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Published: July 22nd 2011
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July 15th, 2011 Yukon River Provincial Park, Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. 58 degrees and raining. Starting mileage 11892.
We drove out of the campground after placing our florescent orange safety cones across the end of the driveway to mark our space, and then paying for 3 more nights at the ranger station. Less than a block away was the ferry crossing of the Yukon River into Dawson City. The ferry loaded about 4 cars and us on. Same type of ferry we have been on before when we crossed the Mississippi River from Tennessee to Missouri and in Romania crossing the Danube River.
We first drove to the Visitors Center for information on things going on in town and a map of the Park-owned buildings. Bought 2 annual senior passes for National Parks of Canada that will allow us to camp and enter all parks and historic properties, participate in tours, etc. administered by the Canadian National Parks Service without paying an additional fee. Since we plan to head to Banff and across Canada on our way home, it should save us some money. The Senior pass that we have for our US National Parks has gotten us
into some of the parks in Alaska for half-price.
Found the library that is housed in the corner of the elementary school building. I checked my e-mail and Valerie worked from her computer to send blog entries and to do some work on her application.
This is a neat looking town with about 16 X 8 city blocks on a flat piece of land of formally swamp land, where the Klondike and Yukon Rivers meet. The National Park Service has restored and maintains over a dozen buildings in town. This town was the place the gold miners bought their supplies and found entertainment as well as being the administration office of the whole Yukon Territory until about 1955. It was also the dock for the sternwheelers that plied the Yukon River. Gold was discovered and mined on Rabbit Creek (renamed Bonanza Creek) that flows into the Klondike River about 15 miles from Dawson City.
We stopped at the small grocery store in town with a small bakery and bought 2 loaves of bread and some nice looking hamburger meat. Valerie has wanted a hamburger, but didn’t wish to pay $12
for one. One loaf of bread we bought was called fruit bread and was a white bread with citron in it like you put in fruit cake. Most likely, this bread was and still is made out of the dried fruit as fresh fruit shipped up here would be very hard to do. Very good stuff.
We drove Rosie II straight up to the top of Dome Mountain for views of the surrounding area. From here you can really see the tailings left by the heavy ongoing placer mining in this area. 88%!o(MISSING)f the gold mined in the Yukon comes from the Dawson City area. Picked a variety of wildflowers as we came down the mountain—daisies, fireweed, goldenrod, yarrow, bladder campion , camas wand lilies , gentian and several others we didn’t ID.
Rode the ferry back to the other side and parked Rosie II on the banks of Yukon in what was once the town of West Dawson . Walked to the River and floated the wildflowers in memory of Mom and Dad. Dad died 5 years ago today. Drove the block
to the campground, cooked hamburgers for dinner, and then settled in for the night.
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