Day 14 and 15 in Dawson City, first time

This morning I slept in and caught up from 14 hr days on the road. Since we got alate start we decided to do the cultural thing in Dawson City.

There was the mining and history museum to start with. Now let me tell you, Dawson City is a restored bunch of old mining type business buildings, and more new buildings trying to look old. When first I visited there in ’05, I snubbed my nose at the yuppy type of restoration as I drove hurriedly through town.

....But this time I went to the museum. There was a cute gal that narrated us through the period of the gold rush.

Then there was a 30 minute movie done in the late '50. I sat through 'City of Gold' What a
movie. By the time that I had suffered the miners trip from Skagway, up over the Chilkoot Pass, and then down the 400 miles of water ways to get to the gold, I was a believer.

Those guys earned whatever they get/got out of those hills, be it a buck from us tourists or from what little gold is left in the streams.

So we spent the rest of the day looking around town at the Dawson City Visitor center, and the North West Territory Visitor center. We spent an hour with the Eskimo girls at the Inuvik (NWT) VC. What a hoot they were. Doug was really getting hyped up over the, soon to be, ride to Inuvik, as was I.

We learned that there were 250 stern wheeler river boats running on the Yukon River at one time. They even had a grave yard for old out of service River Boats. We found it, and walked around the old hulls for a while. These things were a couple hundred feet long, but were mostly a pile of wood and old boilers. They hardly looked like boats any longer, but I could still here the captains calling out orders from the past.



There seemed to be a number of 'around the world' bikes gathering. There may be a large assault on
the 'Dempster Hwy' (road to Inuvik) in the making. Today was Wed, and we learned that there was a bike gathering to happen over the coming weekend. I'll bet my DR350 and Doug’s NX250 will impress the hell out of them. :) We planned to be on The Dempster for Thursday and Friday. Maybe we would be back for the Weekend bike event.

Getting advice on whether to take the road or not is all dependent on the weather, and no one seem sure of what that will bring. There seems to be some real slick clay sections that are like Ice if it is raining.

Our 'go' decision will likely be made in the morning when we look at the sky. At any rate, the road is about 450 miles long. There is gas at the 232 mile mark. If the road isn't slick it is cake, but...... The best we could do is a day up and a day back. I imagine you won't hear from me for a while longer than that.

Well that was quick. We got out to Klondike Corners, where the Dempster starts, and had gassed up. While we put on the last of our gear a fellow comes over and asks if we are headed for Inuvik. We say yes, and he says that he was up there for a whole day waiting on a Ferry to take him across the first river.

He says that the river has risen, and the ferries will not be running for a few days. In another 15 minutes we would have just passed him on the road, and would have learned all that the hard way. So that burst that bubble. Doug and I went to Plan B to head over to Alaska, to see Valdez, Homer, Anchorage, and etc…..