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This trip was made with the <a href=http://www.rubyrange.com/>Ruby Range Adventure Company</a>

Yukon Canoe trip

Napajohnb
2006-01-03 20:11:24

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he'd missed the Yukon River this trip.

Sunday - 7/28

Woke to a rainy day and found that Fred did not sleep well, the TV in the next room being too loud. I did not hear a thing.

Took a walk after breakfast and let him get some sleep. Pretty well covered Dawson City, but that's pretty easy to do. It's a typical gold rush frontier town with false store fronts, wooden sidewalks and dirt streets. Took in the Robert Service and Jack London cabins and later the local museum.

The museum is a bit of a mish mash with little apparent order of sequence. There's a quick nod to geology and pre-history and the rest is Gold Rush.

At 11:00 AM we met and drove up to the Midnight Sun dome but the rain and wind made it a short visit. Then off to Dredge #4 which is a fine old huge machine for tearing up the landscape. An interesting electrically driven dredge that dug it's own pond as it went across the land and filled in behind itself as it crawled across the land at about 1/4 mile per season.

We then visited a placer mine which is a messy and destructive way to get gold out of the hills but about the only way it can be done here abouts. Had to wince just a little though as the operator described his operation as being beneficial to the environment. I suspect he believes that to be true.

I passed on the panning in the rain part. I've panned gold before.

Rest of the afternoon relaxing and called Rose. Took in the show at Diamond Tooth Gertie's after supper and that was a fun Can-Can style review. Dropped a little in the slot machine and very little came out. Oh well. Took a walk past the local dive and there was nice music but I could think of no business or social reason to be there so back to the Hotel and to bed.

Monday - 7/29

Woke to a drizzly day and enjoyed huevos rancheros for breakfast at Kate's. Walked over to the coffee shop to buy lunch and ran into Werner, Thor and Fred in quick order. This is the place where people meet it seems, They DO make a good Mocha.
Upon checking out I find that while the Downtown Hotel is comfortable and convenient I'd stay at a hotel just a bit out of the center of town as it seems that the 0230 closing time noise is an every night affair here.

We were on the road by 11:00 AM with eleven of us in a van that will comfortably seat eight. We had picked up three extra travelers and their gear in Dawson.
These are German lads but of a special sort. They are ethnic German immigrants from Russia. Apparently their ancestors emigrated to Russia a couple of centuries ago. It's an interesting piece of German law that someone who can prove German ancestry can emigrate to Germany with full citizenship. I might even qualify I suppose.

Werner says that they have a special problem in that the Russians have always considered them Germans and gave them a rough time of it, especially after WWII while the Germans consider them Russian. No real homeland it seems.
Well that's about it... nothing remarkable about my last day in Whitehorse. Werner and Fred and I did have a nice supper at the Klondike Restaurant. I had buffalo steak and it was pretty good and we had a nice supper and walk after.