Day 61 ~ Sunday, August 2 - Here we are in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was very overcast again today, all day, but no rain. We listened to a couple of religious recordings by Ronald L. Dart while we finished off a very nice Sunday breakfast. Gregg and Gale returned from their excursion and needed to do some laundry. We had some personal time to ourselves and decided to go downtown for a little sightseeing.

Fairbanks has a very nice riverside park, the Golden Heart Plaza, with a fountain and history information plaques around the courtyard. Very well done. Of course, we documented EVERYTHING with our trusty camera and if you have questions or want to see our 20,000 pictures, just ask, or not. The flower gardens here were very pretty and well-maintained.

The Golden Heart Plaza has a fountain, information plaques, a clock tower and a dead guy on the bench. Well, maybe he's not dead, but where did he come from? Detroit, maybe?

Mushing is big in Alaska - There's the Iditarod and then there's the Yukon Quest.
This building is located right here on the Golden Heart Plaza next to the street.

Pioneer Park became our destination in the afternoon, again, but this time with Gregg and Gale. The park was much nicer with our friends and without the rain. Neat place. It remained overcast and cloudy all day with no rain. That was okay because the temperature was comfortable and remained in the sixties. The gift shop owners appreciated our visit. More souvenirs.

What's a Pioneer Park without a cannon, a train, a totem pole, a bunch of old mining junk?

This was a simple day. After our second visit to Pioneer Park, we all went back to the campground for dinner and our final night here in Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks is a nice place to visit. We liked it better than Anchorage. The buildings in both Anchorage and Fairbanks are very plain architecture; simple square boxes with flat roofs. The earthquake in the sixties flattened a lot of Alaskan towns and we see the low-cost crappy buildings that were built since. Not exciting; don't come here expecting any great architecture. Why build anything nice when the next earthquake will just knock it down to ground level?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, or campground, we could hear the whine of small power tools in the campground, so we went to investigate and met Joe, a fellow camper who was carving a totem pole as a present for his wife (Oh, thank you dear!). The guy has been here on and off for the past four days working on his project. Diane sweet-talked him into donating some diamond willow branches to us to bring back to Michigan for her dad who likes to do wood carving projects, especially canes. The small Diamond Willow trees are only found in the north country. It's a long story that ends with beautiful finished products, canes and walking sticks, produced by the woodcarvers' talent and hard work.

What to do when camping: sit around a campfire, go for a walk, drink beer, smoke a cigar, carve a totem pole. Now, that's a great idea - a 500-pound wood carving project..
Here's some Diamond Willow with its bark stripped off and ready for some clear-coat.
Rika's Roadhouse was selling finished walking sticks for seventy bucks.

Day 62 ~ Monday, August 3 - Just another cloudy overcast day again with 60 degree temperature at 10 o'clock in the morning which is our checkout time for this campground. We have been here in Fairbanks for four days and it's time to leave the Tanana Valley Campground and head toward Delta Junction and then on to Tok. So we jumped on highway 2 (a.k.a. Richardson Highway) heading east, or is it southeast, toward our next scheduled stop, the North Pole, where we stopped at an expensive gift shop just to mail postcards. They got stamped "North Pole, Alaska". The grandkids love that kind of stuff. They're just kids. What do they know?

Highway 2 east of the North Pole is good for the most part. The weather improved to partly cloudy and got up to 75 degrees on the road (the outside temperature gauge in the truck proved to be real handy). We just had to stop at Quartz Lake and get out for a small walkabout. As we exited the park, there was this giant pipeline coming up out of the ground. Could it be the Alaskan Pipeline? Oh, yah...

We then continued the scenic drive to a most interesting stop at the Tanana River just before Big Delta. This is where the Alaskan Pipeline crosses the river on its own suspension bridge. Very technical stuff here. This bridge is so well engineered taking into consideration the changing climate and possible earthquake conditions.

