June 22 - Palmer to Valdez

We hit the trail fairly early - we were really excited to hit Valdez today. We heard nothing but fantastic rave reviews about Valdez from everyone we'd talked to who had been there. We also heard that the road in to Valdez is one of the prettiest roads in America so we were stoked!

As we headed East on the Glenn Highway, we meandered through a lot of agricultural land - small farms and ranches and noticed more cowboy hats and boots... After Sutton, the road starts to follow a big glacier wash and gets twisty and hilly - so much fun on bikes! We came swinging around one corner and suddenly, a brilliant blue glacier was to our right. WOW! Our first glacier this trip. From there, the road slowly started to level and straighten out and we were back into the endless tundra and a million square miles of black spruce. 

We eventually made it to the junction of Highway 4 and the town of Glenallen. We had a really good lunch at the Fireweed Cafe and then headed south. We stopped for gas at Copper Center which is really just a big fishcamp. We stood on the bridge and watched as dozens of people lined the banks of the river and fished for sockeye salmon. People come from all over the States (including the Lower 48) to get their yearly supply and this year, the salmon are hitting record numbers so Fish and Wildlife has increased the allowable catch.

Past  Copper Center, the road is more tundra and black spruce and then it starts to descend towards the coast. Suddenly, the terrain changes dramatically and you start to catch sight of the coastal mountains.

Valdez truly is a land of giants - we've seen some big mountains in our travels (both on this trip and others) and I grew up in the Rockies in southeastern BC and we were both gobsmacked by the mountains that tower over the valley that leads to Valdez. Around every corner is another postcard vista of knife point peaks covered in blinding white snow and lowlands of rich green. Gone is the tundra to be replaced with what looks like temperate rainforest - the trees include many deciduous varieties and the forest is so dense, you would be hard pressed to make a trail. 

Quickly, you come to Worthington Glacier which is the crown of this stretch of road - stretching across the horizon, lodged between a string of mountains. It's so stunning, you simply cannot help but stop at the pull-out and stare in amazement. 

From there, the road swings to the left and up a hill and then there is another pull out that perches over the magnificent valley you descend through to get to Keystone Canyon and the coast below. 

We can honestly say, this is probably the most stunning and awe-inspiring road we've ever travelled. If for no other reason (and there are many), go to Valdez just to travel this road... ESPECIALLY if you can do it on a motorcycle and can catch it on a sunny day as we were so lucky to do. 

Once into Valdez, we cruised the main street through town to get our bearings and then we spotted the Bear Paw RV and Campsite right beside the marina. The little known insider information is that the Bear Paw has an adult-only camping section that has about 2 dozen sites a couple blocks away, right on the harbour. We scored a sweet spot right on the beach...

We went to one of the local hangouts - The Fat Mermaid. The Mermaid is a bar and restaurant that looks out over the marina. It's basic pub fare but the food was really good. We had the fish and chips (the fish is all caught fresh right there) and it was some of the best we've had. 

Valdez is a very interesting town. It is the terminus of the Alaskan Pipeline which runs 800 miles down from Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea at the north end of the Dalton Highway. At Valdez, enormous oil tankers are filled up across the bay at the storage plant and then they sail to the Lower 48 where the oil is refined. The Alaskan Pipeline was moving 2 million barrels of oil per day but now, production has slowed and the pipeline is only moving about 600,000 barrels per day because of a lack of refining facilities so we were told.  

Prior to the pipeline, Valdez was a fishing village. In 1964, the huge earthquake that shook Alaska and down the San Andreas fault line as far south as California, completely destroyed the town. It was a 9.2 quake that lasted for 4.5 minutes at that strength. When they rebuilt, they chose a new (and the current) townsite. Valdez was fading quickly and was almost a ghost town like many of the small towns in the 1960s and 70s before the pipeline was built and created employment for thousands of people which has also supported a burgeoning tourist trade. 

