...And it's still raining. We left our camp and headed into
Tok for breakfast. We also found a laundromat to dry my pillow. We
want to get out from under this rain cloud as soon as possible! We stopped
at Three Bears Grocery for a few supplies and headed for the border (the
Canadian Border, that is!).
Our drive along the dirt and gravel road that was "Top of the World
Highway" would have had beautiful views except for the constant rain
cloud. We arrived in Chicken, AK
near the Canadian Border. Chicken
was named because the two prospectors that founded the town couldn't spell
ptarmigan. Ptarmigan is a bird that was quite prevalent in this area and
was known to fill many a gold miners cook pot. Chicken has a year round
population of 15, but that swells to 30 during the summer. There are a
couple of restaurants, a couple of shops that sell gifts and Chicken shi-... uh,
stuff, and a bar. We ate at one of the restaurants and bought a couple of
T-shirts and some other Chicken shi-...stuff, supporting this fine town with a
little bit of cash.
We found out something interesting while up here, the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature
scales cross at minus 40 degrees. I guess I've never thought of minus 40
as a real temperature before. They actually get minus 40 and minus 50 in
the winter here! Brrrr!!! We talked to one girl and she said
it was more mild now than when she was younger (not that long ago, she was only
in her mid-twenties), she remembered it getting minus 50 for a few days in
winter and now it's only minus 30. Minus 30 she considered MILD!
We were almost to the Canadian border and we saw the clouds break and a
rainbow formed over one of the huge valleys with rolling hills below. We
stopped for gas at the last place before Canada and topped off our tank.
This guy doesn't get out much. He didn't take credit cards and we didn't
have much American cash, so we scraped together $32.00 and he told us that was
about 8 gallons of gas (about $4.00 per gallon). Part of his gas pump
didn't work and the total purchase didn't register on it. Only the number
of gallons. But he assured us it was cheaper than Canada.
We crossed the Canadian border and border patrol was in a cloud. We
could barely see the "Welcome to the Yukon Territory" sign. And
it began raining again (sigh).
We drove along more dirt and gravel road
until we came to the Klondike River. There is no bridge going across,
but
they do have a ferry that shuttles cars across the river 24 hours a
day. On the other side of the river we entered Dawson City, Yukon
Terr. The
town began as a gold rush town and is kind of still in that era. They
have
dirt and gravel roads, wooden boardwalks between buildings, paddleboats
along
the river. Paddleboats were once used to ship out gold and silver ore
and
to ship in liquor, food and passengers. There is a casino, "Diamond
Tooth
Gerties", that has live shows with Can-can girls. We thought about
doing
this, but we just wanted to get a room, relax and dry out.
We found an ATM and got some Canadian cash, since we'll be in Canada for a
while. We also found a cabin with a kitchenette, so we can do some of our
own cooking and not eat out. We checked into the Whitehouse cabins right
on the Klondike River. As we were getting our stuff out of the car, we saw
the rain clearing and the great bright orb in the sky appeared just before
sunset. We haven't seen the sun since August 10th, while we were on the
ferry in the Inside Passage!
We were awake about 3am and went out to see if we could see the Aurora Borealis.
It seems that the Aurora Borealis is always showing, but you can only see it
when it's dark enough. Summer here is the land of the midnight sun, our
day's have been from 4am to 11pm. Not much total darkness. And, of
course, you'd have to have clear skies, something we haven't seen much of.
We went out for a minute in the cold, clear night and even with the street
lights, we could see faint streaks of green in the night sky. But the fog
soon rolled in and we went back inside to sleep.