Day One: The rain and cloudiness continues. we’re not able to see any of the surrounding scenery so we might as well be in any small town in the world. We went to the Beringia Interpretive Center. Now we had never really heard of this before but Beringia (bur-in’-gee-a) is the term for the “never glaciated” area of Alaska, Yukon, and Russia, which created a land bridge over which migrated humans into North America for the first time. The land bridge occurred because the large amount of water tied up by the glaciers caused the sea level to drop and uncover the land. Many animal remains have been found in Yukon buried in the permafrost layers and uncovered by gold miners, including skin and fur intact. So many Mammoth tusks have been found, you will find jewelry made from them here.
Day Two: The rain continued in the morning and we headed to another indoor activity; the Transportation Museum. Here they have relics from the days of the Gold Rush and the White Pass and Yukon Route narrow-gauge railway. This railway ran from Skagway, AK to White Horse, YT, and miners, equipment, and later, tourists into the area. They also have some equipment from the building of the Alaska Highway and airplanes that used to fly into the rugged parts of the territory. The most prominent outdoor feature is a DC-3 airliner which is now balanced on a post and is able to rotate as the wind blows it, making it the world’s largest weather vane.
When we came out of the museum, the weather had started clearing and the sun was shining for the first time in days. We headed off to lunch, did a little bit of shopping we needed to do (cord for fixing a broken window shade and a replacement for a lost lens cap). Then we went to see the SS Klondike, a paddlewheel cargo boat which traveled the Yukon River in the days of the Gold Rush from White Horse up to Dawson City to bring supplies to the miners and ore back for processing.
In the evening, we did some more planning with our friends for our journeys after Fairbanks, AK and watched some TV shows they had recorded on their DVR. They were also able to get a satellite signal so we were able to watch Bill Maher (we share political views with them, which makes finding things in common to talk about besides our travels easy).
Day 3: The sun was shining and the air was clear and we were so happy because today we had a planned outdoor adventure. First, Geoff went to the guitar workshop at the Yukon Bluegrass Festival and then he participated in a “slow jam”. It was a lot of fun for him, as he had not played guitar with any other people since he was at Sun-N-Fun. After lunch, we went with our friends on the Schwatka Lake Cruise. This is a small boat that runs up the Yukon River from the power dam in White Horse about 6 miles toward the headwaters. Along the way there is lore and music and sightings of wildlife, like the bald eagle we saw in a tree right where we turned around. The weather was perfect for this, our last planned outing in White Horse, Yukon.
Today is Martha’s birthday so we are all going out to dinner for a celebration and then back to the rigs for Ken’s homemade cake. tomorrow we leave here for Skagway, AK, USA, assuming the road that was washed out between here and there has been repaired to the point where we can get our two big rigs by it.