The marina is an absolute hive of activity and there is still a very active commercial fishery here including 2 canneries and processing plants. In town, one of the packers has a retail shop where you can buy the fresh catch of the day and is very reasonably priced given that there are no middle-men. The docks are crammed with all kinds of boats from big commercial boats to small sailboats and everything in between. Many people from Fairbanks, Tok and other Alaskan places have boats in Valdez and come down on weekends and for holidays. It was really fun to hang out on the marina boardwalk and watch all the comings and goings and all the hustle and bustle of this vibrant little town. 

We talked to some locals and the consensus was that a boat tour was the must-do activity. There are two major boat tour providers - Stan Steves and the LuLu Belle. We had heard about the LuLu Belle from a lovely young couple we camped beside in Fairbanks who were from Valdez. In fact, they'd gotten married on the LuLu-Belle. She is a gorgous yacht, all hand finished in teak and mahogany by the owner and operator, Fred Rodolf. Fred has been plying these waters for 30 years and is a walking (or, in this case, sailing) encyclopedia of information about anything you might want to know. We opted for the LuLu Belle so we bought tickets for tomorrow. Can't wait!!

June 21 - Denali to Talkeetna and Palmer

We woke up to heavy, dark skies - huge saturated clouds just waiting to dump rain on us as we packed up. We scurried around, trying to get organized as quickly as we could while watching the rain creep it's way towards us. It arrived about 10 minutes before we were finished but we managed to get our camp stowed away and out of the rain. 

We decided to head back up north of Healy to Rose's Cafe for breakfast because dinner was so good the night before. We got there and it was PACKED. We sat out on their covered patio and had a fantastic breakfast. We really can't say enough about Rose's. Just go if you're in the area. You won't be disappointed, we promise!

By the time we left, the rain had let up a bit. We hit the road and, several miles south of Healy, there was some road construction, a 2 mile section of it was an orange, clay-based dirt that, when mixed with rain, turned into a slimy red grease. It was BRUTAL especially on a motorbike - absolutely zero traction and it was a bumpy, pot-holey run. A couple of times, my 950 lb. bike just slid into a hole and pulled me off course. All I could do was go with it and *gently* brake until I came to a stop, redirect myself and try again. Meanwhile, I had a huge line of vehicles behind me but there was no where for them to pass me so we all just had to be patient. It was the closest I've come to dumping my bike but I'm so GLAD that I was able to make it through without mishap! That behind us, the road was in good shape and the sky gradually cleared as we got further south. 

When we were at Rose's, the folks at the table next to us suggested we take the time to detour off the main highway about 14 miles and take a quick run into the historic town of Talkeetna. At the junction, we waffled a little bit but decided we'd better check it out and we've very glad we did. Talkeetna has a long history of being a supply base for many of the adventurers in the area going back to the turn of the century. The town also has a significant aviation history in Alaska as well. It has revived itself into a significant tourist stop and now, many of the cruise ships offer bus excursions to Talkeetna which has allowed it's tourist trade to boom. Many of the old buildings have been resurrected and the main street is now a vibrant, bustling mix of adventure tour companies, excellent eateries, inns, art galleries, museums and gift shops. For those of you who know BC at all, it reminds me of Crawford Bay (outside of Nelson) only a bit bigger. Very artsy, funky and cool little town with a fun vibe... We spent a couple of hours there, had some of the best pie this side of somewhere and then carried on...

From Talkeetna, we continued on through the town of Willow. It was here, a week ago, that a huge wildfire was buring out of control and was uncontained with high winds and a lot of fear of the town being burned to the ground. People were evacuated and the major highway was closed. Fortunately for us, the weather had cooled, we'd gotten some rain and they winds backed off enough for the firefighters to get it sorted out. As we drove through, you could see that the highway went right through a major section of the fire and there were still hot spots smoldering on the sides of the road. Firefighters were still on the scene and we were escorted along several miles by pilot cars. We had heard that the fire was started by fireworks and, sure enough, just before Willow, there is a section of road where suddently there were at least half a dozen ENORMOUS fireworks outlets (all closed up of course!) From Willow, we made our way through Wasilla and then on to Palmer. We just skirted Palmer (so we didn't really see the city at all) and found a camp on the northeast side of town. 

