Whitehorse - The Wilderness City

We did arrive safely in Whitehorse last night. It was very late ( 2 am Toronto Time ) and I was ready to sleep anywhere, 


Today was a day to explore Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon and known as the Wilderness City. It is not a big city, we walked much of it today. Barb and I like to visit and walk through the cities and towns we visit to go into local shops and just enjoy the new place. Here is our view from our hotel room window.

The city has many sculptures on street corners, of famous people to this area.


We walked down to the Yukon River that runs through Whitehorse and took a tour of the MacBride Museum which has artifacts from the area and history of the gold rush days here in the Yukon.



In one of the local stores we stopped in to visit, we noticed on the ceiling, many hundreds of wooden clothes pins hanging from the ceiling. We did ask about these and we were told that it was the stores guestbook.  Visitors are asked to write something on a clothes pin and it will be hung on the ceiling.





We then went to the Fireweed Community Market which is held every Thursday in the Shipyards park. For dinner we were told of restaurant called Klondike Ribs and Salmon. They served local food and wild game. I ordered fresh salmon while Barb had wild Elk Stroganoff. The food was great.



During our visits today we were told that our plans to drive the Dempster Highway all the way to the Arctic Ocean may be in jeopardy.  The Peel River is running high and strong, so the ferry used to transport vehicles across the river has been suspended for safety reasons. We are not due to be up there for 7 more days so we are hoping the river depth goes down and we can complete this journey.  We are working with our local tour company because our plans, hotel bookings and vehicle rental plans may have to change, however Barb and I have talked about some contingency plans to try to get up there, even if we cannot drive the entire Dempster Highway.  We will keep watch on the conditions over the next 4 or 5 days,

Tomorrow we get our rental vehicle and plan to visit the Yukon Wildlife Preserve, a local wildlife rehabilitation centre.  We hope to see many of the wildlife who call the Yukon home.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Edmonton - The end of our Journey

Image
 We left Tumbler Ridge this morning, not very early, come on, we are on vacation. Barb took the first leg of our 8 hour journey and we stopped at Dawson Creek. (Note: the TV show with the same name was not filmed here). First stop was at a very nice laundromat, we have been on the road for 16 days and yes we needed to get many of our clothes cleaned.  After the laundry was done, we crossed the street to a 60's diner for lunch.  Then it was time to hit the road again and heading for Edmonton, our last stop on this adventure. We have a week here at the 5 Pin Masters Championships, not really part of our vacation.  So we thought to close off this blog we would summarize our adventures. We left home 16 days ago, we have taken 6 different flights with one more coming to get us back home from Edmonton next week. Total Flights = 7 (Toronto -Edmonton, Edmonton -Whitehorse, Inuvik - Dawson City, Dawson City - Whitehorse, Whitehorse - Calgary, Calgary - Edmonton, Edmonton - To...
Read more

INUVIK!!!

Image
Yes we made it to Inuvik, after two long days of driving, we have conquered the Dempster Highway, 737.5 kilometers of dirt road. So, lets go back to the day after we arrived in Whitehorse, June 16, we visited the "Welcome Centre". The lady there asked what our plans were and we told her we would drive the Dempster all the way, and she said no you won't, the Peel River ferry crossing has been shut down. Not only Barb and I, but 3 others came over with the same disappointed look that I had. This lady was terse, saying that she had no idea when it would be running again. Nice Welcome. Our travel agent here in Whitehorse said that she would track this for us.  We also tried to look up information on the Internet, but found nothing. It wasn't until we reached Dawson City when a lovely lady told us the ferry was back running and had been since June 17.  Our travel agent could not confirm which is why we were not 100% sure we would make it up here. But we did, and we are tir...
Read more

Edmonton - eventually

Image
So, we are back on the grid and currently sitting in the Whitehorse International Airport.  Our plan was to make an update tonight when we got to Edmonton, but when we arrived here, we were informed that there was a slight delay in our flight.  2 1/2 hours!!!  SLIGHT???     Anyway that is the way travel goes, so rather than making this update tonight at 1am, I'm doing it now. How was the vacation you ask?  Amazing. Our original booking was at the Mount Logan Lodge and we got to visit this place.  Very nice place, lots of trees and while you could see some mountains, there were a lot of trees around.  The lodge itself is quite the building, and they have some cabins out of the main building as well, including this Yurt.  It would have been a nice place to spend a couple of quiet days, however their building upgrades are still waiting for inspection approval, so we were offered to stay at the Yukon Lakes Cabins with the same owner from the...
Read more