Whitehorse to Dawson City
Day 6
The ride to Dawson city was much the same, no traffic great scenery a pleasant day. With the exception of a minor fall I had well coming down a slight incline. It was a drive way of a service station of which you cannot pass. I must have touched a little front brake with a slight turn on some loose gravel on the pavement and down I went. The bike threw me off so fast that I felt like the boys in Harry Potter where they were tufted out of the magic car. Before we left Whitehorse, we had phoned Dawson City and luckily got a nice room with a view of Dome Hill.
Dome Hill is the farthest place south that once a year the sun doesn’t set and this was the day. This was as good a reason as any for a minor celebration. Basically the whole time that we were in the Yukon and Alaska it never got dark, 24 hours of light. All the motels have curtains that darkened the rooms. Now, the city itself has nothing that resembles modern times. The streets are gravel with boardwalks. The buildings have been made to represent the early 1900s or have been restored. There is a casino with an old western show inside, and the profits from this establishment go to keeping the town as a tourist destination.
The entire town is right on the shore of the Yukon River, which can be seen from the top of Dome Mountain. All the time we traveled, we saw these vehicles in the order of quantity: motor homes and trailers, motorcycles (mostly BMW), then pick-ups and vans, cars and semis.
At this time of the year, you find the least amount of bugs, which means that at the end of the day, you can tell what color your bike is but still can’t see through the windshield.
In this part of the world all the citizens will tell you that there is not a single mosquito, that is because they are all married with big families.
I could hardly pass this picture of the Dawson City ferry terminal. We crossed here to access the Top of the World Highway. The last picture shows the city and Dome Mt. from the other side.
