Drink it fast, or drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe...

We spent the last two nights at the Yukon River Campground, which is one of the Yukon Territorial Government Campgrounds. It's located on the opposite side of the river from Dawson City, so we had to take the free ferry back and forth whenever we went into town. These government campgrounds are only $12 CAD ($9.25 USD) per night, and with free firewood included.

There are no services other than pit toilets and hand pumped water, and many of the sites are very small and some are not very level. And, many of the sites are for tenting. Out of the 94 listed sites, I would say that perhaps 35 of them would have been suitable for Sherman.

Natives and dancing girls

As I said, there's a week's worth of stuff to see and do in and Dawson City, Yukon. We were lucky that we arrived here just before summer solstice, and here in Canada, June 21st is National Indigenous Peoples Day.

Yukon has a population of 36,000 people, and demographically, 25% are aboriginal. So there's a lot of First Nations culture in the Yukon, and almost half of Dawson City's residents are First Nation.

Fantastic scenic flight over Yukon's jagged Tombstone Mountain Range

We had to be at Dawson City Airport for 8:45am Thursday morning. The airport is located about 17 kms (10.5 miles) east of town, so we gave ourselves about a half an hour to get there just to be on the safe side. We parked up Sherman at the area where it said "No Overnight RV Camping", but of course we weren't parking overnight.

It's a big enough airport considering the town of Dawson City has only about 2,000 permanent residents. Although they say that the population goes down to about 800 during he winter! Air North does regular flights to Whitehorse from here, as well as Inuvik and also other communities that are only accessible by air.

But for our particular flight this day, we were looking for the offices of Great River Air.

Arrived in Dawson City, Yukon!

We didn't have far to go yesterday. From our campsite beside the Stewart River, we took off at around 7:30am and headed for where the gold rush took place... Dawson City, Yukon!

We stopped and had some breakfast and then also stopped at a couple of viewpoints along the way, and we even added to our wildlife count! Check out the lynx photos below!

On our way to Dawson City

Tuesday morning, we were going to do the hike up Mt. Haldane. But we were still a little tired from our hike on Monday, so we decided to take a pass. There will be more hiking coming up shortly, and we knew we should give our legs a days rest before attempting another big hike.

So we set off driving from Keno City towards Dawson City.

The things you see in Keno City, Yukon

We went exploring in Keno City yesterday morning. Keno City is a derelict mining town whose heyday is long over. But the official population of 20 people (although we were told it's 12 right now) refuse to let go.

As a tourist though, it's worth a visit!

Mayo to Keno City, Yukon and mama bear with cubs!

We camped at the free campground in Mayo on Saturday night. There are actually two, one by the river before the bridge as you enter town, and one closer to town. We think the one before the bridge as you enter town is probably the better one.

We did some time on the internet and had some breakfast and then we took our "Walking tour of Mayo" pamphlet and went to explore the town!

How to reach the top places to watch the sunset in Sydney

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Add another moose to the wildlife list!

We drove the short distance to Pelly Crossing yesterday morning. It is the home of the Selkirk First Nation, and home to the Northern Tutchone native culture. Population of the town is about 300 people.

They have a gas station and store on the highway, as well as the Big Jonathon House Interpretive Centre. And they have a lot of internet access. Except none of them are available to the public!

It wouldn't be like us to back off from a little more exercise

Once again, we woke up early and hit the road right away. It's pretty tough to find internet access up here in the middle of nowhere and we like to get our internet work done as early as possible in the morning. So sometimes that means getting to the nearest town... and even that doesn't always work!

In this case, we headed for the town of Carmacks.

We finally met a bear on the hiking trail!

We woke up yesterday morning to rain. Not a heavy downpour at all, but not a drizzle either. Just a steady rain.

The plan was to go visit the Yukon Wildlife Preserve, about 20 kms (13 miles) northwest of Whitehorse. And, conveniently located another kilometer down the road from the Wildlife Preserve is the Takhini Hot Springs! But we wanted to do the 5 km (3 mile) hike at the Wildlife place, and then go soak ourselves in the hot springs.

The land called Beringia. If you're headed to Yukon and Alaska, you should know this...

We had never heard of Beringia.

But, now that we know about it, we think it's important for other travelers to this region to know some of the ancient history of how Alaska and Yukon came about... before, during, and after the last ice age.

A beautiful day in and around Whitehorse, Yukon!

We were sitting having breakfast yesterday morning where we had overnighted at the Yukon College beside the Yukon Arts Centre. There was not a cloud in the sky, and we were thinking of heading down to Miles Canyon to do some hiking. Ruth was reading some of the local guide literature we had picked up at the Whitehorse Visitors Centre, when she said "hey, there's a hiking trail right here"!

So right after breakfast we went for a 2 km (1.3 mile) hike through the forest.

Grocery shopping in Whitehorse, and Sherman's welding job is done!

We had an 8:30am appointment at a local auto body shop, but when we got there and he actually saw the job, he recommended a welding shop on the other side of town.

This problem has been with Sherman since before we bought him in 2007! And it's a common problem on all of these types of units. But it got worse with all the bumping around in Mexico this past winter and I've been wanting to get it repaired for quite a while.

Managed to get a two hour hike done yesterday.

It was raining fairly steady when we woke up, and it didn't let up until after 10:00am. The forecast said it might be okay after that, so we went for a hike along a trail by the Yukon River near here.

We actually weren't sure if we were going to be able to follow a trail out of the area where Jean and Art live, but it turns out there are trails all over Whitehorse area.

We don't really have a schedule to keep

We actually slept in yesterday morning. And again this morning! Partly due to the fact that we were up late the night before, but also due to the fact that it's light out well up to midnight. In fact even after midnight, there is still light in the sky. So it does tend to mess up your system a little bit because even after 11:00pm you don't feel like you should be going to bed yet because it's still light out.

Normally, we go to bed between 10:30pm and 11:00pm, and are up around 6:30am. But lately it's been closer to 11:30pm for bed, and we don't even really notice that we're staying up later than normal.

Not everything goes according to plan

Not one of our better days, but it still ended up with a glass of wine, so it wasn't all bad!

The plan was to go for a drive up to Quiet Lake on the old Canol Road. There would not be any internet access up there, so we figured we would pay for internet access at Johnson's Crossing before heading into the boonies.

An interesting place, and a worthwhile stop

Hit the road again at 6:45am Thursday morning. This time, we wanted to make it to the community of Teslin, 130 kms (81 miles) west of where we had parked for the night. The Alaska Highway to Teslin crosses the border back into British Columbia for one stretch before heading back to the Yukon for the last time.

We stopped at a couple of scenic pull offs along the way, and it was after 8:30am by the time we pulled in to Teslin.

Beautiful, rugged Yukon scenery

We woke up at the Watson Lake airport and headed into town to use the free wifi at the visitors center. There's a cell signal around Watson lake, but for some reason my phone won't connect to the data. It shows a UMTS connection with no data, but the calling features work fine. Not sure what's going on there, but it's frustrating. (And then for no reason it started working later in the day. And now, in Teslin, it's not working again. Arg!)

Before leaving the airport though, we had a couple of things to do.

Made it to the Yukon!

Yesterday morning we arrived in the Yukon! We can't believe it took us 56 years to get here!

We did the drive first thing in the morning, almost 200 kms. We stopped a couple of times along the way, once to get gas and a couple of times to see the animals!