8/9/2013 – Dawson to Whitehorse

Today we headed out of Dawson for the 9 hour drive to Whitehorse. The drive was pretty and we stopped a few times along the way to stretch our legs or take pictures or eat.

We had a stop at an interesting little place called Moose Creek lodge. There was a little restaurant with pastries and some rest rooms. They had a life sized sculpture of a Yukon mosquito.

They had a moose in the driveway

And a phone if you really needed it 🙂

We drove along the Steward river near Mayo and Keno – silver district.

We then stopped for lunch in a little place called Minto which is owned by the First Nation people. The lunch was a salad, some chili and some homemade bread. It was right on the Yukon river, which we joined up with again in Mento.

The black spruce trees that we have seen everywhere here are very mature but very skinny. The stay so skinny because of the permafrost which limits how low their root systems can grow.

Our guide told us that we stop at Minto because the servers are so good looking. When we got inside we realized that Matt was the server.

After Minto we stopped to see the five finger rapids. Three “fingers” of rock in the middle of the river. It was hard for the early gold rush travelers to traverse but then later even the Stern Wheelers had to traverse it. They eventually strung a cable to help pull the stern wheelers up river.

When we got into Whitehorse we grabbed a quick dinner and headed our for an 8 PM Jet Boat ride on the Yukon river. We saw many Juvenile and Adult Bald eagles sitting in the trees at the edge of the bank, and perched on branches along the edge of the water. We also saw a beaver house that is 7 feet high, part of it under water and part of it built into a hole in the bank so that when the river freezes, they can still move around in the hole in the bank and under the water.

The Jet Boat went 65 miles an hour at top speed, and everyone had a blast. Mom loved the fast boat as it reminded her of her days on the lake as a kid.

This morning we are off to Fraser British Columbia where we will board the White Pass train down into Skagway Alaska. The highway was voted one of the most scenic in the world and the train ride was voted most scenic in the world. Hoping for the weather to hold.

Once in Skagway we will board the cruise ship

#Alaska2013