former chief and very active in the process of achieving self-governance for her tribe. The photos on the wall depicted life in the 1900s and included images of her ancestors who had been involved in the development of her communities.

Once back on the Klondike Highway and heading towards Dawson City, we only stopped at the Tintina Trench which extends hundreds of kilometres between Yukon and Alaska and is the largest fault in North America. The bedrock in this area has shifted a minimum of 450km laterally.

We were soon near Dawson City and drove down Bonanza Creek Road to visit the historic Dredge No. 4, the largest wooden hulled bucket-line dredge in North America. These large machines sifted tons of gravel and rock in rivers and creeks and sifted out the gold.

Now it was time to find a campground in Dawson City and we lucked out at the Gold Rush Campground and RV Park at 4th Avenue and York Street, conveniently located right downtown. We set out to do a walking tour of the city, picked up some groceries and then visited Diamond Tooth Gerties for a show.

Now at 9PM, we were really hungry and headed off to the Drunken Goat, a Greek restaurant and bar for a souvlaki dinner.

Dead tired, we fell into bed.

Tomorrow we will head up the Dempster Highway and will be without Internet and phone service for several days. We will post blog entries as soon as we can.

We left our wonderful campsite telling ourselves that we would definitely stay there again.

Our first stop today was at the remains of the Montague House, an early roadhouse on the stagecoach route between Whitehorse and Dawson City.

We passed through Carmacks and stopped at the Tage Cho Hudan Interpretive Centre to learn about the Northern Tutchone people. Of particular interest was the coming of age custom for a girl which involved her staying in a brush camp away from her people with her mother and grandmother preparing a special hat for her to wear. She was not allowed to look out from under this hat and learned to focus, concentrate, bead and sew.

Another ingenious tool we saw was the bear spear walking stick. This was used when a bear charged. One end was placed in the ground and the other pointy end impaled the bear when it attacked.

It was time for an ice cream and we stopped at Coal Mine Campground and visited a snack bar with all kinds of funny signs.

Next up was the Five Finger Rapids lookup. The Five Finger Rapids are a navigational hazard for watercraft and many early rafts flipped over trying to traverse them.

There was lots of road construction on this section of highway and tons of dust. We stopped for gas and Ruth took this picture out of the front window.

We turned onto the Silver Trail, Highway 11, and drove to Keno City, a small town with a population of 12 in the winter. Here we found the Keno City Hotel, a snack bar and the Keno City Mining museum. The museum was just closing but we will take the time tomorrow to see it. We asked about a tour at the nearby silver mine and were told that there were no tours available, but that there was a gold panner in town who would possibly take us to pan for gold at his claim. Behind the museum and down by the river is a campground and we parked the van and Lucien, the gold panner, drove by with his red truck. We stopped him and had a great chat about life in Keno City but unfortunately weren’t able to take him up on the gold panning offer because of the cost involved.

We walked back up to the town for dinner at the Keno City Snack Bar and had a wonderful freshly made pizza.

 

Keno City has very colourful people and we met a couple of them in the restaurant and we were told about the Art and Music festival that was in town and the campfire that was to take place that evening at Patrick’s private home.

The town itself looks like a semi abandoned miner’s town with a bit of hippy culture and arts community. We had a really fun time talking to people and taking pictures.

Our morning began with housekeeping. A thorough tidying up was followed by a good cleaning. Everything got vacuumed, shaken out, wiped, etc. The dog got a good brushing and we both had a long shower. This was followed by a well deserved breakfast where we discussed our plans for the day. We filled up with water, dumped and said goodbye to Martin, our campground host, and his dog “Big Man” and set off for Whitehorse to visit some more museums.

Our first museum was the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre. This museum concerns itself with the land bridge that existed between Siberia and Alaska at the time of the last ice age when the ocean levels were lower because of the amount of water that was frozen. The museum is modern, interactive and well worth visiting.

The next stop was next door at the Yukon Transportation museum. Martin had to take a picture of the world’s largest weathervane – an iconic DC-3 airplane! This particular aircraft was built in 1942 and spent much of its working life in the Yukon.

In the museum we listened to a talk by Michael Gates, the curator of a museum in Dawson City and a well known author who writes about Yukon history. In his talk and reading he focused on a hike on a historic trail.

The museum included displays of three different canoes – sealskin, birch bark and dugout, typical for natives in various areas of the Yukon. We also saw various vintage vehicles, trains, a replica of the Queen of the Yukon aircraft and various photographs.

The last museum before departing Whitehorse was the Copperbelt Railway and Mining Museum. This unfortunately was a bit of a disappointment as none of the staff seemed to have any idea of what the museum was even about. We did ride a small train for two kilometers, mostly in silence save for the diesel engine noise since the audio system did not work.

We left the Alaska Highway and are now heading up the Klondike Highway towards Dawson City.

Those of you who have been following will be aware that we stop at any and all cinnamon bun cafes. Today we stopped at the Braeburn Lodge which is one of the stops on the 1,000 mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race. They also have HUGE cinnamon buns that will feed 4 people! Well, we proved them wrong and split one between the two of us. It did mean no dinner tonight.

Thirty Kilometers down the road we stopped at the Twin Lakes Yukon Government campground and chose a site and went for a swim in one of the twin lakes. The water was not quite as cold as the North Sea in Denmark had been. This was not enough, and we decided not to forgo the opportunity to take out kayak out for a ride. What a treat! Beautiful warm evening sunshine, calm clear waters and a gentle breeze.