June 19 and 20 - Denali

June 19

The drive from Fairbanks to Healy (where we stayed next) was uneventful. More of the same highway - lots of rolling mountains and vast expanses of tundra, black and white spruce and shrubs. It is a bit monotonous but beautiful just the same and, in some respects, sort of meditative as you drift along the highway with nothing but nature around you. Very pleasant, actually. We crossed the Mighty Nenana river and then followed it on and off into Healy. At Healy, we pulled into the gas station and realized this was also the McKinnley RV Park where we were booked to stay. Right next door was the 49th Brew Pub and Restaurant. We pulled in there for some lunch and realized they were just setting up for a 3 day Solstice festival with a line up of non-stop party plans and music. As we had lunch on their lovely patio, the soundman was testing out his system and periodically, there would be a minute's worth of head-pounding techno - BOM BOM BOM BOM - that thumped in your chest like a madman attempting CPR. We looked at each other over our delicious chowder and spinach salad as realization dawned - our campsite is right next door and we're here for 2 nights. The festival is 3 nights....

We talked to the campsite folks and they were AWESOME. They completely understood our desire to not be in the vicinity and offered our money back. We had the luck of the Gods with us and, a couple miles down the road, dear Phyllis of the Denali RV Park, managed to find us a LOVELY and QUIET little bolthole for our camp which was a bit miraculous given that everything was pretty much booked out in the area... Perfect!

We set up our camp and suddenly, the temperature soared into the 30s and the breeze quit. It was sweltering. That's one thing we've really noticed up here - the air temperature itself isn't that warm but, when the sun comes out, the temperature soars. As soon as the sun goes behind a cloud or drops below the horizon, it plummets again. Anyway - it was probably a combination of fatigue and the heat but we both just wilted. My husband Lynn surrendered to it and made off for a deep 2 hour nap in the camper. I napped briefly in a camp chair and then spent the following 2 hours updating the blog and sorting through photos. FINALLY I had good wifi. For the past 5 days, we've been in campsites with Tengo wifi which, QF (quite frankly) is crap. This wifi was FAST! What a treat to be able to check email, update the blog and not have wait times and service gaps reminiscent of 1990s dial-up. It was a nice, lazy afternoon. 

We roused ourselves around 7pm. The great thing about such long sunny days is that it's still daylight until around midnight. At the moment, we're getting about 21 hours of daylight with about 3 hours of only dusk. It never really gets dark. As a  result, you still feel like you've got time to do things in the later evening. We headed down the road to a place we heard about from a local called Rose's Cafe, just north of Healy. We had a late dinner and boy was it awesome. 

The dinner menu consists of about 8 options, each for $20 - you can have the chicken dinner, the baked ham dinner, the chicken fried steak dinner etc., with all the fixin's and it includes icecream for dessert and a bottomless drink. The dinners are all home cooked and there were lots of locals and regular truckers there. We knew instantly we'd found a gem. 

Dinner was fabulous and Leslie, the owner, told us she and her husband took over the restaurant a few years ago from her mother-in-law who was the original Rose. You can tell Leslie loves her job and her customers. She's a whirlwind to watch and as friendly as they come. We'd already decided to come back the next night before we'd finished our first night's dinner...

Back at camp, we collapsed. We'd booked a tour in Denali for the next day and we had to be at the Wilderness Access Center in the park by 6:30 the next morning so we set the alarm and set about to "sleep fast" as my dad would say...

June 20

We were up at 4am - excited about what the day would bring and a little paranoid about sleeping in and missing out of the tour. We headed into the park and found our way to the Wildnerness Access Center without any trouble. The construction zone we'd been warned about for delays was not even in motion as we putted our way through the gravel sections. At the WAC, we were ECSTATIC to find an open Starbucks canteen! Coffee in hand, we sat outside and watched the folks queue for the various bus tours. 

