Chinook salmon in the Yukon River

The Yukon is still experiencing a heat wave. It's beautiful though... sunny, clear blue sky and the temperature yesterday was about 28C (82F). Supposed to be the same today.

We had parked up in downtown and I took the bikes off to go for a ride to the fish ladder. They have a nice cycling and walking path here in Whitehorse that runs on both sides of the Yukon River.

We are back in Whitehorse!

We left Whitehorse on June 15th, so we've been off exploring the Yukon for about six weeks. And of course, that included a few days in Northwest Territories and Alaska as well.

Since we left Whitehorse, we have driven about 3,700 kms (2,300 miles), and much of it was on dirt roads!

Much better than a busy campground...

We headed further south in order to do more exploring of Yukon's Kluane National Park. There were a couple of other hiking trails along the way we wanted to do. The first one was listed as "a short 0.6 km hike to the rock glacier", so we stopped there and got to the trailhead where the sign said it was 1.6 kms each way. Hmm.

So, we went back and got some water and set off to do it anyhow.

A steep hike in Yukon's Kluane National Park on the King's Throne Trail

We had made plans to meet up with Dan and Isabelle at 9:00am down in the day use area at the Kathleen Lake Campground in Kluane National Park.

We left our motorhomes parked there, and we set off on the King's Throne Trail. There are two sections to the trail... the first part leads to "the seat" of the King's Throne... and then the trail branches off to the summit of the mountain. But the summit is 19 kms (12 miles) return, and it's a rated as a difficult day hike.

Doing some camping in Kluane National Park

There's not a whole lot to see in Haines Junction itself, other than the visitor's center and the fact that it's a fairly scenic location. But, it does have an interesting little church as well that's worth a stop...

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.