Dawson City, Yukon Territory - June 20th to 21st, 2022
We love visiting small towns. We love them even better when they have visible historical ties to the past. Visiting Dawson City is like taking a step back in time, into the Klondike Gold Rush era.
Monday we drove from Carmacks to Dawson City. From the RVing to Alaska Facebook group, we knew the highway was not in good shape and there were a couple of long sections of construction, with pilot cars and a dirt surface. We did not plan many stops along the way to allow plenty of time to get there.
We got up early, packed up, and were on the road by 8 am. We stopped at the Five Fingers Rapids viewpoint, but did not take the short 1 mile trail down for a closer viewer. The rapids were a notorious hazard in the Yukon River for the river paddle boats, especially if they were also pushing a barge in front of them. Four small islands in the river created five swift-moving channels for the boats to navigate through. A cable anchored on the shore was used to help them maneuver through.
For lunch, we stopped at the Tintina Trench Rest Area. The Tintina Trench is the largest fault in North America. We ate our picnic lunch inside of the van, where there were no mosquitos, while enjoying the view. Have we said how much we like having everything with us in the van?
The highway had plenty of pot holes, dips, and rough patches. However, there was not plenty of traffic. Another car would pass by going the other direction about once every five or ten minutes, sometimes longer. That meant that Keith could use the full width of the highway to steer around the obstacles and didn’t have to slow down quite as much as he would have otherwise. However, Keith found it tiring to constantly concentrate on the road conditions to make sure he didn’t hit a pot hole going too fast. So we stopped at several rest areas and viewpoints so he could stretch his legs and relax for a few minutes.
As we were about to leave one of the pull-outs, we spotted a fox trotting down the highway towards us. He had a little limp. Even after he saw us, he kept coming. He stopped a couple of times to pounce on prey in the tall grass alongside the road. He looked like he had caught something and was carrying it away in his mouth. He got pretty close to us before he turned into the woods. It is always a treat to witness animals in their natural habitat living their lives.
As we got closer to Dawson City, the highway drops down and runs alongside the Klondike River. It wasn’t long after we said, “this looks like prime moose habitat” when Keith spotted one in the tall bushes near the highway. He stopped right next to it, probably a little too close. As soon as we stopped, the moose bolted away in the opposite direction, with two little babies right behind her! How cute!
Not far from Dawson City is the turn-off for the Dempster Highway, which goes all the way to the Arctic Ocean. It’s a long trek on a rough, isolated road. It is a gravel road with limited services. It is 456 miles to Inuvik and another 87 miles to reach Tuktoyaktuk on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. We considered it, but decided it wasn’t worth the amount of time it would take out of our itinerary just to say we made it to the Arctic Ocean.
It was just a little past 2 pm as we approached Dawson City, so we decided to take the side trip down Bonanza Creek Road to check out Dredge No. 4. Bonanza Creek Road quickly turns into a rough gravel road, but it is passable in a two-wheel drive vehicle as long as you take your time. It took us about 20 to 30 minutes to reach Dredge No. 4 National Historic Site.
Dredge No. 4 is the largest of the dredges that were used from the early 1900’s up to the early 1960’s. They are used to mine for gold. Most of the gold is not large nuggets, but fine dust. It is mostly concentrated down near the bedrock. The dredge machines had large buckets on the front that would scoop up the ground, process the dirt inside the dredge, sift out the gold and spew the rest out the back. It was much more efficient than mining by hand with pick and shovel. However, it really made a mess of the landscape. We had driven past miles of dredge tailings that snake around the area for miles.
When we arrived at the dredge, they were about to start the last guided tour at 3 pm. You are supposed to buy the tour tickets in town, but they let us join the tour on the honor system. The tour guide wrote us a receipt to take to the Dawson City Visitor Center and pay. The tour is $15 (Canadian) per person. The tour and our tour guide were excellent. The tour lasted over an hour. We learned a lot about gold mining and how dredges work. Well worth the money, the time, and the effort to drive out Bonanza Creek Road. This is also the area where the first gold was discovered that triggered the Klondike Gold Rush.
After checking into the Gold Rush RV Park in downtown Dawson City, we walked over to the visitor center to pay for our tour. Right after we walked inside, it started to pour down rain. We waited a few minutes, but it didn’t seem like it was going to let up soon. We zipped up our rain jackets and walked down the street to Annabelle’s Noodle House for dinner. We were celebrating Ann’s birthday, so a restaurant named Annabelle’s seemed like the appropriate choice. The cuisine is Thai and the food was delicious. We ordered the spring rolls as an appetizer, which came with a lovely spicy chili dipping sauce. Ann ordered the Thai chicken curry soup with noodles and Keith got the chicken Pad Thai. Very tasty!
The rain was a little lighter after dinner. Despite the cool rain, Ann was in the mood for ice cream. The Klondike Cream & Candy store one street over seemed like a great choice. We dodged the large puddles in the street and made our way over there. The streets of Dawson are all dirt, except for the highway. There are wooden boardwalks for the pedestrians, so they can attempt to stay out of the mud. However, the large puddles in the streets seem to be at the corners, where the pedestrians need to cross. The one intersection was so flooded that we had to take a wide detour around the intersection to get across without soaking our feet. Luckily the soil is rather sandy, so the mud does not cake onto your shoes.