The Alaska Pipeline goes in and out of the ground at Quartz Lake road about 2½ miles northwest of Big Delta just off highway 2. At Big Delta a suspension bridge was required to get the pipeline over the Tanana River. Cool. This was a personal best highlight for me.
No Trespassing - there are big security cameras high in the sky looking down.

Located here by the Tanana River is the Big Delta Historical Park and the famous Rika's Roadhouse in Big Delta. There are old roadhouses all over Alaska that were the overnight stagecoach stops with restaurants and rest areas for earlier travelers. Rika's happens to be easily accessed and at just the right time because we needed a break. We inspected the old roadhouse, barns and military buildings that we were allowed access, had hot soup for lunch in Rika's Cafe and continued on our way. Refreshed.

Diane and Gale headed on into Rika's Cafe for a nice lunch and souvenir hunting.
This place was really nice!

The main building, Rika's Roadhouse, offered lodging for weary travelers. Now it's a museum.
Outside of Rika's Roadhouse sits this real fixer-upper truck. Needs a little paint. It looks tired.
Speaking of tired, it needs four tires. Put that on the list. Maybe a new roof also.
Morty the moose showed up for picture taking. I made up that name.

Highway 2 led us right into Delta Junction where we found the end of the Alcan Highway marked with a cool monument at the Visitor Center. There are a bunch of informational displays outside and more inside. We got some travel info from the folks inside then hit the road for the remainder of the boring drive to Tok. One tok over the line sweet Jesus. Oh, right, that should be one toke over the line. Ah, close enough.

We are back in Tok, again, but this time we are staying at Tok RV Village which is right on highway 2 a few hundred feet east of highway 1. Although there is really nothing here at the junction, this is "downtown" Tok. The restrooms here in the campground are very nice and clean. The sites are shady with lots of birch trees all around. Everything is neat and clean, however their "Free Wi-Fi" is a BIG lie. Yeah, free for one hour. What are you supposed to do in one hour? And it's limited to 100MB of data. One email with 3 pictures attached will kill that. It's a good thing that our Verizon hotspot is working quite well, because Diane must work tonight and early tomorrow morning.

The afternoon weather is much better than this morning and while Diane was working, I used the campground's gas BBQ grill to cook four hamburgers and two chicken patties for our food cache and tonight's dinner. Sam Adams and a burger. Yum. Diane came to a stopping point at one o'clock in the morning, but had more to do the next day. For now, we'll say good night.

Day 63 ~ Tuesday, August 4 - We woke up to clear skies this morning (Wow) with 64 degrees and had beautiful weather all day long. Diane finished her work first thing and we left the Tok RV Village at eleven, check out time, did a gas fill-up and then a quick stop at the Visitor Center to get information about today's upcoming journey to Chicken, Alaska, and then on to Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Oh goodie, another border crossing. I must say that the Visitor Centers have all been exceptional. They are great places for local info, maps, weather, Wi-Fi and sometimes even coffee. ALWAYS stop at the Visitor Center FIRST.

Six miles up the road from Tok is an Alaskan State Park that served as a two-hour resting point so that I could do some online bill payments and take care of some things for my business clients while we still had internet connection thru the Verizon hotspot. I knew once we left the Tok area, the Verizon connection would be lost and we were heading for Canada, the black hole, where we start the "No Communications" thing again. All done, so we hit the road toward Chicken. If you go to Alaska, you MUST stop in Chicken.

We drove highway 2 (a.k.a. Alaska Highway) out of Tok to highway 5 (a.k.a. Taylor Highway) and turned left headed north. This intersection is Tetlin Junction. The road was okay pavement as we started, but soon turned to gravel way before we got to the small settlement of Chicken where there is a gas station, post office, two gift shops, a small cafe and a RV Park. Who could ask for more? We spent about an hour here and then looked at the clock and knew we better get going so we could make the border by eight o'clock. We never did visit beautiful "downtown" Chicken which is located on a small gravel road south of us. There's nothing there so we didn't miss anything. The gravel road to the border was slow going and since our small trailer has already been beaten up pretty badly, we took it very slow and enjoyed our final minutes in Alaska.

