Sunday June 10, 2007

Not in a huge hurry to get away today as we don't have too many miles to travel. Got camper squared away and headed into town to eat breakfast at a place called Doc's. Had a yummy breakfast sandwich w/ toasted ciabatta bread, crisp bacon, fried egg, cheese and slice of fresh tomato. Town was deserted on a Sunday morning at 9 a.m.

Whitehorse is kind of a neat town. It is right along the banks of the Yukon River and there is a walking trail along the river all the way through town. It is a good sized town w/ a population of about 22,000 people. There is a lovely canyon - Miles Canyon that is very close to town. We drove out there and it was really gorgeous! I do have some pictures from there, but the ones I wanted to come out were lost. There is a swinging suspension bridge for pedestrians across the river. It does sway! The dogs were not too happy about going across it, but they managed and we followed the trail on the other side of the river. The canyon itself is maybe a couple hundred feet deep on one side, not quite as deep on the other. The trail was great and the dogs liked the freedom to be off the leash for a bit. There is a rock outcropping there that we had to scramble down to get over to to climb up on, but it was great. A wonderful morning.

As we went back into town we stopped for a couple of pictures along the river b/c there was still snow on the river in places. Then we parked and walked a ways on the river trail in town. There is an old paddle wheel steamboat, the S.S. Klondike that is a museum and you can take tours on. We declined the tour, but enjoyed walking around it and Jerry tried to turn the paddle wheel as you can see!

We needed to restock some groceries so we went to the Super Store - Canada's answer to Super Wal-Mart. They had good prices, but they also had a shortage of help and they were really busy by the time we got there. Jerry very frustrated by the lines and they were slow moving, but we finally got stuff put away and headed up the road.

I spent the first hour or so on the computer trying to recover the pictures from the SD card - to no avail. I gave up and decided to enjoy the ride. We are headed to Pelly Crossing where we will spend the nite. It was a very nice drive with several lakes along the way. We stopped at a place called Five Finger Rapids. It is a place on the river where there are several rock outcroppings in the middle of the river. The parking lot is high above them and we could see them from there, but decided to take the hike down.....231 steps down to the trail and then about a half mile through the woods to the viewing platform. It was worth the hike to get close to the rocks although we couldn't get down to the river b/c we were still maybe 75-100 feet above the river. Steamboats actually came through at one point - in fact they dynamited some of the rock face on the bank to widen the gap. It didn't look wide enough to me even then. There were seagulls nesting out on the rocks in the middle of the river. It was great, especially when I reached that 231st step on the way back up!!!

Our next stop was a view of the Yukon as it meandered through this valley....there were about a dozen islands and gravel bars in the middle of the river and the river itself had about a dozen channels through them.

We had to stop for pictures at mile marker signs for Pelly Crossing - after all this is the Pelly Pilgrimage! I am sure people thought we were nuts, but since we don' t know them, that is OK...of course anyone who knows us knows we are nuts anyway so who cares? See pix of Jerry!!

We missed seeing the Pelly Mountains because they were behind the ones we could see (there are LOTS of mountains up here!) In fact the highway that goes by them is washed out in places due to flooding. We finally turned away from the Yukon River - next stop - Pelly Crossing!

Our campsite tonite is right on the Pelly River - in fact I am watching it right out the windshield as I sit here at the table. It is a sizable river but very silty so the water color is gray. We are dry camping as there is no electric, no water and no sewage here at the campground. In fact, there was no registration and camping here is free! We can dry camp for a few nites if we are careful not to fill up the holding tanks.

It is 10:45 p.m. and the sun is still up! Amazing! The town itself it not much - population about 350 according to the book but that metropolitan area may encompass half the Yukon! Jerry has not gotten a chance to see anyone to let them know we have come to claim the homestead by virtue of the name, but there is always tomorrow!

He was determined to get his feet wet in the Pelly River so he did just that. His toes were turning blue by the time we got all the pictures made of that....we had to use all the cameras of course! I took his word that the water was cold and declined the baptism of the toes.

Well, getting late and this is becoming a long post so I will close for now. 11 p.m. and going outside to take a pix of sun over the river. Love to all, Linda