A Trip With The Professional Driver

Peggie's pictures, Bill's narrative:

It is the end of the season, and we had three no-ship days surrounding a single-ship day, so we talked our employers into a four day weekend. The plan was to go to Dawson City, YT, where gold was discovered in 1896, setting off the gold rush that was responsible for the establishment of Skagway, the creation of The Yukon Territory, and the opening up of Alaska and NW Canada.
Since then, over $13,000,000,000 in gold has been mined. We needed to see this place!

So we woke up early, filled our travel mugs with coffee, and hit the road. We decided we could stop for breakfast in Whitehorse and pick up some other items while we were there. We left Skagway at 7:30.

This was our view at Fraser. (Canadian Customs) Fraser Lake was warmer than the air, so a nice fog was laid in, just over the water.

We had a nice breakfast at the Edgewater Hotel in Whitehorse, then continued up the North Klondike Highway to Dawson City. We crossed the Yukon River on the third of four bridges that cross the river. One is on the Alaska Highway, so we crossed it in '95. Two is in Whitehorse and we crossed it last summer going to get Peggie's haircut. Four is on the Dalton Highway along side the pipeline, and we crossed it in '95 also. So now we have driven across all the bridges that cross the Yukon.
Not far north of the bridge we came to this.

Five Finger Rapids is the only rapids remaining on the river now that Schwatka Lake covers the Whitehorse Rapids. During the first stampede 7123 homemade boats attempted the 550 mile float from Lake Bennett to Dawson. Some of the boats capsized in the swift water coursing between the islands making up the five channels.
We arrived at Dawson City B&B in the early evening and met our hosts, Jon and Inday. We got settled and found an open restaurant (many are closed for the season) called the Sluice Box Lounge. If that name won't get you in the door, what's wrong with you. The food was remarkably good. So we returned the second night.
Meanwhile, Inday was very helpful in telling us about places to go. One of the places was Midnight Dome. It is a mountain behind the town where early residents held a solstice party to see the midnight sun. They were dissappointed to find that the sun actually sets at 11:30 in Dawson. Oh, well. Here is what we saw on Saturday morning.

The fog was only on the river. The river coming in just below the fog is the Klondike. The town is on the delta created at the junction of the two rivers. The big river is the Yukon. If you zoom in, you can see a small houseboat floating in the Yukon.
Turning to the east we followed the course of the Klondike and got a picture of the earthworms left behind by the large dredges brought in by the large companies that bought up most of the claims.

These mounds are made as floating dredges dump the waste rock aside as they move along the stream bed. You can see the relative size of the mounds, called earthworms, due to the obvious similarity. Dredges are now illegal, as a means of extracting minerals. The Klondike and feeder creeks were dredged for miles. Look at Googleearth to get a good idea. As you can see, the mounds are flattened and reclaimed for use in various ways. There is even the attractively named Dredge Pond Subdivision up river a ways. We could hardly resist purchasing one of the seen-ick lots.

I really wanted to see Bonanza Creek, where the first, or Discovery Claim was made.

Here I am confirming that all the gold has been found. Actually, you can't take anything from this claim. But I didn't give up. Bring on the heavy equipment.

Big toys for big boys. This bad boy probably last pushed rock before I was born.

So we went on to Claim 6, which is public, and you can legally pan for gold. If you bring your own pan. Oh, well.

On Sunday we checked out and headed to the Top of the World Highway to go to Chicken, AK and on to Tok. But first you have to cross the Yukon River, without a bridge. So, to the George Black.

George Black is a ferry. Don't snicker. Check the spelling of ferry!

Yes, we actually trusted our lives to this little craft. So now we have crossed the Yukon at all five highway crossings and lived to tell about it.

The Top of the World Highway is appropriately named. It stays at or near the tops of the mountains, instead of going up and down along the sides as usual. At the Alaska border the name of the road changes to the Taylor Highway, and the surface goes from paved to dirt, and the road narrows considerably, and drops off the top down into the creek bottom. And earlier in the summer the creek did what creeks do and washed out the road. They are getting it back into shape, but we had to wait about an hour for a pilot car to take us through the construction.

But eventually we came back on top and got this view. You really have to zoom in and see the white capped peaks between the last blue mountains and the sky.

That is the Alaska Range. At least 300 miles away!!!!

We were blessed with clear skies for the entire trip. This picture looks like all of Alaska had clear skies.

We spent the night in Tok then drove home today.

We made four border crossings without any hassles. Changed time zones four times without getting confused. We drove over 1100 miles with no "adventures." The only four-legged animal we saw was a coyote. If we had four more days off, we would turn around and do the whole thing in reverse. Indescribable.