Wednesday 24 July
Got up early and finished our audio tour as the Information Centre opened at 8am and we had to return our headsets. We drove to Claim 33 where they have antique mining equipment on display and Chris fell in love with the rustic cabin and wants to re-create one to Airbnb it at home. On the way, we saw a fox walk slowly across the road looking at us as he went into the bush, but we didn’t get any photos. We saw Dredge #4 (built in 1912), pulled from the muck of Bonanza Creek in 1992. It is a huge machine like the one at Chicken. We also saw mining taking place as we drove to the Discovery Claim National Historic Site was originally staked in 1896 (the site of the gold discovery that sparked the Klondike Gold Rush). We walked around the trail with boards with information and photos describing the story of the discovery, the people and the life during the Gold Rush. There were some mining buckets that had plaques as a memorial to Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie. George Carmacks whose wife, Kate Carmack, was Skookum Jim’s sister. George registered the claim. The plaques honoured Jim for the good he did with the fortune he made in the Gold Rush, that still exist today to help his native people. We continued to drive to Free Claim #6 which is open to the public to pan for gold so we stopped and tried our luck with the shovel and pans we borrowed from the camping ground. There were lots of rocks with Gold Flecks in and also we got lots of little flecks of gold but no big nuggets 😊 We continued to drive up Cheechako Hill until we got to a stream so turned around. We returned the Gold Panning gear and headed back into town and drove up to the midnight dome where the locals for over 100 years have had picnics under the midnight sun and there are still celebrations on the 21st June on Summer Solstice. The view from up there of Dawson City, the Yukon River, and Klondike River was very hazy from the forest fires that have been burning most of the summer. We came down and went and looked through Robert Service’s Cabin and asked if we could read “The Little Cabin” poem but the guy wouldn’t give it to us and we had no internet so will read it at home, from our Robert Service book we bought from there in 1996. We then walked around the Yukon Order of Pioneers Cemetery and then visited the Danoja Zho Cultural Centre and then walked around the town visiting the shops and taking photos. We left Dawson at 4.30pm and crossed the ferry with the plan to drive back to Fairbanks, back over the Top of the World, Taylor and Alaska Highways with an ETA of 2.30am at the earliest. We crossed the US Boarder and then stopped again at Chicken briefly. We saw a Black Bear cross the road but weren’t quick enough to get photos. Danika was hanging out for a steak and we didn’t want to stop to cook our sausages, so we stopped for dinner at Fast Eddies at Tok at 10pm for a really yummy dinner and got back on the road. We had hoped to keep driving but decided to call it a night at 1.30am and parked in the visitor’s centre at Delta Junction for the night where it was really smoky.
