Up close on the Kluane Icefields and Canada's Highest Mountain

Wow. What a day we had yesterday! I don't even know how to come up with the right term to describe it. We thought the scenic flight we did in Yukon's Tombstone Park was spectacular (and it was!) but this may have been even better!

The largest non-polar icefield in the world is located in Yukon's Kluane National Park. The ice and snow stretches for further than you can see, and in places, the ice is over 700 meters thick.

To see it all up close is a very surreal experience!

Grizzly bear sighting!

You may have noticed that we haven't mentioned a lot of animal sightings lately. That's because we haven't seen any! Well, that's not totally true. We saw a couple of caribou off far in the distance on the Top of the World Highway. And a few rabbits and other small mammals. But other than that, we hardly saw anything all the way up to Tuktoyaktuk and back... and we hadn't seen a bear for over a month!

Until yesterday...

Money in Monaco – a quick traveller’s guide

Even if you’ve never heard of Monaco, you’ve probably heard about Princess Grace. She was an American actress named Grace Kelly, and she won the heart and crown of the Monaco monarch, Prince Rainier III. She was a big Hollywood star from age 20 to 26, when she retired from acting to marry her Prince. Also, Monaco citizens are called Monégasque. This is the ethnicity and language of indigenous natives, though Italian, French, English, and Occitan are also common tongues.

The shores of Kluane Lake, Yukon

Another gorgeous day in the Yukon, which along with Alaska is experiencing a northern heat wave. Yesterday was 28C (83F) and sunny where we are.

We drove from our beautiful boondocking spot near Snag Lake down to the community of Burwash Landing, and then to Destruction Bay. Lots of gorgeous scenery along the way...

A dead end with a beautiful view...

We slept in Sunday morning... didn't  get up until almost 8am. And by the time we had some breakfast and got ourselves ready to go around 10am, the campground had pretty much emptied right out!

Still, we wandered down to the waterfront before we left to see if there was any wildlife about.

I bet we were carrying 500 lbs of mud!

The town of Tok is not a tourist destination. It exists to service travelers as they pass through on their way to a tourist destination. So there's not much to see or do there. And other than the mountains that are visible far on the horizon, it's not that scenic of a place.

However... it has all the travelers services you would need. A couple of full service RV parks, 3 or 4 fuel stations, a big visitors info center, some tourist trinket shops, a couple of mechanics, a couple of motels, a grocery store, and a small airport.

Made it to Alaska!

Yesterday's post was late due to lack of decent internet. If you missed it, here it is...

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2018/07/we-struck-it-rich-and-now-were-off-to.html

Woke up to rain showers Friday morning, but they quickly cleared up and it became a decent day although it was pretty windy as we neared the top of the Top of the World highway on our route to Alaska.

We struck it rich, and now we're off to Alaska!

A little late posting... the following is based on our Thursday July 19th activities!

We were up early Thursday morning because we had an appointment to find some gold! We arrived at Klondike Experience at 8:15am, ready for the 8:30am departure to Bonanza Creek, the area that sparked the Yukon goldrush of 1898.

We met our guide Sandra and then our minibus picked up 5 other couples at various hotels around Dawson City, and then we did a short tour of the city itself before heading out to the gold claims area.

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.

I tried to order a new camera yesterday...

Amazon in the United States gets a lot of great deals, but not so much at Amazon in Canada. So yesterday was Prime Day at Amazon, and we're in the market for a new camera.

Our Nikon P520 is now 5 years old and it has taken thousands of photos for us. And while most people would agree that the photos we post here are fine, I'm not totally happy with them. I have to do a lot of adjusting after the fact to get them to look natural. The photos the camera takes on it's own do not often look the way they should.

A nice day in Dawson City, Yukon

In the morning, we walked over to the Dawson City Museum. We were actually a little later getting going than we wanted to be, but when we got there at shortly after 10:00am, we learned that it only opens up at 10:00am... so our timing was just fine.

The museum has been a museum since 1962, however the building has been there since 1901 when it was constructed as the Territorial Administration Building.

It's a small world...

We like that header photo so much, I think we'll just leave it there for a couple of days!

Through this blog, and facebook, we sometimes meet up with people who know us. Well yesterday, we met a bunch of people who know us, and some who we know through other people. Really strange!

Beautiful hike to end our time on the Dempster Highway!

We got up at 6:30am Saturday morning and started driving right away. We only had to do about 70 kms (43 miles) to get to our hiking trail but we also had to stop in at the Tombstone Park visitors center and we knew that it didn't open until 9:00am.

The visitors center had lent us some paperwork and we had to return it. We arrived there at just after 8:00am, which gave us lots of time to have breakfast before they opened.

We can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

It had rained hard Thursday night, but we think it stopped around 4am Friday morning. When we got up, the ground was still soaking wet, even though the sun was peaking through the clouds occasionally. We decided to wait out the morning and let things dry out a bit more before finally hitting the road again.

We had been parked up at Eagle Plains, Yukon for about two and a half days by the time we finally left at around 11:00am.

And the road was actually drier than we thought it was going to be.

The skies are clearing...

First of all, we are a little overwhelmed by the response to our Mexico RV Caravan news from yesterday! We have received 19 emails so far from people interested in joining the trip! Wow!

It's going to be a great trip. We are looking forward to finalizing things over the next couple of weeks.

But, lets bring you back to the present for now...