You Don't Always Get What You Want

Sunday, July 14: We have come full circle and are at the Yukon Motel and Lakeside RV Park again in Teslin, YK. We were here on June 10^th and it was almost deserted, not so now. We passed the 10,000 mile mark today. Tomorrow we will retrace our path for 17 miles on the ALCAN and then will be in new territory as we continue east toward BC.  We are going home but we have big plans for the next few weeks.

You don’t get everything you want and it looked as if we were going to have to miss driving the Taylor Highway to “Beautiful Downtown Chicken” and on to Dawson City. We stayed over in Tok trying to outwait the rain but were getting shacky wacky. There had been wildfires in that part of Alaska for over a month and no rain since the first of May. We could see the fires from the highway coming down from Delta Junction and the smoke made driving very difficult. The rain was such a blessing that I was ashamed to wish that it would go away. The few vehicles that came in from Chicken-Dawson were not just dirty they were literally coated with an oily mud. The advice in the campground was “don’t even think about it”. We were dejected.

Then, a happening! The SMART Caravan pulled in and I remembered that one of my internet friends was on it. We found Sherry and Jim in their View and got a whole different story. They said the big rigs were having problems but we would be fine. We were elated.

Wednesday we drove 180 miles on the Taylor Highway through Chicken to Dawson over the Top of the World and it was outstanding. The day started out overcast but we rolled into Dawson in full sun. We stopped several times to rock hound and found some nice specimens of Dendrites and beautiful banded rhyolite but we didn’t really know what a labradorite looked like so just picked up some pretty stones. The views from the highway are amazing. It was hard to realize that there was nothing to the north of us but mountain ranges and tundra all the way to the Artic Ocean.

At Dawson, there is a government ferry to get travelers across the Yukon River in the summer. In the winter they make an ice road. The ferry runs 24 hours a day “on demand” and holds four cars/trucks and two RV’s. We crossed with just us and an ATV.

We had fun in Dawson. They make the most of their short summer and there is a lot of activity going on.  Folks never stopped gold mining in this area and with the price of gold escalating interest has revived. We have seen everything from panning to huge dredges. We took a trip on the paddle wheeler on the Yukon River, watched the show at Gertie’s, went out to the goldfields and pretended to pan. 

What we didn’t get is an opportunity to drive the Dempster Highway to the Arctic Circle. It was closed due to a landslide.  Like the famous Dalton Highway in Alaska (the “haul road” to Prudo Bay), it is unpaved for over 400 miles to the village of Inuvit and is the only road in Canada that goes to the Arctic Circle. There weren’t any flights either, all taken up by people who really need to go to Inuvit and points north.

We also did not get a chance to paddle on the Yukon River. We spent last night in Carmacks after arranging for a shuttle for today. The forest fires are so bad that the valley was filled with smoke and this morning the visibility was nil.  The smoke did contribute to a beautiful "sunset" last night about 9 p.m. Of course the sun didn't really set for hours.

What we did get? Just about everything on our Bucket List, visits with good friends, meeting lots of new people, fabulous scenery, and constant overwhelming amazement at the wonder of God’s creation.  And it ain’t over.