The way Denali works is that you can drive into the park for the first 10 miles or so and then that's it. To get beyond that point, you have to take one of their buses. Their mandate is to have as little impact as possible on the 6 million acres of ecosystem this park is there to preserve. There is only one road in and it only goes 90 miles and that's it. If you want to hike, however, there is no limit to where you can go and you can catch shuttle buses in to various points where different trail head take off. At the center of the park is a section of the Alaskan Mountain Range and, of course, the famous Mount McKinley, later renamed Denali, the Athabascan traditional name which means "the high one". Denali is the tallest peak in North America and she truly is a beauty if you can see her. Only about 30% of the visitors to Denali see her because she makes her own weather and is often veiled in cloud or haze. We were VERY lucky to have a couple of relatively clear glimpses of her at various times of the day as the cloud blew off. 

We were also partially hampered by forest fire smoke from a large fire burning south of us at Willow. The  entire park surrounds this section of the Alaskan Mountain Range and the great jagged peaks are encircled by vast expanses of tundra in wide sweeping valleys. This type of wide valley is created by glaciers (as opposed to deep v-shaped valleys carved out by eons of running water). There are many glacier washes here in Alaska and in the Yukon. They look like giant gravel riverbeds and often, small "braided" rivers will run through them, changing course daily. These huge gravel washes have been there since the glaciers receded, in some cases, many thousands of years ago. 

In the park there are shuttle buses (green) and tour buses (beige). The tour buses are coaches and they have various different tours you can go on. The shuttles are school buses and, while the drivers DO provide a running informative commentary as you go, they're designed to run up and down the park road, stopping at designated points and allowing people to get on and off as they please. The upside of the tour buses is that once you're on and you have a seat, you'll always have your seat. With the shuttles, if you hop off and hike or do an activity of some kind, you may have to wait for a bus or two until there is availability for you which, when busy, could be a frustration. Not knowing any better, we opted for the tour. At the turn-around point of our tour (at mile 30), our bus driver said he would see if we could hop onto a shuttle bus if we wanted to go further into the park which was awesome. The next shuttle that came by was the one to Kantishna, the very end point of the road 90 miles in. Kim, the driver, said she'd take us but we wouldn't be back to the WAC until 9pm. It was only 10am and we'd already been on the first bus since 6:30. What the heck. We'll likely only be here once. Steve, our original tour driver, gave us a couple extra boxed lunches and bottles of water from the tour that weren't used and off we went. 

The shuttle stops at different points along the way and there are very nice, clean outhouses and interpretive centers at each stop off. We stopped at Polychrome, Toklat River and then the Eielson Center which is the main mid-point stop. If we were to do Denali again, we would just take the green shuttle bus to Eielson and back. This first stretch of road is, by far, the most beautiful and dramatic part of the park (that you can see from the road.) Past Eielson to Wonder Lake and Kantishna is beautiful but not breathtaking like the first part. 

At Kantishna, there are several gorgeous lodges and an airstrip along with an old, heritage mining site and cabins. Another option is to bus out to Kantishna and then fly back to the park Entrance area by small plane for about $300 - an option all of us contemplated as we considered the 6 hour ride back out of the park in front of us on a school bus. On hard seats. Over 90 miles of gravel road.  

The ride back was long. By then, we'd seen the scenery so the wonder of what would be coming around the next bend was done. We were tired and many people catnapped as the bus jolted, bobbed and rattled along with a top speed of about 50kms/hour. Some of the road was a bit hairy for the less hearty folks with steep drop offs that plummeted down 1000 feet but, by the return trip, no one cared much if they pitched over the edge to their deaths.... 

The really exciting thing about going back was that it was when we saw all the great wildlife. We saw many cariboo from a distance but on our return trip, we saw two right by the road. We stopped and the cariboo came right alongside the bus and then wandered up the road in front of us for half a mile, stopping traffic and taking center stage. 

Next, we saw a very large grizzly bear right off the road who hung out for 5 minutes before wandering off. 

