My Trails

Diamond Tooth Gertie Show

The one show everyone talks about when visiting Dawson is the stage production at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Casino and Dance Hall. There are three shows nightly, and I decided to go to one of the later ones in hopes of avoiding the crowds. I found out that it doesn’t matter when you go because it is always packed.

The building where they have the dancing girls is full of tables stretching back from the stage with slot machines and gambling tables around the outside edges. Of course there is a long bar pouring drinks and waitresses roaming the floor keeping your glass full. The place was packed when I got there, but I asked a couple if I could sit at their table for the show. They were accommodating and we enjoyed good conversation before the show started.

The girls were good dancers and good singers. The act consisted of a story about a miner that had struck it rich in the goldfields and how all the girls played up to him for his gold. The two stars of the show were the head dance hall girl and Charlie, the rich miner. They did several duets together that were really good. It was a fun show, but of course one of the highlights of the show was when the girls pulled four men from the audience, put dresses on them, and made them do a cancan dance.

Midnight Sun

After the show ended I decided to ride up to Dome Rock – a twisting road that climbs high above Dawson – to watch the midnight sun. The sky was clear so I figured it would be a good time to go. The official town celebration is on the 21st of June but the forecast for the next night was cloudy and possible rain.

When I arrived at the top there were already many people there. Some were waiting for the sun to go down at 12:45 while others were in for the long haul and we’re waiting till it came back from behind the mountain a couple hours later. I stayed until I could get a picture of the midnight sun, then headed down the mountain with most other people.

Train Museum

Today was spent seeing a few places around town that I had missed. I walked to the museum and browsed there for a while, made a quick visit to Jack London’s and Robert Service’s Cabins, and then did the tour of the Keno Riverboat. I should have enough gold rush and early Dawson history to last me for quite some time.

Yukon riverboat Keno

This afternoon I loaded my motorcycle, took Minnie to get her tanks emptied and filled, and settled in to watch a storm pass through. My plan is to get an early start tomorrow and maybe get ahead of the long line waiting for the ferry. I have been staying up so late that it may be hard to wake up early.

Tour at the saloon

Belinda Mullvaney

This morning I walked down to the visitors center just in time to take the walking tour of Dawson. It was quite interesting and fun. The guide took us to different places and told us some history of the building, then this lady dressed up in 1890’s clothes came out and pretended she was telling the story of the original time. She was supposed to be Belinda Mullvaney, an early female entrepreneur that became wealthy building boarding houses and other establishments in and around Dawson. We found out eventually that the gal dressed up for the part has really lived here for 30 years.

After the tour, which lasted until noon, I rode back up Bonanza Creek to check out the places I missed yesterday because of rain. The Discovery Claim National Historic Site, place of the original gold discovery in 1896 that sparked the Klondike Gold Rush, was nothing more than a small path down to the creek with a few plaques to tell about the men and what happened.

Then I drove on up the road a way where you can pan for gold for free. This is the only place on the stream that is not a private claim. There were several people down in the creek trying their luck at finding a flake of gold. After years of miners digging up the dirt in the 1890’s, and maybe four dredges that had chewed through the valley, there is probably not much left for the recreational panner. But they never get it all and new flakes get washed down every year. Do you think I took my gold pan down to the stream?

Yukon River

The sky was starting to look like rain again and the mosquitos were biting like mad at the creek, so I headed back to town with only one little flake of gold. Important: Always take DEET when you are in nature up here!

I bought a loaf of bread, some cookies, and a pound of hamburger at the local market that came to $20.50. I’m trying to eat up some of my provisions – pushed to the back of my cupboard – instead of buying much up here. Before I made my hamburger for dinner, I took a walk along the Yukon Riverbank and read more plaques about the traffic to and from Dawson in the early
days.

Loading the ferry

Tonight I have a plan to go to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall. I’m not too sure what to expect but it is one show everyone seems to go to. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow. I’m planning on going to the 10 pm show to miss the crowds at 8:30. I sure hope they don’t try to pull me up on stage – I would never go to a show that would have me in the act!

Dredge #4

I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want them to worry, but Minnie did not want to start well after I left Whitehorse. Two times when I stopped at roadside historical areas, Minnie cranked for several seconds before starting. The last hundred miles to Mayo were made without turning the engine off.

All last week I worried that Minnie would not start this morning. I resisted the urge to start the engine before I left in case it was the last time it would start. I knew the closest place to get mechanical work done would be in Dawson. This morning when I had everything packed and ready to go, I turned the key and heard the beautiful sound of a running engine.

I took pictures of signs to read later while Minnie idled.

I left the engine running as I filled with gas outside Mayo and never shut it off till I reached Dawson three hours later. The first RV shop said they were booked up for two weeks but she gave me the name of another mechanic outside town. He ran several diagnosis programs on his code reader and couldn’t find anything wrong. No matter how many times we stopped and started Minnie’s engine, it fired up instantly. He thinks I may have gotten some bad gas in Whitehorse or the gas cap was not put on tight enough. I hope it gets me into Alaska with no more trouble.

Sardines!

Things are expensive here in Dawson City. I checked into a RV park called the Gold Rush Campground RV Park. It is like a parking lot with rigs packed in like sardines, and they want a lot of gold from my pocket just to park here. At least it is close to town and all the tourist things required of everyone that visits.

Nugget passed around on dredge tour.

After I parked and unloaded Honda, I decided to drive up Bonanza Creek and check out the historic dredge parked there. The dredge is called Dredge #4 and man is it big. I could write down how many hundreds of thousands of tons it weighs and how many millions of gold it pulled out of the river valley but it’s too much to comprehend. Let’s just say it’s a massive structure and a story all its own. The tour was fun but I got repremanded for asking something about a dredge I had seen on Discovery Channel Gold Rush.

He said. ” That’s not reality! That’s just made up TV!”

After the tour I intended to drive on up to the original Historical Discovery Site, but I was on Honda and the sky was looking like rain. I will have two more days to check out the rest of town. The next move should put me back in the USA.

Pretty flowers!

Yesterday I finished fastening the panels to Minnie’s roof and today I connected up all the wiring. With the wire I had left from the stand out panels I made a jumper cable that I can charge my engine battery if it gets low.

I guess tomorrow I will head for Dawson City. This has been a nice camp but I’m beginning to wonder what’s up the road. It will be easy to break camp with no solar panels to put away and no satellite dish to take apart. I’m getting closer to Alaska.

Room for one more panel.

I got a little ambitious this morning and started the process of mounting my other two solar panels on Minnie’s roof. I worked a few hours removing the old legs from the panels, cutting mounting bracket from a piece of stock angle iron, and attaching the brackets to the panels.

The place on the roof where the new panels had to be attached was occupied by my tanker trailer, so I had to remove that first. Then I hoisted the new panels up on the roof with a rope and set them in place. The sky was starting to look like rain so I put off gluing and bolting them down until tomorrow. Then it will be just a matter of running wires to tie all the panels into my charge controller.

I have lots of battery capacity traveling here in the north. The main two things that keep me charged is all the daylight hours of solar power and the fact I’m not watching TV very much.