The Yukon and British Columbia

Mining Dredge - Chicken, AK

Monday, June 06, 2011 – A little more about Chicken, AK.  The RV campground was pretty much an open parking lot, with hookups for electricity spaced every 15 feet or so around the perimeter.  Almost everyone else there was panning or digging for gold, still being mined in nearby diggings.  They were not very forthcoming about where we might find the mother lode, but you could easily imagine an old mining camp.  There was an old dredge on-site as well.  This whole building floated on the river as it took in and disgorged tons of gravel.  We also saw a mother moose with two babies this morning as she strolled through the camp.



Scenic(?) Views in the Fog

 It was still raining this morning, but we decided to drive the scenic Taylor Highway anyway.  The dirt road was slick in spots, and we could not see very much at all, but we reached the Canadian border without incident and drove on toward Dawson City on the Top of the World Highway, the weather improving as we went.

On the Ferry, Dawson City

You have to take a ferry (no charge, courtesy of the Yukon government) to cross the Yukon River and continue our journey through Dawson City and beyond.  The ferry crew miscalculated slightly the length of our rig, so we were somewhat hanging off the back as we crossed the river without mishap.  The current is quite strong, as it was in many of the un-dammed, wild Yukon rivers.  I took a movie of our crossing, and may be able to upload it at some point.  Dawson City has a strong mining history and many of the buildings are being refurbished in the old style (false-fronted buildings, etc.) mostly for tourist dollars but the effect was pleasing to me, less so to Susan. 

We spent the night in a free campground, next to another wild Yukon river, the Pelly.  The manager at the Klondike Resort across the street kindly supplied me with a free bolt, washer and nut for a loose bracket on the trailer.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 – We continued down the Top of the World Highway (Yukon Hwy 2) to Whitehorse.  Just outside Whitehorse (but we had no views, and, alas, no pictures) was a turnoff to Lake Lebarge made famous by Robert Service (and later Mark Lindsey) in “The Cremation of Sam Magee.”  We shopped for hardware (more nuts and bolts), food and gas in Whitehorse and drove through town.  At a stop in at a local rock shop we found out that we had already passed the best places to rockhound about 200 miles earlier, near Mayo.  The evening was spent in a provincial park campground ($12), Teslin Lake, about 150 miles from Watson Lake.  We had traveled this stretch between Watson Lake and Whitehorse on our trip north, about two weeks ago.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - Out of our campsite by 8:00 am, we reached Watson Lake before noon.  There we saw the somewhat famous forest of signs, and went to a planetarium-like movie of the Aurora Borealis, at the Northern Lights Centre.  Further on down the road, and back in British Columbia, we saw more moose, several bison, and two bears.  We crossed the Rocky Mountains at their most northern point, the Termination Range, and found a private RV park, at Toad Lake, where we could take showers, recharge batteries, watch TV, and publish this blog.