Sharp's Travels

At 9:15am we were all lined up at Spike’s, ready to head for our Commissioners Residence tour. We parked in town where the Yukon and Klondike rivers come together. You can clearly see, as they flow together, that the Yukon River is the dirty one and the Klondike River is the clear one. It looks weird to see the difference as they flow side by side.

At the Commissioners Residence we found out our tour guide was ill and we would have to reschedule our tour. We switched our Dredge #4 tour to the morning and the Commissioners Residence to the afternoon.

The Dredge #4 tour was very interesting. We watched a movie on the history of dredging and then we were given a guided tour of the dredge. For sixty years these huge machines dug up the ground of the Klondike region to extract gold. Dredge #4 is the largest wooden hulled bucket line dredge in North America. $32,000,000 of gold was sold in the Dawson area by the 100 miners that are in business here today. Dredge #4 ceased operating in 1960 when it sunk into the slit and mud of the Bonanza Creek. It remained this way for years until Parks Canada undertook a project to recover and restore it.

It was great to be able to go inside the dredge and see how it all works.

We had lunch back at the 5th wheel and by 1:30 we were ready for that tour of the Commissioners Residence. In 1996 Parks Canada completed an extensive restoration and refurbishing project on the Yukon’s Commissioners Residence. The gardens and the main floor have been carefully returned to their original state making one feel like they have stepped back in time. Wished we could have toured the entire house but they have no pictures to indicate which rooms were which upstairs to they decided if they couldn’t make it accurate they would not spend the money to redo the upstairs.

At 6pm we were on our way into town to have supper at Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall. I had a hamburger and Gay had a rib sandwich. Patty and I traded some money for tokens and did a little gambling in the slot machines. Patty won $7 and I just gave them all my money! The show started at 8:30. It was good. The lead gal had a beautiful voice and the can-can dancers were really good.

There were 3 caravan groups in Dawson, which meant about 79 units would have to cross the Yukon on the ferry. The ferry holds 1, sometimes 2 units at a time, plus they had to fit all the cars on that were waiting to cross. We talked it over with Charlie & Patty and decided to pack up right away and cross over tonight. It was a free ferry and only took about 15 minutes to load the ferry and cross to the other side. We traveled the TOP OF THE WORLD HIGHWAY. WOW! It was beautiful. We loved the scenery. The sky was beautiful. Now we know what they mean when they say the midnight sun. It was still light out at 1:20am when we reached the border. When you look at all the sunset pictures just remember they were all taken between 11pm and 1am. Looking down into the valleys was beautiful too. The roads were dirt and there were places where we had to dodge the pot holes, and there were also patches of asphalt. We took is easy and enjoyed the ride. A number of others in our group did the same thing but they stopped at mile 11 at a wayside and stayed the night. We pushed on as far as the border crossing. We arrived there at 1:20am and parked in line for the crossing to open at 9am. We were unlevel but just crawled into bed and made the best of it. I told Gay as long as he didn’t roll on me and push me out of bed I’d be fine.

Gay has uploaded pictures for the day See Album: Dawson City 7-11-08