Later, we saw a cow moose. It was completely worth the 14 hours we spent on the bus!  Denali truly is spectacular. Take the shuttle to Eielson and you'll have seen the best of it (by road). 

By the time we got back to camp at 10:00, we were completely bushed. It looked like rain so we covered things up and went to bed.

June 16 - Dawson City to Tok

We woke up this morning and the sky was overcast. After 2 days of fairly sweltering heat, it was a nice reprieve BUT, lurking and looming in the distance were purple bruises of clouds threatening rain and thunderstorms. Today is the day we were heading up over the Top of the World Highway and the ONE THING everyone said to us that was consistent was "Don't go if it's raining - the rain makes the calcium on the road turn to a greasy consistency and, if it's wet enough, the mud will cake and stick to everything.

Just as we packed up, it started to rain a bit... figures.

What the heck, we thought. Let's give it a go.

So - we headed off to the ferry that takes you across the Yukon river. It's just a wee one that carries about 12 cars max, or one very large bus-sized RV towing a small car (as it turns out). The line up included about a dozen huge RVs and then there were several of us smaller chump change. The  ferry alternated taking one HUGE RV on a run and then coming back and taking a load of smaller vehicles. The round trip only takes about 10-15 minutes so it wasn't much of a wait (about an hour or so) but if you're an RV, it can be a long wait! 

Once on the other side, we started up the hill and very quickly, the road starts to run along the ridgeline of the mountain range. It's similar to the Dempster Highway in this regard. For this reason, the views (when you can peek through the trees) are spectacular and you really do feel like you're on the top of the world. At points, it is dramatic in that the land drops away steeply off each side of the highway, making you feel like you're driving along the ridgepole of a mighty rooftop. The landscape, in both directions, is a bounty of hulking mountains as far as the eye can see and a million miles of tundra, black spruce and tundra shrubs. We were astonished that we didn't see one animal along this part of the trip - not a bear, not a cariboo, not a moose, nothin'. A little disappointing that way but the terrain was breathtaking. Several kilometers up the road from the ferry, the pavement runs out. Goodbye nice pavement... see you again in a couple hundred kilometers! 

The dirt road was in remarkably good condition for the most part. It's amazing how in tune one becomes to the variations of gravel and gravel road conditions when you're driving it on a bike. You've got your loose sharp small gravel (OK) and your loose deep pebbly gravel that moves like marbles (NOT SO OK), then you have your compact gravel (GOOD) and then you have your gravel that has been solidified by calcium and is smooth as pavement (FABULOUS!). Then you have the deep loose dirt and gravel mix that crews put down to maintain the road. Before it's compacted by a roller, it's awful business - 4x4ing on a Harley is not my favorite, gotta say. Last but not least, you have the snotty muddy gravel that sticks like goose poop on everything which we also had (DEFINITELY NOT FUN) when we hit several rain pockets. Thankfully, they were short lived but they sure made a royal mess of us, our gear, our bikes - everything! 

The road climbs up and up and up and again, we started seeing snow packs and the edges of the treeline. It got cold and we were happy for our cold weather gear, especially our electric vests and electric handgrips. At the top, we hit the American Border at Poker Creek - the northern most land-accessible American border. 

From there, you get a DIVINE stretch of about 10 miles of freshly laid tarmack - just enough for a bit of a break and a teaser before the gravel hits again.

After about 170 kms of gravel road, we were VERY excited to hit the town of Chicken, Alaska. As the story goes, Chicken got it's name because the local miners back in the day couldn't agree on how to spell Ptarmigan which are in abundance in the area and were a favorite in the stew pot. The colloquial name for them is chicken so the town was called Chicken. Chicken is a groovy little tourist spot - mostly a few RV parks capitalizing on the tourist draw and then the original Chicken townsite which consists of a gas station, a gift shop, a bar and a cafe. The week before we arrived, hundreds of people descended upon Chicken for their annual music festival which could ONLY possibly be named... (you guessed it)... Chickenstock. Many people travel hundreds of miles to come to Chickenstock and it's become a much celebrated annual event. The town also boasts a giant metal chicken sculpture and an old mining dredge. It's worth a stop and the food at the Old Chicken Cafe is really good.