The ice cream was pretty tasty. Ann had two scoops of hand-dipped ice cream in a waffle cone, while Keith had a vanilla shake. He was glad they gave him the choice to have hard or soft ice cream in his shake, because he much prefers hard ice cream. There is no place to sit inside the store, but there was a gazebo just across the street, so that’s where we headed with our ice cream. It was nice to find some shelter to eat our treats out of the rain.
By 10 pm, the rain had stopped and the sun came out. The summer solstice was the following day, the longest day of the year. We learned that people go up to the Midnight Dome, up Dome Road, just outside of town to watch the sun set on the solstice, June 21st. It was only June 20th, but we don’t like crowds. We sat there, studying the weather forecasts and debating whether we were going up to the Dome that night or waiting until the next evening. Even though more rain was in the forecast, it looked so nice out at the time, that we decided to risk it. So, at 10:30 pm, we drove up Dome Road to the top.
From the Dome, there are 360 degrees of views of the surrounding area, including town, the Yukon River, the Klondike River and the surrounding mountains. The sun partially hid behind some clouds for a while, but it gave the clouds some wonderful color. A partial rainbow formed behind us. The sun reflected off the Yukon River. It was gorgeous. Good decision. However, the actual sunset was not until 12:52 am. That is way past our bedtime!
The air got pretty chilly and the skeeters came out. We bundled up in some warm jackets to stay warm. For some reason, the mosquitos just hung out on top of Ann’s rain jacket hood on top of her head, but left her face alone. Since they couldn’t bite her through the hood, she was just fine with that.
While we were there for a couple of hours, a couple of local women looked like they were harvesting spruce tips. We learned about spruce tips being consumed by the indigenous people for its high source of vitamin C. We wondered if they were going to make some spruce tip tea.
There were about one to two dozen people up there with us. Some of them came and went while others stayed for sunset. We decided to stay as well. Taking in a wonderful view for a couple of hours was not a bad way to spend our time, even if it was past our bedtime! OK, we’re sounding like retired, old people. Well, we guess that is our identity now.
Tuesday was National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada. Festivities were starting outside the Dänojà Zho Cultural Center at 11:30 am. We managed to finish a load of laundry and get our showers in by about 10 am, which left us plenty of time to walk around the town a little before the ceremonies started. It was raining some, but not too hard.
At 11:30 am, the event started with a native group who sang and danced to the beat of the drums. Following a couple of speeches, a band from Whitehorse started playing a set of country music. It seemed a rather odd choice of music for the holiday, but the leader of the band was half indigenous. He grew up learning country music because it was illegal for him to practice any of his native culture, language, or religion. He explained that it was even illegal for him to wear the vest he now wears, a fringed vest made from animal hides with bead work because it is regalia of a First Nation.
The rain stopped and the sun came out just in time for the festivities. We only stayed for the first country song, then headed back to the van for lunch. Of course, by the time we finished lunch, it started lightly raining again. The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring Dawson. In addition to the various hotels, shops, and restaurants downtown, there was the Grand Palace Theater, the Masonic Temple, a couple of churches, and some old homes. Jack London’s house and Robert Service’s cabin were also interesting. Jack London wrote stories about his experience with the Klondike Gold Rush while Robert Service wrote poems about the same time period.
A couple of old buildings have been left unrestored to illustrate what happens to buildings built on top of permafrost. They were the most lopsided buildings we have ever seen. It is a wonder they are still standing.
Our wandering, of course, brought us by the Klondike Cream & Candy store again. It was not raining when we ordered our ice cream, but naturally it started again as we sat outside eating our treats. We were too lazy to move so we just got a little wet sitting there.
At the end of the Klondike Highway, on the north side of town, is the George Black Ferry, which runs 24/7 during the summer months. The service is free of charge for vehicles to cross the Yukon River over to the Top of the World Highway. We walked over to the ferry landing to check it out. The ferry is only large enough to haul two large RV’s across the river at a time. The ferry does not tie up at the landing, it just folds down a ramp onto the gravel landing and uses its engines to keep the ferry up against the shore as the vehicles unload and load.
As we were walking back from the ferry landing, the Firefighters Museum caught our eye. We keep saying we are not big on museums, but somehow we keep going to them. The doors were wide open and the shiny, restored horse-drawn fire engine was dazzling. The museum was small and the entry fee was a donation. OK, we’re game. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the museum, but we did find some of it fascinating. There is actually another building that is part of the museum, but we did not stick around for the person running the museum to let us into that building. It contained more modern fire trucks. We were getting hungry for dinner so we headed back to our Red Tail Lodge (our van) to make dinner.
We spent only a couple of days in Dawson City. There were still more things to see and do, but we felt like we got a good taste of the town. Participating in local events such as National Indigenous Peoples Day and the midnight sun up at Midnight Dome helped us feel more connected to the people who live there. We don’t know if we’ll have a chance to return to Dawson City, but we have not ruled it out. Dawson City will always have a warm place in our hearts.
Check out our related video: Dawson City, Yukon Territory
(Ann)