Date: 4 July 2001 (Wednesday)

Start:

End: Pioneer RV Park, Whitehorse YT (0 miles)

The temperature was 52f early and cloudy. It only reached 64f in the afternoon. Cool, humid, breezy. Feels as though a front is coming in, and rain is forecast for Friday.

This was a day for loafing and doing chores. After breakfast, we hauled all the laundry down to the park laundry facility (we’re up on a hill in a wooded circle, behind the main part of the place).

Dolores started the laundry while I went and did the e-mail, including sending the notes up to this one. We finished that and hauled it all up to the little house in the mosquitoes and put it away.

Then we went down to the local Food Fair for groceries and spent $105 Canadian on them. The individual prices didn’t appear too bad, but they’re definitely higher here. The 7% GST (Goods and Services Tax) on everything doesn’t help. We also wandered through the small mall and looked at some clothes, and bought some needed vitamins in the drug store.

We brought all that back and put it away, then remembered a few more things. So we went back downtown and bought a new mop and I bought some Chardonnay at the government liquor store (no take-out sales of beer, wine, or booze except in the government store here).

This time back at the campground, we stopped. We had a late lunch/early dinner and read.

We turned the TV on for the news. We have cable here, including Detroit – why we have Detroit, I’ve no idea. We also get Vancouver (2), Seattle (2), Chicago, the weather channels for both the US and Canada, and a camera that shows Main Street downtown so you can see how busy it is.

We also get the First Nation channel – this is the Athabascan Indian channel. This channel is sometimes quite interesting when they get some of the elders talking about old times. It’s also quite moralistic and pitches sobriety and work as necessary and good things. A number of community events make it onto the channel, including the community dances in remote locations.

We saw some of the 4^th of July festivities, but turned it off again to have the quiet.

Dolores had finished the book "Tisha" yesterday, so I read it today. It’s not history, but it’s a good little read.

We’ll go down to Carcross tomorrow and put the trailer there; then we’ll commute to and from Skagway in the truck for a day or two and look around Carcross when we want.

We seem to be a little ahead of where we thought we’d be at this point. We’re trying to figure out what to do with the apparent extra time.