Yukon Trip 2009 - Day 21 - Dawson City

June 12th we got up to mainly clear skies and 11c.
a final look at one of the friendly Snow-shoe Hares at Tombstone Campground........

and very reluctantly, we turned the truck and headed south.......

We'd visit Dawson City, before retracing our route back to Whitehorse......

Pavement! the first in over 1,400 km (well if you exclude the little bit in Inuvik).....as it turns out the gravel of the Dempster was smoother than the pavement leading into Dawson!

And now here we are in one of those 'cheek' to 'jowl' private RV places....only the need of power and a laundry could drive us to it!

I guess this is a 'Yukon Garden' the RV park had a number of these, ours had lettuce in it another I checked had radishes - I'm not sure who they were for....the 'guests' or the owners of the park.

I don't know how many of these shovel scoop gardens there were around the perimeter but there were lots!

This is a view of the Yukon River, looking sort of north east......

This is the paddle wheeler that takes tourists on trips up the river.....

a park ran between the main 'Front Street' and the river itself.

Ernie was intrigued with this sign....quite the combination of services!

This is the Keno - the last steamship to be used on the river and now a National Historic Site.

The sky that evening, showed that some weather was moving in and not long after this was taken there was an incredible thunder, lightning and rain storm.

To say I was unimpressed with Dawson City would be an understatement. I was so horrified by the havoc wrecked on the environment that is evident for some distance before you reach the town itself, and the fact that this is somehow a badge of honor and a tourist attraction, even in this day and age with no effort to reclaim any of it had me so upset that I'd just as soon turned around and headed out of town. Perhaps it was the contrast with the pure, virtually untouched wilderness that we had spent the last week and a half in, that magnified the whole effect. To their credit there are many old buildings that have been preserved and are still in use....but in my 'mood' all I could think of was that the place was akin to a dusty (and after the rain - muddy) Disneyland.

Campground fee: $31 (power and water) Total Distance traveled to date: 4,852 km.