Shortly leaving Chicken, the pavement starts again - oh Happy Day!!! On gravel, we were averaging about 50 kms/hour so you can imagine how happy we were to make some quick miles. The rest of the Taylor HIghway down to the Tetlin Junction is just a million more miles of tundra, black spruce and mountains. 

FINALLY, at Tetlin, we saw a moose! From there, we headed northwest into Tok (pronounced TOKE) - a small highway strip of a town. We stayed at the Tok RV Park. It was awesome. We had a nice wooded campsite, they had CLEAN bathrooms with free showers and they even had a do-it-yourself car wash for all us dirty, dusty, muddy travellers coming off the Top of the World! 

June 17 - Tok to Fairbanks

After a night of fairly heavy rainfall, we woke up to a glorious morning. Sunshine beamed into our tent and birds were chirping like crazy. We packed up and, on the recommendation of our camping neighbour, we headed over to Fast Eddy's for breakfast. 

Almost as soon as you leave Tok, a mountain range pops up on the south side of the highway, part of the Alaska Range according to our map. The highway itself runs along the Tanana River for a lot of the trip to Fairbanks and a fellow at a gas station explained to me that it's what they call a braided river - these rivers rise up to to be enormous when there is a lot of rain or during glacier melt but then reduce down to just small creeks so they look very low and dried up a lot of the time. 

Maybe because it was the sunshine, maybe because I had a good breakfast in my belly, maybe because I had some great tunes playing on my stereo but I found this riding day just great. At Delta Junction, there is a good sized wildfire buring to the northeast, filling the sky with a vast plume of purple, red and black smoke. You can see it for miles.

About 50kms before Fairbanks is the Eielson Air Force Base and HOLY HANNAH it's huge. As you ride along side it on the highway, there are rows and rows of military jets in front of huge hangars. After that were rows and rows of military cargo planes and more huge hangars. Eielson is the seat of of the US military defense in the north and boy, are they serious about it! All along the highway, there are signs telling people not to stop and not to take photos. In the Christmas Store we were in a little later in North Pole, Alaska, I over heard a lady telling her story about when she stopped and took photos, the military police arrived, asked for her camera and deleted the photos she had of the base on there. They don't kid around about that. According to the Milepost, the base is 63,000 acres with a population of about 3000. The runway is 14,000 feet long (almost 3 miles!) just to give you an idea of the enormity of it. It's a small town in it's own right...

From here, we stopped at the North Pole. You have to, right? Yes, it's a tourist trap but it's kind of cool. There is a year round Christmas Store here but one of the neat things they do is they have a program where they will send kids letters from Santa from the post office in North Pole, Alaska. They also have a barnyard area where they house reindeer... it's complete kitsch but a little bit of kitsch never hurt anyone... ha ha ha...

We finished up the day by rolling into Fairbanks, a very pretty city that is built around a stretch of the Chena river. We snagged a camping site right on the river bank at River's Edge RV Park which we would recommend. The RV part is crammed and tight but lots of trees. The camping area is very nice, right on the river. There is also a large picnic area on a grassy part of the river bank for all to enjoy. The bonus is that the park is minutes from downtown. We walked down the river path to Chena's Alaskan Grill, a very nice restaurant with a huge deck that looks out on the river. A bit "spendy" as the Alaskans say - a groovy saying I think I might hang on to in lieu of the word "expensive" - but a nice meal with a gorgeous view...

June 18 - Fairbanks

We picked up a coffee at the office of the RV Park and waited for our little city tour bus to arrive. Gail, from California, was our host and she was a hoot. Lots of fun stories and interaction with the 8 of us on the bus. The tour took us by Pioneer Park and then through some of the downtown area, including the old red light district. Fairbanks is full of little old post-war square houses but there are still a very large number of old log houses still in use as well. We visited the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor's Center which is fantastic! A very well done facility that houses an excellent collection of artifacts, runs some movies and is a great place to get oriented to the city and surrounding area. 

