Sunday, July 3, 2011

The Klondike Loop took us 337 miles from Whitehorse, YT to Dawson City, YT.  It was our longest travel day yet as We left Whitehorse at 7:20 am and arrived at Dawson City at 4:20 pm.  Our average speed for today was 47.1 mpg.  There were 3 or 4 stretches of road construction but one in particular even made your teeth rattle.  Hwy 2 is being widened but onlyhas pea gravel down.  It was like driving on a giant washboard, even at 13 mph.  A plum and a tomato bounced off the cupboard during this shaky ride.  Then a semi truck comes barrelling from the other direction and throws a stone into our
windshield.  After it rained it looks like it may just be a tiny pit. 

We passed through Carmacks, named after George Carmack who found the motherlode of gold in the 1890s.  When news of his gold strike reached the outside world, it set off the Klondike Gold Rush.  He reportedly extracted more than a ton of gold from the Bonanza Creek. A bit further down the road we saw what looked like giant beaver dams.  So Dorothy was right about those giant beaver after all.  Actually, the right of way is being clear cut to widen the highway.

Stopped for a breather at the Five Fingers Rapids.  It was named by early miners for the five rock pillars that resemble fingers and create channels in the river.  Only the east channel was deep enough for Yukon stern wheelers to get through the swift water and narrow channels and then they even had to winch themselves over a 1-2 foot drop in the navigable channel.  The rapids were likewise a danger for the overloaded boats and rafts of the 1898 Klondike stampeders.

There was a layer of white ash along many road cuts.  Over 1,200 years ago the southern one-third of Yukon was coated in a layer of volcanic ash.  Archaeologists have dated the materials below the ash line to 700 AD.

Another stop landed us at the Tintina Trench is the largest fault in North America.  It is visible geological proof of the earth's plate movement.  It is a long trench that runs hundreds of miles across Yukon and Alaska.

Just 15 miles before entering Dawson City, traffic was stopped for a driver license check.  Law enforcement requested to see every one's driver license, registration and insurance papers.  They also asked if we had any alcohol to drink today.  Once at camp it sounded like we were the only couple of RVs that were checked.

As we approached Dawson city we noticed endless mounds of gravel and rock along the road.  It didn't look natural there, and it didn't look like it was landscaped.  Turns out they are the tailings from the hydraulic mining operations from both sides of the Klondike Highway along here from 1909 until the 1930s.  These telltale tailings of the goldfields look like huge stone caterpillars.

The only animal, besides chipmunks, was a large cow moose sauntering through a business parking lot just before we entered Dawson City.  The City of Dawson began as a tent city on mud flat.  Many historic buildings, some still in use, survive from the days when Dawson City as the gold capital of the world.