Date: 10 June 2001 (Sunday)

Start:

End: Trail of ’98 RV Park, Whitehorse YT (0 miles)

It was 51f with a few clouds when we got up (late). A beautiful morning again. The sun rose at 4:30 am after setting last night at 11:28 pm.

We ate in the campground restaurant, which was featuring sourdough pancakes. We got our e-mail and responded to one and we’ll do that again this evening.

It was time to play tourist again, so we wandered around town for a bit and saw the world's tallest log cabin, among other things. We went across the Yukon to the Riverdale side and explored the fish ladder around the dam, then went out the road to Chadburn Lake. It’s another of the beautiful little mountain lakes near here.

Then we opened the MacBride museum. It’s a much larger and better museum than the exterior and the outside exhibits lead you to believe.

The upstairs has a bunch of Yukon artifacts and stuffed animals. The downstairs is a series of exhibits on gold mining, gold, other minerals in the area, and so forth. Outside is the real Sam McGee’s cabin, an old locomotive from the White Pass & Yukon, and other transportation items.

Lindsay put on a presentation at the cabin for the tourists. She gave the story of Sam McGee versus what Robert Service put in his most famous poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Sam was actually from Ontario, versus Tennessee, and was a successful Whitehorse businessman. Some think Sam gave Service permission to use his name, others that Service just used it. In either case, Sam didn’t like all the publicity it gave him and eventually left Whitehorse.

The story goes that when he returned for a brief time in 1938, a con man was selling Sam’s ashes, so he bought his own ashes and took them home.

We did some needed grocery and drug shopping and returned to the little house in the parking lot to put things away.

Then back downtown to the SS Klondike, a registered historical site Yukon paddle wheel steamboat. It’s owned by Parks Canada and tours are given frequently. We did the next tour and found it very enlightening. It’s currently having its hull replaced; the original oakum caulking retained moisture very well and that caused rot. The new hull will have non-absorbing caulking. It’s on land now and will never go back into the water, but it is realistically moored to a dock in a park. There’s an excellent tape presentation, much of it made from home movies from the period 1940-1953.

Both the Klondike and the MacBride museum are "don’t-miss" attractions.

The world’s largest weathervane (a DC3) is down off its pedestal at the local airport. We didn’t find out why.

After wandering around downtown, we decided it was time to return to the little house and have dinner.

We actually had to put on the air conditioning when we got there; the outside temperature was 76f and it was very hot inside, especially when we began cooking.

Tomorrow’s weather should be more of the same. We’re going over to Kluane Lake, stopping to look around Haines Junction en route.