July 17 - Dawson City

We took it slow and made it about 250 miles on Saturday.  We've learned to drive slow all the time because we never know when an unmarked frost heave in the road is going to send the 5th wheel rockin' and rollin'.

We spent Saturday night at the Moose Creek government campground.  It was real nice - woods, fire pits, and they even provide the firewood.  The bad part - the mosquitoes just about carried us away when we went outside!  If we stood still for just a few seconds there would be a swarm of about 50 of them on us right now, and there were always some that found a spot we missed with the bug spray.  So we were happy to leave there bright and early.

The rest of the drive up to Dawson City wasn't the most scenic.  A lot of thick bush (mosquito heaven that is), with some mountains off in the distance. 

 

We rolled into Dawson City at about noon and set up camp at the Bonanza Gold RV Park.  Nice place, but like many of the campgrounds up here, we feel like we're camping in a parking lot.  All the hookups, plus cable TV and internet...but the internet is only turned on for 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours at night.  A bandwidth thing.

Dawson City is another Gold Rush town.  There are still some operating mines too.  We plan to do some gold panning at the government "claim".  All the other streams are off-limits as they have private claims on them.  We're prepared though - we bought gold pans in Skagway.  Just like the 1900 gold miners, we got our supplies there and made our way all the way to the Klondike gold fields.  Now we just gotta hit pay dirt and get some "color" in the pan!

Dawson City is also a tourist town.  Today is the last day of a week-long music festival, so we're lucky to have rolled in when everyone was leaving.  They told us the place was packed full last week.

We unpacked the motorcycle and took a ride into town.  It is an interesting place.  Highway 2 (or the Klondike Highway) is paved, but all the streets in town are dirt.  Gives it that old gold rush town feeling and that's the way it seems they want to keep it.  Lots of shops, old buildings, and wooden sidewalks.

And they have the only casino in the Yukon.  It's named Diamond Tooth Gerties.  Can't wait to check this place out.

It was sunny and 72, so we decided to take a ride up to Midnight Dome (elev. 2,890 feet) for a birds-eye view of the city.  And a great view it was of Dawson City, the Klondike River, and even our parking lot....er campground (middle left).

Here's the view of Dawson City...

And another nice view of the Klondike River.

 

Got to see a paraglider taking off from the mountain too.as an added bonus.

Watched him sail all the way down to Dawson City.

It was real hard to go to bed here in Dawson.  Here's what it looked like at midnight at the Bonanza Gold.  Pretty strange to watch Jay Leno when it's still daylight....  We covered up all the windows though to make it as dark as we could and hit the sack.

Tomorrow we finally hit the gold fields in search of the Mother Lode.