At Tetlin Junction we hung a left toward Chicken, the U.S. Canada border, and then Dawson City, Yukon Territory. We drove into Alaska on highway 2 which is straight ahead. All traffic going into and out of Alaska passes thru Tetlin Junction and Tok. Where's all the traffic?

Well, here we go on the last stretch of highway out of Alaska. 104 miles to the border.
As you can see in the picture, the road is not so good. Hang on to the truck little trailer.

The Goldpanner Gift Shop and the Cafe in Chicken, Alaska, was must see stop. Lots of junk to look at including the suspension bridge going over to the campground. That just seems to be a bit of overkill. The buildings here are pure Alaska. Buy yourself a drink and sit outside in the beautiful sunshine. Maybe get laid.

The last ten miles or so of the road to the border was new pavement and very nice with a 50mph speed limit. We made it to the Canadian border with ten minutes to spare before they shut the gate at eight o'clock. Yes, they really do shut the gate way up here at this crossing. The U.S. and Canada share a building at this border with U.S. on one side and the Canadians on the other. Good idea. The Canadian border guards gave us the okay and we drove up the road a mile to a really nice pull out with an absolutely wonderful view. There is no wonder why they call this the Top of the World. I looked at Diane and asked "Why not spend the night here on Top of the World?" She agreed and quickly called Gregg and Gale on the radio thing and told them that we were spending the night here. All agreed it was a great idea!

We all stood back and looked at our traveling units and noticed the tremendous amount of road dust and dirt that was adhered to them. Diane and Gale got out a couple of small zip-lok baggies and collected some of this "Top of the World" dust - just another free souvenir.

A short time later, a couple from South Dakota drove up in their F-150 and also parked for the night. They missed the eight o'clock deadline going from the Yukon into Alaska. We had a nice long conversation with them. They are small-time cattle ranchers going to Anchorage to visit their daughter. So here we all are in our rustic campground of sorts with no toilets except for our porta-potty. The South Dakota folks are sleeping in their truck without any facilities whatsoever. Good grief! We know it's going to be cold tonight.

Welcome to "Top of the World"

We had to stack some rocks. It's the right thing to do. I made this. Diane is building her thing.
There's my generator next to the trailer recharging the refrigerator with coldness.

The Top of the World was the highlight of this trip so far. This is where Santa hires his reindeer. I certainly enjoyed the late evening sunshine.

There are small herds of caribou wandering all over the treeless tundra landscape and quite close to our trailer. This was a real thrill for us and our cameras were kept busy. There were some really big mature males with huge racks. Cool. We are standing on old mountains that are basically rolling hills of broken pieces of rock. It seems that everybody who stops by this unofficial rest stop stacks the flat rocks into small towers. There are scores of these little man-made creations all over the place. Pretty cool, we thought, so we made a few ourselves to leave our mark behind. We took a lot of pictures. It is absolutely dead quiet here with a moderate breeze, but not too cold. The GPS says we are at 4400 feet elevation which is not all that high. Tundra must start at a much lower elevation here due to the higher latitude and colder climate. The caribou like it a lot. They are so very graceful as they trot along the tundra. Their hooves don't seem to touch the ground - just a quick boost every now and then to keep them going. Maybe this is where they learn to fly.

So, we are now out of Alaska time and into Pacific time and the sunset at eleven thirty was breathtaking. We had our latest dinner ever at eleven and kept an eye on the after-sunset skies as the world finally darkened. It took a long time to do so. We will never forget this wonderful evening and could have, would have, should have spent another night here, but didn't. We have to come back someday.

The "Top of the World" was the highlight of this trip so far. This late sunset was at 11:00pm.

Day 64 ~ Wednesday, August 5 - We have often said that this was the BEST camping ever and we took our time leaving this camping paradise high in the sky. I relaxed in the morning sunshine enjoying the quietness of this high country. The caribou made a return visit to tell us goodbye.

