Dawson City -- continued

Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - Continued We rode the bus a few blocks to the hotel, got our room keys and checked out our space for the next two nights. The rooms were really comfortable, and out our window was a view of a lovely purple house, (Ugh!), but as you can see Dawson is a colorful place!

Office and restaurant at Westmark

Rooms which most of our group stayed in (across the street from the office)

We took some time to walk around the streets of Dawson (there are 8!), and walked along front street, reading the signboards and learning about the sternwheelers that traveled the Yukon River in the early 1900's.

We also saw the buildings shown below, built on permafrost in 1901. When heated buildings are built on frozen ground, the frost melts and the water mixes into the soil, creating a fluid muck, causing the pilings to settle at different rates. They have maintained these buildings just as they were from the permafrost melt, so visitors can see history as it naturally unfolds.

Current day buildings in Dawson are all built off the ground, all entrances are 3 or 4 or more steps up from street level, to prevent permafrost damage to their structures.

Along about 9:00 pm, and still totally light outside, Don decided he needed to get some dinner before turning in for the night. We walked over to the Midnight Sun Hotel (quite aptly named) for a burger. It wasn't a fancy place, but the burger was good and the service was excellent. Then a short walk back to the Westmark where we settled in for the night.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010 Today we are booked on a bus tour of Tombstone Territorial Park (see why it's called Tombstone??) on the Dempster Highway. the only public highway in North America that crosses the Arctic Circle. We were hoping to have more opportunities to see some great wild life, and once again, we were disappointed. We did see a moose near the side of the road, but we were quite a ways away from him. During the trip, our bus guide told us about the lives of Joe and Annie Henry, a well known and well documented First Nation couple that lived along the Dempster. They both lived to be over 100 years old, and were instrumental in development of the Moosehide/Dawson area. We might not have signed up for this trip if we had given it enough thought. We just got off a bus after several days of riding, and we paid to ride another one...... But when we planned this from home, we really thought we'd be greatly entertained by all the animals we would see. One of the most unusual things we saw on the bus ride was some buildings being put up that will be used in the upcoming movie, The Big Year, starring Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson.


Once we returned to Dawson, we headed to Sourdough Joe's for dinner. It was a little cool outside, but we decided on outside seating at a picnic table. I had a salmon sandwich and cup of chili and Don ordered fish and chips. You might think he isn't too adventurous, ordering such a mundane meal, but wait. He'll prove you wrong in a couple of hours. At the picnic table next to us, there was a young couple; he was wearing a Packers jersey, so of course we had to strike up a conversation with him. Turns out he's from a small town near Hudson, and he's a teacher in Anchorage. His girlfriend, also a teacher, is from Anchorage, and the two of them were on vacation. We invited them to join us at Diamond Tooth Gertie's for the Cabaret show, and then on to the Downtown Hotel for a drink. The cabaret show was pretty entertaining. The ladies chose 4 men from the audience to join them in a little dance on stage, and all four were part of our tour group: Fred, Rudy, Allen and Willem. Rudy and Allen were pretty frisky with those young ladies; very entertaining.

Then onward to the Downtown Hotel for a Sourtoe Cocktail. Yes, it's for real. You pay $5.00 for the drink of your choice (although it can't be a cream or carbonated beverage). You then take that drink to the Captain (or in our case, a Captain-ess). She then recites the following words: "You may drink it fast, or you may drink it slow. But your lips must touch this gnarly toe," and drops a dehydrated human toe into your drink.



Once you've accomplished that task, you have the privilege(?) of becoming a member of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club.
Altogether, 7 guys and 3 gals in our group joined the Sourtoe Cocktail Club that evening, including our tour director, both driver guides and Don, who's seen here holding that disgusting toe in his mouth.

And that wraps up our visit to Dawson City. Tomorrow morning we're back on the coach bus on our way to Whitehorse.