We stayed at another tight campground in Whitehorse – Pioneer RV park. Not only were the sites narrow enough that we couldn’t open one of our slides, but the power was flaky. Thank goodness we didn’t need much AC! If I stayed again, I would just use one of their dry camping spots which were more spacious. Whitehorse itself is a nice town though. It is the majority of the entire Yukon Territory population, so it has lots of restaurants and shopping.
Our first group activity on arrival on Tuesday, 26 July, was a dinner out on by the caravan staff. The RV park had a nice meeting room for such activities. It was a break from cooking. The next day we started early with an entire set of museums beginning with the S. S. Klondike National Historic Site. I have mentioned how a group does have some advantages, and this was one of them. The ship is undergoing renovations, and most people can only see it from shore. We got a ranger-led tour of at least the outside of the boat in an otherwise restricted area. Fabulous old boat, the last of the really big Yukon River boats that opened up the territory.
We then continued to the MacBride Museum with some really nicely done exhibits about the local history including mining and fur trapping. There was a nice Robert Service area too, the famous Yukon poet. They even had Sam Magee’s cabin, though we discovered the real Sam Magee wasn’t from Tennessee and wasn’t cremated “on the marge of the Lake Labarge”. Instead he was a local figure active in mining and early Yukon/Whitehorse history. If you don’t get the quote, go read Service’s poem “The Cremation of Sam Magee.” We then went to the Yukon Transportation Museum and the Beringia Museum. Beer Gia is the name for the non-glaciated area that included parts of the Yukon during the last Ice Age. It included the land bridge from Asia, and was a refuge for the mega fauna of the age.
For dinner, we ate at the famous Klondike Rib and Salmon restaurant. It deserves it’s reputation. I had the salmon and Kevin had ribs, and both were fabulous. The roasted vegetables were particularly tasty!
After dinner we were beat, so it was early to bed. The next day was a free day – unplanned by the caravan. That meant we were able to take a very lazy start to the day. I went to Bear Paw Quilts – “Compassionate Care for the Quilting Addicted.” They had a large number of north country fabrics including some fabulous batiks; I bought 3 one meter lengths!
After having lunch and a nap, both important tasks, we decided to do some last minute sightseeing. Miles Canyon is one of the places that complicated river travel in the Yukon. The river is squeezed into a volcanic canyon with shear rock walls. It generally required an overland by-pass. While my picture lacks scale, the walls are 10-15’ above the water now, and in historic times before the dam was built in Whitehorse the river was 20+ foot below the top of the walls. It was a beautiful place.
The dam in Whitehorse was a serious obstacle to the very important salmon fishery, so a fish ladder was built. These aren’t that unusual these days, but it was the first one I had seen in person. Sadly the salmon weren’t running. I bet it was be fascinating to see the climbing the ladder!
There is also a boat lock next to the dam on the short opposite the fish ladder. It is under reconstruction though and not in use.
The river itself is sometimes wide and braided, and sometimes fast and wild. The volume of water is huge, and it moves quickly. It is easy to see how challenging it was for the early riverboats to traverse it.
We spent 3 nights in Whitehorse, and there was definitely more to see. It would be a nice place to come back to. We had to do a lot of housekeeping tasks like laundry and shopping which cut down our time in the community.
Today, Friday 29 July we took off for Destruction Bay and Destruction Bay RV Park. We had been told the road was bad, but it wasn’t bad at all! A few frost heaves and a fairly long gravel area with a pilot car, but it wasn’t a challenge. Tomorrow we go to Tok, AK, and supposedly that road is awful! We will report our experiences on that in a day or two. We change time zones again, but I am hoping my AT&T and Verizon hotspots start working again! Being with very limited service is tough for putting pictures up which is why there are so few.