Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Cheri Aug-21-12
3:20 PM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
Whitehorse is nestled on the banks of the Yukon River and is surrounded by mountains and lakes. It has a population of 25, 000 residents and is 3 blocks wide and used to be 8 blocks long until the Canadian Super Store and Wal-Mart arrived. Now it is about 1 mile long.
At 9:30am we carpooled along the Yukon River and to the Whitehorse Rapids. The water is a beautiful turquoise.
We stopped at the Whitehorse Fish Ladder. It is the largest wooden fish ladder in the world. The Chinook salmon run in August and we watched as they used a net to catch and bring the fish up out of the water, count male & female fish one by one, and drop them back into the water to continue their journey up the fish ladder. The fish then return to their ancestral spawning grounds. It was such an interesting operation.
We then headed up to Miles Canyon and the Suspension Bridge. A few of our group were afraid of heights and were nervous about walking across the bridge. With support from our gang, we helped them across.
You could look down at the Devils Bowl, where the water just swirled around and around. What a beautiful area.
We headed back to the campground for a lunch break.
We were off again at 1:45pm to tour the SS Klondike Sternwheeler. It is like taking a trip back in time to the golden age of sternwheeler traffic on the Yukon River. We were led on a personal tour of the ship. The men went down in the engine room and the ladies were shown the deck, dining rooms, sleeping quarter for first and second class and the wheel house.
This ship was built in 1929 and is 240 feet long. The ship traveled between Whitehorse and Dawson City. It made 14 trips in their 4 months season. In the 1950’s they stopped running it because it got too expensive to operate.
We also took in the Beringa Interpretive Center. It featured life-size exhibits of animals of the last ice age. It had a full size cast of the largest wooly mammoth ever recovered in North America. The feature exhibit is a fascinating well preserved 26,000 year old Yukon Horse—complete with partial hide.
One of the gals demonstrated how to throw the ancient hunting tool called an Atlate. We each got a chance to throw it.
Gay also got a picture of the world’s largest weather vane that was on display at the Transportation Museum. It was an airplane that turns on axes. It only needs a 3 knot wind to make it turn. Right now it is all covered in colorful quilts, for what reason we could not find out.
Everyone went back to the campground for dinner at their rigs.
Spike made an announcement on the radio regarding the carpool at 7:45pm to the Frantic Follies Vaudeville Revue.
The Follies is celebrating 43 years of entertaining people.
Our group sat in the front on the left side of the stage. It was a 1 ½ hr show, including the works of Robert Service and the music of the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. They had dancing gals and one from our group got picked to go up on stage with the gals. It was a fun time had by all.
We didn’t get back to the 5th wheel until after 10pm and was near midnight before we got to bed. That’s a late night for us.
To see pictures of the day click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on albums: Whitehorse day one, S.S. Klondike Tour & Beringia Center, and Frantic Follies
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