Dawson City to Whitehorse

Dawson City to Whitehorse

This stretch of road is the beginning of the Klondike Loop, coming in the opposite direction from Whitehouse to Dawson City, and then over the Top of the World Highway.  We see a lot of fifth wheelers and large RVs going by.  We have done a lot of these roads backwards from the norm.

We came to the entrance to the Dempster highway.  It goes 400 miles out to Inuvik and then you turn around and come back 800 miles of hard driving.   We have talked to a lot of people who have done it, and they have said there is nothing out there.  I asked one man if he saw any wildlife, and he said,” One rabbit and two mice.”    We turned on to it anyway, went across the bridge and read the signs, and then turned around and headed back down the highway.  There are no services of any kind of this dirt road.   We realized that the expense, the time, and the wear and tear on our vehicle isn’t worth it.  John talked about having  bragging rights, but who gets exited when you say you’ve been to Inuvik?

We went through Carmacks, where George Carmack (you know, the guy who discovered gold on the Klondike), had a roadhouse for a couple of years.  It is a very pleasant place, with a mile long boardwalk along what is here a lazy Yukon.

We spent the night at Pelly’s Crossing, a place where the Hudson Bay Company had an n outpost.  There is a Ft. Selkirk nearby and the natives here are called the Selkirk Indians.  They only just completed an agreement with the Canadian Government in 1997, and have moved to Pelly’s Crossing since then.

We passed Five Finger Rapids, which gave all of the travelers’ fits.  There are four big rocks, and five possible passages through here.  The one closest to shore turned out to be the best, but many lost their boats here, until they dynamited the rocks.

On the opposite shore is a clear cut that was actually done to get wood for the sternwheelers.

Like so many places, there was a huge forest fire through here, and fireweed lives up to its name as being the first plant to regenerate after a fire.  Some of this are was burned in 1858!  We talked to a man in Carmacks who said that every hundred years, all of the Yukon burns.   The magenta color is magnificent, with the black sticks above it.  And the fragrance is light and beautiful.

As we enter Whitehorse, it is one of the few places where we have backtracked.  We are stopping here to clean, do laundry, get propane, take long showers,  use the internet and generally catch our breath before we head to Skagway and meet John’s sister and her family who are stopping next Tuesday on a cruise ship.  It will be fun to meet them at the dock!  Her daughter and husband have a baby we have never seen.

So, we have already  blogged about the trip over the White Pass into Skagway.
We will cross from the Yukon Territory in Canada into Alaska once again.   We won’t be reporting for a couple of days - - our last days in Alaska before we really head south. Today is our 68th day.