Our Day in Dawson

Leo and I started the day with a run down the Bonanza Creek road. Bonanza Creek is the site of the first gold strike that started the Klondike Gold Rush.  We turned around when we heard a wolf howling in the woods.

In the afternoon we headed downtown to check out the shops and of course, for a latte and a slice.

In the afternoon we signed up for a tour of the SS Keno, a sternwheeler parked on the main street.

While we were waiting we were surprised to see a mini paddlewheeler chug by.  

This is the Klondike Spirit and it just got back into service after being drydocked since the pandemic.  It's not authentic:  unlike the original Yukon paddlewheelers this boat is a sidewheeler, not a sternwheeler.  But it still would be a fun  excursion on the river. It makes a 1 hour trip up and down the river.  We hoped to take the tour on our way back from the Dempster but ran out of time.

As for the Keno it was built in 1922 and ran until 1951, when the highway was completed.  

It spent most of its career carrying ore from mines down the Stewart River, which was too shallow for the larger sternwheelers like the SS Klondike.  It was also used on the main Whitehorse to Dawson route early in the year when ice narrowed the Yukon River.

Dining Hall

We spent the rest of the day preparing for the Dempster, moving everything we needed from our trailers to our trucks, buying groceries and filling jugs of water for our trip.

To the Klondike!

It was a long and bumpy road to Dawson today.  We forgot to turn off the pump in the trailer and the bumpy road turned on the kitchen sink tap which then emptied out our freshwater tank all over the floor.  Quite the disaster.

We'd planned to camp in the government campground on the Yukon River but they have no potable water there (and we needed to fill our tank) and we needed to do our laundry.  So we went to the Bonanza RV park.  It's just a gravel pit but it's a historic gravel pit as this gravel has been run through countless slices in the search for gold.

It's only $35 to stay here but then they nickle and dime you for everything else, a loony for water, 2 loonies for a shower, and, worse yet, the sanidump was $5 with no water.

Our first act was to drive up to the Dome for the view just as a storm was blowing in.

We got views of the city,

down the Yukon River 

Yukon River

and towards the Klondike River and our RV park.

Next we headed downtown to check out the town.  We rode out the afternoon shower by watching films about the gold rush and sternwheelers in the Visitor Centre.

Supper was fish and chips and chowder at Sourdough Joes.  Somehow we stayed up till midnight and yeah, it was still light out.