Thurs, Aug 20: Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada

This morning is bright, dry and sunny. While we have a late breakfast, we read through the tourist booklet and decide to go to the information center for more detailed information. Dawson City has a great information center.

We head out to see Bonanza Creek,

the location of the first gold strike in1896. The picture above is the actual location of the first gold strike in August 1896. There are channels of gravel all along the creek bed and up onto the hill sides from all the dredging work.Gold is still being mined and there are KEEP OUT signs all along the road. Several miles up the road are two National Park areas, one around Dredge #4 and the other at Discovery Claim, the site of the first strike, and Claim #6, a place where you can pan free using only hand tools. The Dredge is huge.It is the largest wooden-hulled, bucket-line, gold dredge in North America and has definitely left its mark in Bonanza Creek.

At Discovery Mine we see a couple of young men panning. Up the road at Claim #6, there are a group of people trying their hand. We get out and wander around doing a bit of rock hounding, but the water is too cold and the ground too muddy to really get into the panning scene.

Back in town, we go the the Palace Grandfor a little skit put on by the parks department summer workers. It is OK, but the movie on the Gold Rush is better. The theater has been restored to its original grandure.

After that we drive around a little, the town has completed restoring many of the old building since we were here in 2002. There are wooden side walks and most of the buildings are brightly painted and open for business.At 5:30PM we head down to the Yukon River landing for a two-hour river ride on the side wheeler, Klondike Spirit.We go down river far enough to see the First Nation village of Moosehideand then turn around and go by the steamboat boat graveyard.
From there we go up river about 4-5KM from Dawson City, past the mouth of the Klondike River with its dark green clear water pouring into the slit laden Yukon giving the Yukon a two tone effect.We then pass a First Nation fishing Camp and finally turn around in the area of a back woodsman, dog trainer, trapper.It takes a hour and a half to go upriver and ten minutes to go back down, or put another way...it took four to five days to go from Dawson City to Whitehorse up river and about 21 hours to come back down river from Whitehorse to Dawson City!Back at the rig, a little after 8PM, we fix quiche for supper and think about going to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s CanCan show at 10:30PM; but not very hard!