We Saw Denali!

It may be a little hard to see it in the above picture, but we saw Denali on our tour today!  Considering we had 98% of our activities so far on this tour being rained on, we were happy for a shift in the clouds and being able to see the top part of Denali.  It never even rained on us during the tour.

We had to take a 699-mile detour to get from Dawson City to Tok, Alaska.  Several days of heavy rain washed out the highway called Top of the World Highway and our caravan was forced to take a detour to Tok.  That put us one day behind on our schedule, but it wasn't too bad, just two long days of driving on some of this area's worse roads (it's all relative, believe me).  The first really good day of weather was the day we went on the Discovery Sternwheeler Tour in Fairbanks.  We actually saw sunshine.

Tomorrow we head to Anchorage for five days.  We have a lot of activities in the area and some free time.  It may be cool weather, it may be rainy, windy, and cloudy, but we are enjoying it all!

On the Denali tour today we saw caribou, golden eagle, arctic ground squirrel, dall sheep, grizzly sow and two cubs, and two lynx.  The only thing we really didn't see was a moose.  That's okay -- I saw a moose when we were around Dawson City.

Dawson City, Yukon Territory

This picture was taken from the top of Dome Mountain looking North where the Yukon River is flowing out to the Bering Sea.  The island that you see is one of the places the locals kept their "barking dogs" during the summer months.  When the weather turned cold and the river froze, they'd get their dogs back to use their sleds to get around in the winter.

We have been gold panning (we didn't strike it rich), did a walking tour of downtown Dawson City (where the streets are packed dirt and the sidewalks are boardwalks), saw the restored Dredge #4 and learned how they operated during the gold rush era, and rested. 

We brought the cool weather with us.  It was 85 the day we arrived, but hasn't been above 60 since then and mostly overcast and rainy. 

We will be staying in Dawson another night because part of the Top of the World Highway washed away in the previous two days of rain.  This happens a lot up here according to the locals, and you just wait around until it gets fixed.  We are fortunate enough to be stuck in a campground -- the people who are up on the mountain now trying to go to Chicken, Alaska, or come to Dawson City, are stuck up on the road.  Our tour guide, Spike, said we'll just lose a day in Fairbanks; we were supposed to be there four nights. 

So we will remain fluid and see what transpires.  We've been averaging $5.00/gallon for diesel in Canada, and anxiously await returning to Alaska where it should be closer to $4.25/gallon!

This is the rear of the Dredge we toured.  It was misting the whole time we were touring and the inside was rather chilly! 

On our return from gold panning, we spotted a yearling moose standing in a pond eating leaves.  We were unable to get a picture, because the camera was buried in the back seat under all the gold panning paraphernalia.   Wayne promised we would see more moose along the trip -- I'll try to have the camera at the ready!

The Longest Day

Yesterday was the longest day of driving that we will have on the whole tour -- 337 miles.  That doesn't sound like much until you factor in there are 22 rigs plus a van pulling a trailer.  Throw into that mix a traffic accident that closed the highway for several hours, but our wait wasn't that bad as we came upon just as they were finishing.  The various bridges that are one-lane-at-a-time bridges with traffic lights at either end adds a bit of time to get us all across; and the final unknown - road construction.  

There was a stretch of construction that was several miles in length that had road base and dust -- so much that they had water trucks working continuously.  The pilot car would weave us from one side to the other around the working vehicles.  We now all have a matched hue of yellowish mud on our rigs/vehicles!  Wayne decided it is a badge of honor that we made it through the Klondike Highway and none of us should wash it off!  That and the knowledge that we have two more days of driving after we leave Dawson City - the start of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896 -- that are gravel/dirt roads.  We take a ferry across the Klondike River to get out of Dawson City, so I'll be sure and take pictures of that!

We arrived about two hours later than our planned arrival time -- people were tired, hungry, and it was 85 degrees and sunny outside.  When we finally got to bed around 10:00 PM, the sun in the sky would be about the same as 3:00 PM elsewhere in the lower 48 states.  Must be how it got the name of land of the Midnight Sun!

Thankfully we have a few days to be here and rest up for driving the next leg.  We get to go over the Top of the World Highway, which is the northernmost highway in Alaska -- not paved, just a "working dirt road."  

Tonight we pan for gold! 

Weather Vane - Yukon Style

Yesterday we drove by this airplane outside the National Aeronautics Museum and I thought it looked neat.  Today we drove by again and it had shifted positions -- Wayne read last night that it's a weather vane!  They have it on a pivoting arm and the whole plane swings to show which direction the wind is blowing -- hence the Yukon Style Weather Vane.  They say everything is bigger in the Yukon!

We also went to see Miles Canyon that flows into the Yukon River and walked over a suspension bridge.  The water is coming from glaciers and the color is beautiful -- hard to describe.  The whole tour went there yesterday, but we left because there wasn't enough parking for everyone.  I'm glad just the two of us went back to see it today.  It was much nicer and less crowded.

We head to Dawson City in the morning.  Wayne decided to make some seafood gumbo for dinner tonight - yum!

At Last - A Sunny Day!

Little did I realize when we left Hyder, Alaska, and toured up the Cassiar Highway through Dease Lake, Watson Lake, and Teslin (Yukon Territory), that we would be without internet service. 

The Fourth of July and days we spent in Skagway were the coldest, dampest, and windiest that we have had so far on our trip!  The layer-look was rampant.  You could tell the locals, because they were in shorts and flip flops, while the rest of us were layered up, hats, gloves, anything to help keep us warm. 

Spending the 4th of July in a small town and seeing a parade is the best way to spend the Fourth!  The kids parade was first, which was small but cute.  The big parade was amazing in its length for such a small town.  A group of bagpipe players and a small group of Royal Canadian Mounted Police in uniform were part of the parade.  Ships came and went while we spent four days there, helicopters and planes ferrying passengers, and of course the White Pass Yukon Railroad was right by the campground.  It was a busy place!

This picture kind of depicts the weather we had while there.  One night a man from Santa Fe, which is just north of Albuquerque, camped next to us.  The next night a venture crew that ferried in from somewhere packs and all came in and were headed out to do some hiking for a few days.  The 33-mile Chilkoot Trail is a popular hiking spot.

We arrived in Whitehorse to clouds and wind, but yesterday afternoon the sun finally made it's appearance.  We are all happy to see it!  It looks like it will be sunny today, too, and it's a free day for us.  We plan to go to the Canada Super Store for some groceries and tomorrow we head to Dawson City, Yukon Territory -- the place where the Klondike Gold Rush started. 

We currently have about 20 hours of daylight and when we arrive in Dawson City, we'll only have two hours of "night time."  It's called the Land of the Midnight Sun.  That will be our furthest point North on the tour -- we're only 150 miles from the North Pole.

Driving up out of Skagway we were on our own, meeting up at Carcross by 11:00 AM.  As usual, Wayne and I were the first ones out and we hit unbelievable fog all the way up the road.  We were happy that there wasn't a lot of traffic because it was very hard to see.  We didn't get a picture in front of the "Welcome to Alaska" sign that resembles the "Yukon Larger than Life" sign, because the fog was so thick we drove past it before we saw it and didn't figure you'd see the sign in a picture.

We are enjoying our trip and hope this finds everyone well!