The caribou came back looking for breakfast. Their racks are huge! Made out of light-weight plastic so they don't fall over. I'll bet you didn't know that.

Top of the World Caribou

This video is 1 minute
and 26 seconds long

There were a lot of caribou wandering around eating rocks. They were probably 500 feet away. Not exciting, but cool.

The Canadian highway 9 going into Dawson City is gravel and extremely dusty in sections, but mostly smooth with no washboard and very few holes to avoid. The speed is 70km per hour and we did get to that a few times, but we stayed closer to 25 to 30mph a lot of the time because the scenery was magnificent. After all, we were driving on Top of the World; one of the best drives on this trip, except for the damn dust. It is almost 80 miles to Dawson City. Here we go; "Dawson City or Bust" (or with Dust).

We passed some Yukon Highway Department workers who were grading the road and adding more gravel. They manage to keep the road in pretty good drivable condition. The trees reappeared as we dropped a bit in elevation. No animals at all, but the view was great. We stopped in a couple of small rest areas before arriving at the free government-run ferry that would transport our filthy truck, trailer and motorhome across the Yukon River. This was cool. The whole procedure only took about 15 minutes. The river is not very wide, so why not build a bridge over it? The people don't want it and the people rule, so no bridge.

The traffic is extremely light with about 30 cars, pickups and RV units per hour.
he actual crossing takes about five minutes and it was fun. Once across the river,
we were in historic downtown Dawson City, the very famous gold rush town.
This town is going to be fun!

This is the ferry boat that took us across the Yukon River at Dawson City. It was a fun trip.

Crossing the Yukon

This video is 5 minutes
and 34 seconds long

Rather than build a bridge, the Yukon government offers free ferry service across the Yukon River to Dawson City. This was fun.

First things first, we needed to find a campground so we located the Visitor Center to gather info. There were three campgrounds from which to choose on this side of the river and we stopped at all three and selected the last one which is about a mile out of town. All three RV parks were undesirable; oh, well. Our choice was Bonanza Gold RV Park and Motel with okay facilities and Wi-Fi, almost. Oh, they advertise free Wi-Fi like all the other places and give you one hour free. Big deal. Same old marketing lie.

There are two restroom facilities; one in the main building and one in an out building which was closer to us. The out building restroom facilities are old and rough, but mildly clean. The water is hot and they charge one Canadian dollar (loonies only) for a three-minute shower. They also charge to refill RV water tanks. Wow! But, this place is cheap - $18.90 for the night - Canadian!

After parking our portable homes in our chosen campsite (a.k.a. parking space), we all packed into the truck and headed to downtown Dawson City. We parked the truck in the street, road, or whatever, and walked around several blocks to get a feel of this old west town with it's real boardwalks in front of most of the stores and buildings and dirt roads. This place is cool and loaded with gold rush history. There are plaques on many of the buildings telling its story; lots to read and a good history lesson. This town is a giant outdoor museum. Most of the buildings have been restored, but there are some that the town has left alone because they are beyond repair due to the permafrost. The builders didn't know that when the buildings were heated, some of the permafrost melted, the ground softened and the building's foundation sank. These buildings are easy to spot because they are sitting on an angle worse that the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The town just leaves these buildings alone and puts an info plaque on it. We took pictures.

The downtown park along the river is really pretty with its flower gardens and cool clock.
They should think about taking away the dead bodies. It scares the tourists.

Every town should have a Downtown Hotel.

Dwayne Kelly is a piano player at the Downtown Hotel (what an original name).
This guy was a concert pianist and can he play honky tonk piano. Wow!

Dwayne Kelly Piano Player

This video is
45 seconds long

A small sample of Dwayne's talent.

Some of the old original buildings are having a difficult time trying to stay afloat.
There are crazy ravens all over downtown sitting on top of the poles and squawking like they own the town. Maybe they do and we don't know it. Ever see Alfred's movie?

