May 31 – To Mayo, Yukon

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As I said we are headed in the direction of Dawson City but decided to take a little side to to see the old mining town of Keno City. The road is paved as far as Mayo so that is as far as we took the RV.

A fairly easy drive following the Yukon River valley. As we are going downstream, the road is mostly downhill.

The highway goes beside the famous Lake Laberge (from the poem The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service) but never did see it. We did see the deep blue of Fox Lake.

A lot of this area has huge forest fires in the not too distant past. Mostly we drove beside vast forests of the fast growing aspen and some fir tree that have replaced all the trees that burned.

Some nice views of the river and the mountains in the back.

For lunch we stopped at a place called Five Fingers Rapids. When the paddle wheelers had to pass here going upstream they would have to attach to cable from the shore and winch themselves through. It must have been tricky going downstream to try and keep a 200 foot long boat straight in a narrow passage.

This is the view from the highway. The boats had to pass on this side of the island as the other side was too shallow.

There was a long set of stairs and a path out to the riverside.

Jennie wasn’t much of a fan of going to the railing at the lookout at the end of the trail.

Who needs a lookout?

It must have been a tight fit.

A couple of the islands had this weird little arch at the end. Jennie thought it looked like a dog taking a drink of water.

Well the inevitable happened as we continued on. It was just much sooner than I expected. On the one patch of gravel road, we passed the one large truck we saw all day and smack. I am pretty sure there are windshield repairs places in Dawson. I just hope it doesn’t spread before then.

The place we are staying in Mayo is a motel with a small RV park in the back. He said he doesn’t really open until tomorrow but since we don’t need any hookups we said we could park for free.

Tomorrow we explore Keno City.

May 30 – Whitehorse, Yukon

A partly cloudy day with a high of 12C. There are supposedly a bunch of good museums in town but we don’t really like staring and reading static displays. We would much rather be outside so off we went for another hike.

Whitehorse has a great trail system in the hills just east of town. There is a huge set of hiking, mountain biking and cross country ski trails. They are very well marked, with maps at the key crossing and arrow posts at each junction.

Today we did what is called the Hidden Lakes Trail. During the last glacier period some of the blocks of ice got buried in the ground and stayed frozen a while after the glaciers had moved on. Once they melted they left huge holes that filled with ground and rain water. They have no inlet or outlet and are “hidden”.

We always read the information panels.

The trail looped around several small lakes, up and down the hills. We figure it was about 6 km total.

There were lots of views of mountains off in the distance.

We found this beautiful carved bench about half way around, on top of a hill. It must have been a lot of work to get it there.

Back down along the lake side.

Jennie caught this loon. I love the zoom on her camera. This picture was not cropped.

The view back from the other side of the lake. The bench is on top of the foreground hill in the middle of the picture.

More wildflowers, these are Yukon Lupines.  There were numerous Prairie Crocus everywhere we went.

After lunch at a viewpoint next to the Yukon River we headed back into town and got this shot of downtown Whitehorse.

 

We saw this interesting structure on somebody's front lawn. They obviously have a lot of bicycle rims.

Next photo stop was the “Log Skyscraper”. A 3 storey log building.

And finally the world’s largest weather vane. A real DC-3 mounted on a pedestal. It didn’t actually take much wind to get it to turn.

One of the huge vehicles used to build the highway.

We are leaving tomorrow to head up towards Dawson City but we are going to make a little side trip onto something called the Silver Trail to visit Keno City. I am pretty sure we will be out of touch for the next two days.

May 29 – Whitehorse, Yukon

We slept in pretty late today and then went for a hike around Miles Canyon, just outside of the city. One of the nearby mountains oozed some lava which turned into basalt columns. A river then carved a gorge between two lakes.

First you have to walk across this slightly shaky suspension bridge.

Carefully. It was windy as well.

Once across, we did a trail that hugged the cliff going upstream, looped back through the forest to come back along the cliff from downstream.

Lots of wildflowers were out.

We had a picnic lunch at a viewpoint looking back down on the hiking area.

We then went for a tour of the SS Klondike, a steam powered paddle wheeler that carried cargo and people between here and Dawson City before there was a road. It is over 200 feet long and could carry about 300 tons of goods yet only needed 40 inches of water. The river is very shallow in places. It ran from the 1930’s to 1955.

It is a national historic site run by Parks Canada, so we got in “free” with the annual pass we had purchased. We signed up for the guided tour.

Here is one cord of wood. The boiler would need to be fed, by hand, one pile like this every 1/2 hour.

The crew, cargo and second class passengers stayed and slept on the lower deck.

A second class ticket was $25. First class was only $35 but $10 was a lot back then.

Guess what this funnel was for. Chamber pots!

Up into the wheelhouse.

Occasionally then would run up on sandbars. To get off, they would lower these two poles over the side and jack the front of the boat up. The poles could pivot a bit and they would back up and then repeat until they were off.

The business end. It’s hard to believe those tiny rudders could control that long boat, especially one with a flat bottom and no keel.

The books said there was a scenic viewpoint up one of the mountains. The road went from paved to gravel to very uneven and rocky. We decided it wasn’t worth possibly damaging the CRV at this early stage and headed back to the RV and had a nice steak dinner.

Our body time clocks are way off here. Besides the 3 hour time difference from home, it is light very late and very early. Today the sun sets at around 11pm and rises at about 5am, meaning the birds start up about then as well. It never gets really dark.