Fairbanks has about 30,000 people, with a surrounding catchment area of about 100,000 so it's definitely the hub of this part of the north.

Off we went again, this time up the Steese Expressway to a pullout that has an information area about the Alaska Pipeline and then you can walk in to where a portion of the pipeline is above ground to see it. What an incredible engineering feat this was, back in the 70s, and a huge part of the complexity of it was building above permafrost as well as building along a fault line. 

Next we headed up to the University of Alaska which is a very interesting place to visit. They have a huge agricultural program there and at the base of the hill it's built on, there are lovely farmed up fields. There is a botanical garden as well. The other thing the University is known for is it's study of the Aurora Borealis. NASA even has a dish on campus as part of their own research. We spent some time in the University's Museum of the North. A very modern, beautiful building that houses a wonderful collection of artifacts as well as art work so it's also a gallery in it's own right. This is a really worthwhile stop. 

Back downtown, we drove to the Golden Heart Plaza which is a beautiful public garden and gathering space. The Chena river meanders through the entire city and the city planners have done a brilliant job of capitalizing on it's benefits. Miles of walking and bike paths follow portions of the river with many little foot and driving bridges along the way. The river is used a lot for recreation so there are lots of boats, jet skis and people floating the river. It's beautiful. 

In the afternoon, we went back out. Our first stop was the Alaska Raw Fur Shop. Here is the sign in the window... 

There is a certain "I don't know what" about a shop filled with dead animal stuff that seems terribly concerned about cleavage. But there you go... I checked myself and took the chance and went in. :) 

We went back downtown and headed to the Fairbanks Ice Museum. This is right on 2nd Ave downtown. The story is that, back in the 1980s, some Chinese ice carvers came to Fairbanks and since then, a huge ice carving festival has developed over the years to become an international event. Carvers come from all over the world. Andy, a Chinese immigrant, is one of the carvers who has moved to Fairbanks permanently. He took over the old movie theatre on 2nd Ave. and has converted it into an ice sculpture museum. The first part is a 20 minute movie about the festival and ice carving and then he opens up the refridgerated museum section which you can wander around in. Many of the carvings are interactive - you can sit on the ice stools in the ice bar or go into the ice log cabin and sit at the ice table, there is a dog sled, polar bears, a miner panning for gold and even an ice slide you can slide down on crazy carpets. It's pretty awesome, really. After that, Andy does a small 15 minute ice carving demonstration using Dremel tools and drills. 

What we really liked about Andy and his Ice Museum is that it's not your typical polished tourist trap. He's just an honest, genuine artist who is trying to creatively make a living with his craft. If you're in Fairbanks, it's a fun thing to do. 

After that, we went across the street to Big Ray's - an outfitting store that blew our minds! It's HUGE!! They have  every conceivable item you could possibly want for outdoor activities with the most enormous selection of norther wear from Carharts to Patagonia. And boots?!? They must have 300 different kinds. Three floors of everything. They also have online sales so check it out. Very impressive. 

For dinner, we hit Big Daddy's rib place... the tout themselves to be the best southern food in the north. It really is like the southern BBQ we had in Texas a few years ago. Good ribs, fun atmosphere... 

We ran into some great folks we originally met back in Dawson City so we dropped by their campsite and had a great visit. Fran and Ron are from Australia and Marilyn and Frank are from New York/South Carolina. We had a hoot of an evening with exchanging of emails and lots of offers of places to stay if we decide to visit them. You never know! 