Dinner time brought us to Sourdough Joe's restaurant for a pretty good meal that was too expensive like most of the restaurants here especially those in the hotels. The pizza place gets twenty bucks for a small pizza and that's just carry out; no dining in. We found ourselves back on Front street for our daily dose of ice cream for dessert.

We went to Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall for the 8:30 singing and dancing stage show. They have three half-hour shows per night which are all different. There are lots of slot machines, a roulette table and black jack tables and all profits go to the town. Of course, they have a full bar and light food. This first show was more old western like with appropriate music. Very entertaining for twelve bucks a head for a ticket that lasts for all of 2015. Pretty good deal and we had a great time.

It was too early to quit for the day so we drove up to the Midnight Dome which is a lookout hill high above Dawson City with a really great view of the city and the Yukon and Klondike rivers. The sun was setting so we stuck around and took a bunch of sunset pictures before heading back down to the RV park for the night.

Our Bonanza Gold RV Park parking space was small and dusty. The restrooms are crappy with pay showers. But, the price is cheap and the neighbors are hilarious.

I've been bitchin' about the dust. This guy bitches about the mud. Don't drive after it rains.

Day 65 ~ Thursday, August 6 - The sun was bright first thing this morning, but quickly dimmed as the clouds set in and it got a bit breezy with a 69 degree temperature.

This campground is dry and dusty and the breeze takes the dust and moves it everywhere and everything you touch is gritty. If it rains, the dust will be held down and we will be in big trouble with mud. Oh, boy! Thank goodness it didn't rain today and just stayed overcast.

We went to downtown Dawson City and wandered around checking out all of the stores and hotels and enjoyed dinner and a happy hour beer at Klondike Kate. The food was very good. After dinner, we strolled to the Downtown Hotel saloon looking for Dwayne Kelly the piano player, but he wasn't there. Instead, we watched people drink whiskey from a glass with a human toe in it. Now this was gross. A severed black toe from some guy. Makes no sense, but the drinker pays five bucks and gets a certificate for his achievement. One of the stupidest things ever and the drinker had to buy the shot of whiskey. Men and women were lined up to do this. What a money maker for the saloon. And gross. Their slogan is "Drink it fast or drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe." Gross. And if the drinker swallows the toe, he'll be charged a $2500 fine. Swallow the toe? Really gross! Evidently, they do have to replace the toe every now and then and people donate their toes for this purpose - from frostbite or death - REALLY GROSS!

We wandered along the riverfront park and took a bunch more pictures of this historic town and read all the plaques telling stories of the gold rush days back in the 1890-1900s. Ice cream was for dessert, again, and then back to Diamond Tooth Gerties for the ten-thirty show that was different than yesterday's eight-thirty show. We got in free this time with our ticket that we purchased yesterday. We watched the people playing the slot machines and not winning anything; not a single bell or whistle. Nothing. It is a fun, noisy place.

Back to the parking lot campground for a Jack Daniels and some creative writing before sleepy time. The wind had died down and the dust storm quit. Everything has a very thin film of dust on it. Yikes!

Day 66 ~ Friday, August 7 - Sunny skies greeted us this morning. The weather here in Dawson City is pretty darn good, so we drove back into town and toured the Keno Sternwheeler - a sternwheeler riverboat that has been turned into a really cool museum piece. Aboard ship you can tour through the history exhibits on the main floor and see all the engines and mechanics. Then upstairs you walk through the tiny staterooms, kitchen and storage areas and view a movie of the ship's last voyage. Very interesting.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the Bistro on Front Street and headed up to Crocus Bluff to a short trail and lookout over the rivers. Along the trail we identified and picked wild, high-bush cranberries for a snack. Very tart, but definitely cranberries.

The road to Crocus Bluff revealed a gruesome site - a dead bicycle hanging on a tree. Yikes!
How fast was this kid going?
In the backyard of a house in Dawson City is an old truck in need of some tender loving care.

