Our second driving day on the Dempster Highway...bald eagles, and moose!

We've been without internet for the past four days so we're just getting caught up with the blog posting. If you missed them, you'll want to go back to the first two posts today...

1) http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2018/06/our-first-taste-of-dempster-highway.html

2) http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2018/06/beautiful-views-hiking-in-tombstone.html

Tuesday, June 26

Our second driving day on the Dempster Highway. The less than ideal weather continued, despite a forecast that had said otherwise! Still, it wasn't raining (yet!) so the road was in okay condition in most spots. However, I found that it was in worse shape overall than it had been the first driving day, and that a suitable speed was more between 40 to 50 km/h (24 to 30 mph) rather than the 50 to 70 km/h (30 to 42 mph) that we had been able to do the first day.

Beautiful views hiking in Tombstone Territorial Park...

This is the second post today. We were without internet for 4 days in a row, so we're just getting caught up. Go here to click on the first post if you missed it...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2018/06/our-first-taste-of-dempster-highway.html

Monday, June 25

My older sister's birthday. Happy Birthday Elaine... we did remember, but of course had no way to communicate our birthday wishes. Hope you had a good day!

We had planned on doing a long day hike on the Grizzly Lake Trail, but the day started off windy and overcast. It's supposed to be a spectacular hike, but we would like to do it with blue skies. So we have put it off until our return to the area on the way back south. However, we still managed to do two hikes that totaled 14.8 kms (9.2 miles)!

Our first taste of the Dempster Highway!

(We've been offline for 4 days in a row! Can't tell you the last time that happened. We are now only 37 kms (23 miles) south of the Arctic Circle! Here's Sunday's blog post... I'll try and get you caught up with more in the next few hours...)

Sunday, June 24

The last thing we had to do on the way out of Dawson City was to fill the gas tank. By filling it when it's still above half, you don't get as much of a shock. But once again, we knew that gasoline would be the major expense of this trip, and it is what it is. So we topped it up at $1.49 CAD per liter ($4.30 USD per gallon). We went to the public AFD Cardlock station on the outskirts of town. Far cheaper than the stations in town that were selling for $1.67 per liter!

And so, with a full fridge, empty holding tanks, a full fresh water tank, and a full fuel tank, we set off on the Dempster Highway towards the Arctc Circle, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.

Drink it fast, or drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe...

We spent the last two nights at the Yukon River Campground, which is one of the Yukon Territorial Government Campgrounds. It's located on the opposite side of the river from Dawson City, so we had to take the free ferry back and forth whenever we went into town. These government campgrounds are only $12 CAD ($9.25 USD) per night, and with free firewood included.

There are no services other than pit toilets and hand pumped water, and many of the sites are very small and some are not very level. And, many of the sites are for tenting. Out of the 94 listed sites, I would say that perhaps 35 of them would have been suitable for Sherman.

Natives and dancing girls

As I said, there's a week's worth of stuff to see and do in and Dawson City, Yukon. We were lucky that we arrived here just before summer solstice, and here in Canada, June 21st is National Indigenous Peoples Day.

Yukon has a population of 36,000 people, and demographically, 25% are aboriginal. So there's a lot of First Nations culture in the Yukon, and almost half of Dawson City's residents are First Nation.

Fantastic scenic flight over Yukon's jagged Tombstone Mountain Range

We had to be at Dawson City Airport for 8:45am Thursday morning. The airport is located about 17 kms (10.5 miles) east of town, so we gave ourselves about a half an hour to get there just to be on the safe side. We parked up Sherman at the area where it said "No Overnight RV Camping", but of course we weren't parking overnight.

It's a big enough airport considering the town of Dawson City has only about 2,000 permanent residents. Although they say that the population goes down to about 800 during he winter! Air North does regular flights to Whitehorse from here, as well as Inuvik and also other communities that are only accessible by air.

But for our particular flight this day, we were looking for the offices of Great River Air.

Arrived in Dawson City, Yukon!

We didn't have far to go yesterday. From our campsite beside the Stewart River, we took off at around 7:30am and headed for where the gold rush took place... Dawson City, Yukon!

We stopped and had some breakfast and then also stopped at a couple of viewpoints along the way, and we even added to our wildlife count! Check out the lynx photos below!

On our way to Dawson City

Tuesday morning, we were going to do the hike up Mt. Haldane. But we were still a little tired from our hike on Monday, so we decided to take a pass. There will be more hiking coming up shortly, and we knew we should give our legs a days rest before attempting another big hike.

So we set off driving from Keno City towards Dawson City.

The things you see in Keno City, Yukon

We went exploring in Keno City yesterday morning. Keno City is a derelict mining town whose heyday is long over. But the official population of 20 people (although we were told it's 12 right now) refuse to let go.

As a tourist though, it's worth a visit!

Mayo to Keno City, Yukon and mama bear with cubs!

We camped at the free campground in Mayo on Saturday night. There are actually two, one by the river before the bridge as you enter town, and one closer to town. We think the one before the bridge as you enter town is probably the better one.

We did some time on the internet and had some breakfast and then we took our "Walking tour of Mayo" pamphlet and went to explore the town!

How to reach the top places to watch the sunset in Sydney

Sydney is an incredible city to visit but, besides all its history and its cultural highlights, while exploring it you should totally save some time to marvel at the beautiful breathtaking Sydney sunset which is becoming quite a big deal lately! If you are passionate about natural enchanting scenarios and you definitely don’t want to miss this show, this is the right guide to know how to reach the best 5 places to watch the sunset in Sydney. So let’s begin!

Add another moose to the wildlife list!

We drove the short distance to Pelly Crossing yesterday morning. It is the home of the Selkirk First Nation, and home to the Northern Tutchone native culture. Population of the town is about 300 people.

They have a gas station and store on the highway, as well as the Big Jonathon House Interpretive Centre. And they have a lot of internet access. Except none of them are available to the public!

It wouldn't be like us to back off from a little more exercise

Once again, we woke up early and hit the road right away. It's pretty tough to find internet access up here in the middle of nowhere and we like to get our internet work done as early as possible in the morning. So sometimes that means getting to the nearest town... and even that doesn't always work!

In this case, we headed for the town of Carmacks.

We finally met a bear on the hiking trail!

We woke up yesterday morning to rain. Not a heavy downpour at all, but not a drizzle either. Just a steady rain.

The plan was to go visit the Yukon Wildlife Preserve, about 20 kms (13 miles) northwest of Whitehorse. And, conveniently located another kilometer down the road from the Wildlife Preserve is the Takhini Hot Springs! But we wanted to do the 5 km (3 mile) hike at the Wildlife place, and then go soak ourselves in the hot springs.

The land called Beringia. If you're headed to Yukon and Alaska, you should know this...

We had never heard of Beringia.

But, now that we know about it, we think it's important for other travelers to this region to know some of the ancient history of how Alaska and Yukon came about... before, during, and after the last ice age.