June 14,15 - Dawson City, Yukon

We decided to give Dawson City 2 days. At this point in the trip, we were ready to have a couple of days in one spot. On the morning of the 14th, we were really tired so we slept in which is unusual for us but we needed it I guess. We didn't get on our way for the day until about 11am. The first thing we did was go to the Visitor's Center to find out the scoop on what was happening in town. We were here before in 2009 but we wanted to make sure we weren't missing out on anything new. The  Visitor's Center is really nice - a huge old log building with lots of nice displays and a few movie theatres you can watch documentaries in for free. We watched a really good one about Dawson City in the 60s narrated by Pierre Burton - an old NFB flick. We also watched another short film on the paddle wheelers with a lot of great old footage of them plying the Yukon river. The old Keno paddle wheeler has her final resting place along the river in town. These graceful old boats were the life's blood of the region during the gold rush. 

We walked the old part of the town for a few hours, doing a bit of a grid and enjoying all the old heritage buildings. Some of them have active businesses in them, some of them are restored but not in commercial use but can be viewed while on a town tour. Many, though, are still as they were left when the majority of the town was abandoned back in the 1960s. 

We went to a little theater show at the Palace Grand Theatre that was put on by Parks Canada which was cute - a depiction of 3 of Dawson's key historical figures. 

Dinner at Klondike Kate's was excellent - some of the best seafood chowder we've had. They have a really nice covered outdoor patio which was a nice cool retreat on a very hot afternoon. In the evening, we went to the Dawson City "Must-Do" - Diamond Tooth Gertie's - a casino, saloon and theatre. There were three shows at 8:30, 10:00 and Midnight - each one of them was different and they got bawdier as the evening went on! The shows were fantastic - the woman who plays Gertie is an incredible singer and showperson. She was here in 2009 when we came the first time and she was just as fabulous this time around. The dancers were also incredible. It is absolutely worth it to hang around and catch all 3 shows. It's just a great evening of entertainment and the talent is first rate. When we finished up at1am, it was still quite light out. The sun was down but just barely and there was only just a wee bit of dusk...

The next day, we headed up Bonanza Creek to Dredge #4 - in it's heyday, it was one of the biggest mining dredges ever built and it is still the second largest dredge in existence. Parks Canda has done a great job of restoring it and we went on the one hour tour. Our tour guide was really well informed and was able to answer the many questions people had. This was another really good attraction, well worth seeing.

Afterwards, we headed back towards Dawson and went up to the Midnight Dome which looks out over the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers and towers over the townsite of Dawson City. The view is spectacular and the Dome is where many hang-gliders take off from. 

Back in town, we had the great fortune of running into friends from home who have been mining south of Dawson for many years during the summer. We caught up on news and had a good visit and then had dinner at Sourdough Joe's Restaurant. More excellent seafood chowder... Of course, a hot evening wouldn't be complete without a promenade down the boardwalk with an icecream cone. The hugest icecream cones in the world can be found at Klondyke Cream and Candy - a single scoop for $3 the size of your head! OK. Maybe not quite that big but close! It's attached to Cheechakos Bake Shop which sells no end of beautiful baking and home made sandwiches... 

After dinner, we had just enough time for a quick wander through the Dawson City museum which is very well done. 

One of the things we really got a kick out of were a small group of ravens (about 5 of them) who were hanging about in a tall tree behind our campsite over the 2 days we were here. They were really fun to watch and they make sure a wide variety of wonderful sounds. Caws and glub, glub, glubs and even some noises that sound like words (hello), cries, laughter and other human sounds. Two of them spent an hour landing at the top of a tin roof and sliding sideways down and then circling around to do it again. What a hoot! 

Overall, Dawson City is really a gem of the Yukon. The history here is incredibly interesting and amazing. We were continually floored by the temerity and ingenuity of the people who had the courage to throw themselves out there and try their luck, especially the early folks who didn't have the benefit of others blazing the trail before them. Even today, the current 1800-2000 year-round residents are made of tough stuff to not just survive but thrive in the long, cold, dark winters but almost all of them that you talk to will say how much they love it there. 

We would really like to do the Dempster Highway again at some point - not this trip on our motorbikes but some day we'll come back and head up to Tombstone, Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk once more. There is a magic in the North... :)