Welcome to the Yukon Territory

From Eagle the Top of the World Highway brought us into the Canada for the first time on our trip.

The highway was just as scenic on the Canadian side.

We had our eyes set on Dawson City, home of Diamond Tooth Gertie. For those of you in Fairbanks, I’m sure you remember the commercials on TV for this establishment. We didn’t have high hopes for the can-can dance show, so we weren’t terribly disappointed when the show met our expectations. Thankfully the bartender gave us two free beers and the people at the entrance didn’t charge us the admission (even though they seemed to be charging everyone else).

Dawson City (pop.1,800) still portrays itself as a frontier town. Most of the store fronts and hotels exhibit some sort of frontier flavor. The sidewalks are plank boardwalks and the streets are all dirt.

Coming Into Dawson City

Downtown Dawson City

In order to fit OUR frontier spirit, we even had a slight brush with the law. We won’t go into the details but it all worked out in the end.

From Dawson City, we headed southeast to Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon Territory. Whitehorse is a really neat city. The streets are all pedestrian and bike friendly. There are recycling cans all over and the river front has been developed into a tourist train and walkway. We sat by the river for most of the day and watched not only tourists but many locals take advantage of the walkway.

Many of the buildings in downtown had fun murals painted on them. Here is one of them.

Whitehorse has a dam on the Yukon River with a fish ladder. The people working at the ladder count all the salmon coming through, so there was an underwater viewing area where we watched the fish.

We took advantage of the Yukon Brewing Company’s FREE brewery tour. It was neat to see how this small organization makes its product. They still hand cap all the cans ONE AT A TIME. We got our fair share of free samples at the end of the tour. Dave purchased a liter of the Espresso Stout and the tour guide gave us a couple free cans of their best seller, Yukon Gold. More free beer!!

This is the machine they use to fill their bottles.

It was tempting not to reach over during the tour and open up one of the many bottles.

Whitehorse even has its own skateboard park. Dave had brought along his board and was eager to use it. We spent many hours hanging out, talking to the local kids and of course, skating. I chose not to participate, as I’m sure I would have fallen on my head and instead went for a walk with the dogs. We stumbled across this entire network of trails that span almost the entire city. The dogs loved it, as this was the first time off of leashes for awhile.

Dave practicing his moves.

We also visited the Beringia Museum of Ice Age creatures. It was well worth the $6 admission price. Dave was almost attacked by a mammoth while we were there.

While taking an evening stroll along the river we came across a group of people erecting a giant kayak slide. Sure enough kayakers came out of the woodwork and we were treated to an aerial display of flying kayaks. We must have stayed a couple of hours watching kayakers of all levels go off this beast and try their luck at flips and rolls into the chilly Yukon River. Here are a few of the photos before it got dark.

The forecast has been consistently calling for rain. We got lucky and the sun has been out off and on for the past two days. Let’s hope this trend continues as the majority of our trip has been spent in the rain … but we are not counting on it.