Back near town, we stopped where the Muddy Yukon River meets the very clear Klondike River. The two waters crash into one another, mingle and the larger, powerful Yukon moves on. We picked up some glittering sand for our grandkids to pan to see if they find gold and make us all rich. Dinner was at Klondike Kate's again since they serve very tasty food.

Dawson Hardware is for real. We had to check it out. They have everything.
If your vehicle needs a tow, here's a toe truck. Was this on purpose or are they that stupid?
Honestly, I'm leaning toward the stupid.

Oh, a mobile home. There is a lot of on-going restoration work here. Save the old city.
Beware if you're not a cowboy. That's a harsh penalty.

Diamond Tooth Gerties sucked us in for three nights in a row to watch the three different shows. We bought an annual pass for 2015. That was the only ticket they offered. It really was a lot of fun.

Diamond Tooth Gerties

This video is
15 seconds long

Just a short sample of the stage show. A very high level of talent displayed here.

Diamond Tooth Gerties No.2

This video is 1 minute
and 34 seconds long

The talent of these girls will amaze you. Or not. They do squeak a lot. It's probably a lot better if you're drunk.

Here we have a vacation property in the middle of the Yukon River with a canoe.
Tourists can go for a ride on that sternwheeler and wave to people on shore. Fun.

We arrived early at Diamond Tooth Gerties for the midnight show and met some very interesting folks who just moved to Dawson City two months ago. He previously worked in law enforcement in Nova Scotia and took a job in the Yukon as a mining regulation inspection officer. She works for WordPress basically as a helpdesk. They also had two friends visiting from Washington, I think. Anyway, after the show, we hung around and had a great time. We closed Diamond Tooth Gerties at 2 in the morning. They went on to continue their party and we went home to bed. We are definitely getting old. There was a time when we would have stayed up all night.

Day 67 ~ Saturday, August 8 - Wow, more sunshine first thing, but a chilly 49 degrees at nine o'clock in the morning. It did warm up by the time we left for the Farmers Market on Front Street. There we found some really nice locally-grown vegetables at about 3 times the price in Kroger. We gotta eat and now we can brag about going to the Farmers Market in Dawson City. Mark that off our bucket list.

It's noon and we have the International Outhouse Race on our schedule. This crazy race starts and ends at Diamond Tooth Gerties, our favorite saloon with nightly entertainment. It was simply the craziest thing we've ever seen; well maybe not ever. Ask to see our pictures or you won't believe it!

The Great International Outhouse Race took place in front of Diamond Tooth Gerties.
It was a very good day for a high-speed chariot race thru the streets of Dawson City.

From the outhouse race, we went back to Front Street to purchase tickets for the three o'clock Dredge No. 4 tour which is about ten miles out of town. Ice cream cones for lunch and then we were off onto the gravel roads again for the Dredge Tour located south of town on Upper Bonanza Creek Road. I can say that this thing is HUGE and when operating years ago, created piles and piles of rocks called tailings.

We headed on back to the Visitor Center on Front Street for some info on the Sternwheeler wrecks in the Yukon river. This has to be cool, wrecked sternwheelers. We found out that the wrecks are on the other side of the Yukon River which means a ferry boat crossing with the truck. So, away we go. Boat trip.

Once across the Yukon, we made a quick right turn into the Yukon Territory government-run campground that runs about a quarter mile along the river. We parked at the far end of the campground and walked the trail along the river to the wrecks. There are four boats here jammed up onto the shoreline high above the water. They were really wrecked! Pretty cool stuff. Apparently, there are three more wrecks that we didn't see further up the river .

Enough wrecked boats. We drove back onto the ferry boat and puttered back across the Yukon to downtown Dawson City looking for dinner. We stopped at the Chinese restaurant at the end of town on our way back to the RV park. The food was okay and reasonably priced. Chinese food in the Yukon. Whoda thunk.

Back at the trailer, I finished off my small bottle of Apple Pie hooch on the rocks. Thanks Kevin and Lori for the booze. Time for a shower and bed. It was a very nice day today. We just love Dawson City and would come back here anytime (in the summer).