South on the Klondike Highway or Whitehorse, Round 2

Saturday, June 27, 2009 -  Day 58

We pulled out of Dawson City this morning around 09:00 AM. (A surprisingly early start for the Lewis’.) The temperature was 9C, under a mostly sunny sky. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, ”Gold Fever”; there are tailings from the gold dredges all around Dawson City.  I didn’t realize till we started driving that they extend about 8 miles past the city on both sides of the highway.  Past this point however the forest starts creeping back to the side of the road and things get a little more scenic.  The Klondike Highway is in fairly good condition with a few gravel sections and some frost heaved areas, but nothing at all like the dirt track that they pass off as the Taylor Highway, east of Chicken, AK.

Rain started falling when we approached the Carmacks area and continued almost all the way into Whitehorse.  We stopped at the overlook of Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River.  These rapids apparently were quite the curse to river navigators during the Gold Rush years and many riverboats have been wrecked there.  From the top of the bluff it didn’t look that bad to me.  All perspective I suppose.  We wanted to stop at Lake Laberge, made famous by Robert Service, in the Cremation of Sam McGee, but it was raining buckets at the time, so we wimped out.

 

As I am writing this I forgot to mention that yesterday, we had wandered down to the river where some large tents had been setup with an even larger “FINISH” sign.  Apparently, this was the weekend of the Yukon River Quest – 740 Km or 460 miles along the Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson City.  This is apparently the longest canoe and kayak race in the world. (I drove for seven hours today 332 miles and my butt was sore!) The race is conducted over the course of four days, but a few teams had finished yesterday with a total in water time of 40 hours and 52 minutes.  Incredible.  I guess they didn’t have any trouble at Five Finger Rapids either.

We intend to spend a couple of days in Whitehorse, just looking around and catching some of the things that had been closed when we came through here in the middle of May.  All the ice is now off the River; the trees are in full leaf and wild flowers are growing along the roadsides. It has changed considerably! We are also scheduled for an oil change on Monday.  As of today we have travelled 7779 miles!