RETIRED ON WHEELS: THE ALASKAN ADVENTURE Day 5 May 21, 2009 Whitehorse to Dawson City, YK

We did get a good start today and were actually out of the RV park by 8:30. I must admit we did this by not having breakfast. We stopped for breakfast as the Airport Chalet and then headed over to Soapy's to wash the truck and camper. It got pretty dirty the last week coming through the snow and dirt. We needed to get a few groceries prior to heading north so we stopped at the Superstore and stocked up. Prices are high here. A walking tour of the downtown area came next and then a quick stop at Starbuck's and we were on our way. Amazingly it was only 12:30.

We travelled out of town on the Alaska Highway. Just a short way out of town we turned north onto the Klondike Highway which is Hwy # 2. We had planned to stop at a hot springs just north of Whitehorse but somehow we missed the turnoff. By the time we realized it we decided to just keep going. The turnoffs are not well marked to many things in the north. The upside is the landscape is less littered.

The next place we did stop was the infamous Lake Laberge.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

This lake was made famous by the poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee" by Robert Service. It was one of my Dad's favorite poems.

When travelling in the Yukon along Hwy 2 you will pass through burn areas. There are signposts that state the year of the fire. A great portion of the area travelled from Whitehorse to Dawson City has been burned at least once during the last 50 years with a lot of the burn happening in the last ten years.

The most severe fire was at Fox Lake in 1998 which burned for over 3 months and cost over 2.2 million dollars to fight. The total area burnt was over 45000 hectares or 111,197 acres. This is a very fragile landscape, so the devastation is visible for many decades. The habitat for wildlife is forever altered.

As we travelled along the highway we came to a couple of areas where we stopped to take pictures. The first was a vista of the Yukon River.

One other vista was at the Five Finger Rapids which is on the Yukon River. The picture does not really show the rapids or how the islands form the five fingers without going right down to the river. It is about a 1 - 1 1/2 hour hike and due to time we decided not to go. From around this point in our travels today much of the foliage was well open, whereas earlier this morning there was only slight evidence of budding starting.

Five Finger Rapids

Twin Lakes ( one of them )

We arrived in Dawson City around 8 PM and after checking in and getting settled we had a late super and called it a night. The time was 11PM and it was still daylight.