It was tougher than we thought it was going to be!

Gorgeous day yesterday, so we made plans to go for a hike. We decided we had better go up to "The Dome", as they call the viewpoint look off above the town of Dawson City. Of course most people drive up there, but we needed to get some exercise.

I mapped out the route ahead of time, and at 10 kms (6.2 miles) round trip, it didn't look like it was going to be that tough of a hike.

But it was tougher than we thought it was going to be!

Along the way, we stopped in at the Jack London Museum. The famous author had come to the Yukon as a young man in 1898 to strike it rich in the gold rush, but although he was not successful in the mining business, many of his future books (White Fang, Call of the Wild) were set in the Yukon.

Jack London Museum in Dawson City, Yukon.

This is the cabin he lived in when he was here.

Well, it wasn't the exact same cabin that he lived in but part of it was. The cabin was actually found on the banks of Henderson Creek, 120km (75 mi.) south of Dawson City. Jack never built the cabin but found it abandoned and fixed it up enough to live in. When it was found, he had written his name onto one of the logs within the cabin and this is how they knew he had lived there. The cabin was then dismantled and the bottom half of the cabin was donated to Dawson City and the upper half to Oakland, California where he grew up. Each cabin was then rebuilt using those same pieces and the other halves replicated with the plans of the original.

We think that curator Helen knows everything there is to know about Jack London!

Interesting place, and worth a stop. Jack London died in 1916 at age 40, and was one of the first commercially successful authors ever. 

We continued on up the hill and came across an interesting cemetery. 

Graves of Northwest Mounted Police officers. 

Look at the ages!

Old bulldozer.

Once we got out of town, the hill climbed steeply. We knew that you can also drive up to The Dome if you want to, and the road isn't so steep, but it's also a lot longer. As it was, the hike was about 5 kms (3 miles) each way.

Taking a break to enjoy the scenery.

You can get an idea of how steep it was.

In fact, the last one kilometer (.62 miles) took us a whole hour!

Where the Klondike River meets the Yukon River.

View at the top of The Dome.

The Yukon River looking south.

Dawson City.

If you knew where to look, Sherman is in this picture!

Back at the motorhome and I had a short nap and then we had an early dinner so that we could make it to the 6:30pm "Then and Now" walking tour put on by Parks Canada. They do quite a few historical tours, and we've done several and found them all worthwhile.

The ferry goes across the Yukon River.

Did I mention it was a beautiful day?

In the Bank of North America. 

See the gold bars?

The gold bars that you see in the photo above are actually made of lead. The fake bars are heavy! However, if they were real gold, they would weigh almost twice as much!

Our guide Justin, talking to the group.

We went into an art gallery with some odd stuff.

Then we went into the Red Feather Saloon that has been meticulously restored by Parks Canada.

Interesting tour talking about how things happened then compared to how they happen now. From banking, to the mail delivery etc.

Today, we were up early to go gold panning this morning. You can read all about that tomorrow!

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