Monday, June 11, 2007

Certainly in no rush to leave here today. Having breakfast watching the namesake river go by. Of course we had to take a few more pictures, then we got in RV and went across the street to the general store and the museum. As I said, not much to town, but this was our chance to do a bit of name dropping - LOL! We went into the museum and I got a picture of Jerry signing the guest register...of course he wrote PELLY in capital letters! We were hoping for a key to the city, but the name failed to impress anyone. :((( Of course we are used to that reaction! I guess if you have to have a place named for you, it would be better to have a name like Trump or some such.

The museum is in a log cabin called Big Jonathan House and is a tribal heritage/historical museum. There were several photos and displays of tribal stuff. When Jerry asked the two gals at the museum how the place got its name, they were clueless. He informed them that it was named for a governor or director of the Hudson Bay Company. They still weren't impressed.

Then we went over to the General Store to see if we could find some Pelly Crossing t-shirts or other paraphanalia. We did find some of last year's stuff that was on sale but the new stuff had not come in yet. Slim pickings but we managed to find sweatshirts and/or t-shirts for a few folks back home. I think we made a total of 3 trips into that store...THEY really liked us, but it had nothing to do with OUR name.....they like the American Express name better! We got an ice cream and then had to get some post cards. Sat in RV and wrote postcards to be mailed from Pelly Crossing. Post Office was a drop box inside the tribal administration/government center so I don't know if they will have Pelly Crossing postmark or not. But we tried.

We felt a need to drive through town so we did that twice in less than 5 minutes! In spite of the town being so small we managed to spend quite a bit of time there! This is the Pelly Pilgrimage after all! We went back to the campground so we could have access to the river again because we wanted some river rocks from the Pelly River. Since it is a very silty river, rocks were a bit hard to come by, but we got what we needed.

The river itself is fairly large and fast flowing and we wanted pictures of the Pelly River sign on the bridge. HOWEVER - there wasn't one. So we drove across the bridge and there wasn't one on that side either! We were able to park on the other side and we then walked across the bridge over "OUR" river. Jerry did his "ka-boom rock" for Malia in the middle of the river and then we went back to the RV. We said our farewells to the town of Pelly Crossing and Pelly River. Thus endeth the Pelly Pilgirmage part of the trip.

As we headed to Dawson City, we noticed that virtually EVERY other river, creek, dry streambed and ditch was named and had signs posted going both ways! Maybe they know something we don't know....but still no pix of Pelly River sign. sigh......

The drive was fairly scenic altho some parts not so pretty.....we finally picked up on the Klondike River and the highway followed that into Dawson City. The Klondike is a very historic river because of the Gold Rush that happened there in 1899. It is a clear river which is mostly not the case up here as glacier melt is very milky and rivers not clear. As we got closer to Dawson City we began seeing piles and piles of river rock that were the tailings or leftovers from placer gold mining. In placer mining, they dredge up river bottom and sift it to look for gold. In fact one aerial photo showed a labyrinth of these gravel/rock piles that snaked along in an unbelievable way. Some are now being levelled and houses being built on them. There is still a lot of mining going on today. The spaces between these gravel levees have filled up w/ water and become small lakes or ponds.

We arrived in Dawson City about 5:30 p.m. and our RV park was right in town. I was a bit leery of that, but it turned out to be a great place to stay. We were in walking distance to most everything in town....not a large town by any means - population - 1800 or so. Very quaint and rustic in places...streets are gravel/dirt except for the highway and that is questionable in some spots. This is a gold rush town and they try to preserve that image. There are boardwalks and buildings with false fronts, log cabins and shacks.

After dinner it had quit raining so we decided to take a walk. Local folk said we could follow the road behind the campground up the mountain for a way to a lookout on the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers. It truly was uphill all the way! We had hoped for a view of the city as well, but too many trees and bushes. It was an OK walk when we got to the top, but we were both huffing and puffing. Decided later it was not really worth the effort, but we were out and about. Jerry had bear spray with him, but did not need it thank goodness!

When we got back to the RV I decided to do some serious catching up on the blog. I was up until 1 a.m. working on that. About 1:40 a.m I noticed a strange orange light on an RV across the way and thought they really had some strange colored glass on their RV. Then I realized it was the sky color. Sure enough I turned around and the sky was a beautiful color of deep orange and a beautiful sunset! That's right...the sunset this evening was at 12:40 a.m! I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but as we were in town there were too many trees and buildings in the way. As we are approaching the summer solstice the days are still getting longer.

It takes a LONG time to download pictures to blog and playing catch up is not all that easy. But I am trying.....slowly but surely....

I am getting sleepy, so off to bed....