Date: 3 July 2001 (Teusday)

Start: Guggieville RV Park, Dawson YT

End: Pioneer RV Park, Whitehorse YT (344 miles)

The temperature was 52f early, rising to 79f later in the day. The day was clear in Dawson but got progressively more cloudy as we traveled to Whitehorse.

We ate, dumped the tanks, and left Dawson. Dawson’s a funny little town & we’d be happy to go back. We left by going upstream alongside the Klondike. Just out of town we saw a bird at roadside that we identified as a spruce grouse.

The first notable thing on the trip south was an overlook for the Tintina Trench. This trench is visible from space and some call it the largest geological feature ever found. It’s the visible part of a fault line that has seen one side slide several hundred miles caused by tectonic plate movement over the last 60 million years.

The trench is several hundred feet deep and about two miles across. It lies on a straight line from Dawson YT to Watson Lake YT.

The sliding of the rock is thought to have changed the flow of the Yukon River from south-flowing to north-flowing out to the Bering Sea.

While we were looking at it, along with part of a Fantasy RV caravan, Dolores found a moose and two calves with her binoculars. They were far away, but identifiable.

We came over a low pass and found ourselves in the Stewart River valley, going downstream. We went over a bridge and up out of the valley soon.

We wandered on south, stopping now and then to take wildflower pictures. The road finally returned to the Yukon River. Then we came to an overlook at Five Fingers.

Five Fingers is a feature on the Yukon where four separate basalt rocks force the water into one of five small channels. It was very critical that the steamboaters take the easternmost channel, as it was the only one with enough water to allow passage.

But this channel had such quick-flowing water that the steamboats had a hard time coming upstream through it. So, a cable was fastened to the shore upstream. A steamboat would snag the cable and winch its way up the channel, dropping the cable as it went for the next boat.

We had intended to stop for the day at Carmacks (named after one of the Indians who made the Klondike gold strike). But a shower had just passed through, and the whole place looked like a bog. There weren’t enough features in the place to keep us interested, so we continued south for Whitehorse, another 100 miles.

Along this stretch, we saw an arctic ground squirrel at roadside and, later, an eagle landing on a powerline pole.

The first campground we went into was full, but the next one was open and we checked in there. We backed in to our site in a cloud of mosquitoes. I guess we won’t sit outside much here.

Then we returned to Panda’s downtown for dinner. We were last here on June 9^th. It was as good this time as last time. The season is in full swing, apparently, since they were much busier tonight.

Back to the little house in the mosquitoes we went, to type these notes and relax. While typing, I’ve been watching a little canadian red squirrel scurrying around outside.