We woke up this morning to hear a light sprinkle of rain on the truck andpanicked. We packed up our slightly drier chairs and tarp and then madebreakfast. The clouds are kind of spotty, it doesn’t look like too muchrain, just a little overcast.
We drove down to an overlook for the Five Fingers Rapids. This is a portion of the Yukon River where several large standing rocks in theriver, separating the river into five smaller channels. This was a very treacherousportion of the river when this was a major transportation route. Paddleboats called stern wheelers, carried gold and silver ore out of the Yukonand carried liquor, food and passengers into the remote areas of Yukon. Today, fifty years later, its’ a beautiful portion of the river with a woodenviewing platform and stairs taking visitors to the river’s edge.
We also stopped at the Montague House, the ruins of a historicroadhouse. We chatted for a minute with Doug and Norma from Alberta, Canada. A tour bus arrived and the next thing we knew, we had 75 people stumbling aroundthese ruins with us. Time to go.
We stopped in Carmacks, YT for gas. We’ve been paying about $4.00 pergallon here in Canada. We complained about paying over $3.00 per gallon inCalifornia, but we’d be so excited to see prices in the three dollar rangeagain.
We finally arrived in Whitehorse, YT, the capitol of the Yukon. This isby far the largest city we’ve been thru in days. It even has fast foodrestaurants and a Wal-Mart. We stopped by the Visitor’s Center and go infoon hotels, hostels and B&B’s. It’s raining again and we’re looking fora place that’s warm and dry. We called several places and found AScandia House B&B, run by a wonderful Danish lady Lene Neilson (pronouncedLEE-na). She has a couple of rooms in her basement she rents. Wewould share a bath with the other room, but it was not rented so far, so wemight have it all to ourselves. We checked in quickly and headed back intotown
We went to the 4:30 brewery tour at Yukon Brewing Co.(Ummmm,beer!) The tour had already started when we got there, so we had to catchup on tasting. They had some pretty tasty beers. We tried two orthree and went out to the brewery. They have a very small operation andonly distribute to the Yukon Territory and a little in British Columbia andAlberta. We finished up by tasting three or four more beers. It wasgood, but we decided not to take any with us (and it was $11.00 per sixpack).
We went back to the B&B and showered and cleaned up a bit. We wentback into town for the “Frantic Follies” show at8:30. The Yukon was a famous gold rush area in the late 1800’s and early1900’s. Gold miners would come into town hungry for entertainment. Vaudeville type shows with pretty girls singing and dancing a high-kickingCan-Can was the order of the day. The “Frantic Follies” was oncein Dawson City (we saw a similar show advertised there), but they moved to thelarger town of Whitehorse. It plays every night and twice a day duringpeak season. They had quite a crowd tonight. Many tour groups willbook this as part of their tour package. It was a lot of fun with somereally corny jokes and decent music and humor.