Blogs from Yukon, Canada, North America - page 27

Sunday August 24 - Tuesday August 26 The Canadian immigration and Customs officials boarded the Yukon Queen ll in Dawson to stamp our passports. After checking into our hotel and a short walk around town we stopped at the Sourdough Saloon in the Downtown Hotel for beer, wings and onion rings. This is the home of the Sour Toe Cocktail, your drink of choice with a real petrified toe in it while the keeper of the toe recites: “You can drink it fast You can drink it slow but your lips must touch the toe.” People were lined up to pay for this Yukon experience and to receive a certificate. On Monday we visited the Danoja Zho Cultural Center and joined a walking tour of the Dawson Historical Complex led by a costumed interpreter. This National ... read more

There is relatively little to say about this next bit of the blog... i think the pictures are far more comprehensive. Ultimately We are heading to Alaska-- having driven for three days we should be arriving there on friday, early in the AM if all goes as planned. Aside from having to change the battery in my car, everything has been going really well and we are thankful for the lack of complications which do abound this far from modern civilization. For me personally this is beginning to take a turn in terms of personal significance due to the fact that I am now re-tracing the trip my family took when I was only three years old. As I see various landmarks, memories are rekindled and I feel a strange sense of familiarity as well as ... read more

This entry was written august 9th in the morning at our hotel in Atlin...a good nights rest in the ghost town...and finished in the basement of a bed and breakfast in a hundred year old house built for Sam McGee (the namesake of the poem, the cremation of Sam MeGee) the next day. We are on the famous Alaska Highway. We stopped at Dawson Creek, the official mile “0” of the Alaska highway and took the obligatory pictures. We had a good chinese food lunch - the common thread through all the little towns we have passed along the way - they all have chinese restaurants - most serving “chinese and western food”. Slept the first night at the Ramada in Fort Nelson after giving Chuggs (the car) a wash and an oil change. A little ... read more

What's hot: Dogs who travel more than 100 miles a day and love it! MUSH! Liddy Riddles, the first woman to win the 1000-mile Iditarod race across the Yukon and Alaska, joined the cruise and gave a presentation on her race, her dogs, and the mushing life. She calls herself a "musher." The mushing life is surprisingly diverse, she says—men, women, young (18), old (89), Native Americans, Caucasians, Asians. All groups have produced winners in the races, of which the Iditarod is only one. Iditerod is not a very old race. It was inspired about 40 years ago by the appearance of the snowmobile, which quickly began to displace working dogs as a means of winter transportation. The race founders wanted to keep the mushing practices and the breeds alive. The dogs, she says, are Alaskan ... read more

What's hot: Yukon! What's not: High-priced shore excursions. Travel lesson of the day: When in doubt, ask a park ranger. from Kathy: Skaguay, Alaska is on the roster of National Historical Parks because of its role in the 1898 gold rush, a wealth-quest that left most participants empty-handed during the economically depressed last days of the 19th thecentury. Photographs circa 1898 show a squalid tent city. Contemporary writers called Skaguay a lawless “hell on earth.” We’re not sure what events caused Skaguay to get the carefully appointed clapboard buildings it has today—supposedly a commemoration of the gold rush—but whatever! People are here to shop, not to study history. I find my way to National Park desk in search of a ranger and ask: “What do you tell your friends to do when they’re in town?” The ... read more