The Northiest

We had a great time in Whitehorse with our friends! We spent some time in Carcross, about an hour south, and it has changed quite a bit since we were there two years ago. There are a number of new buildings and businesses (including a great coffee shop) and it seems like they are getting a lot of tourists.
Our truck broke down again, this time in the parking lot right across from the Nissan dealer. It wasn't starting at all though, so we had to get it towed across the street. It turns out it was some small part that wasn't very expensive but took 3.5 hours to figure out, so of course it was an expensive repair. Luckily Luke is super smart and interested in such things so he's figured out what to do if that happens again.
We also got to hang out with one of my favourite dogs Starbuck. Even Luke admitted to missing him when we left, so I feel like I'm one small step closer to convincing Luke that we (eventually) need a trail dog :)

After we left Whitehorse we drove north to see Dawson. I'm not much of a history buff so I didn't go crazy over the historic significance of the area. Here's a view of the city from up high:

It's a very cute town though and it is interesting to see what the building style was back then. We did go to see Dredge #4 though, seen here:

There are piles upon large piles of rocks that were dredged for gold. The process is actually quite involved--they would often have to spend long amounts of time thawing the ground, then when the dredge would do its work it would only move 0.8 km in 10 months on average. They got an awful lot of gold out of this area though, so it must have been worth it.
Most of the area has been claimed but there is one small area that has been left public so you can try gold panning for free there. I don't have anywhere near the patience for that kind of thing but we did spend a few minutes looking for surface gold....there was none, of course.

Here's a pretty flower that I haven't identified yet:

And here's the view further down the river from the downtown, taken from the Midnight Dome. There are plaques that have cute photos from the 1800s (can't exactly remember the date) of a group that climbed the mountain expecting the sun not to set until midnight from that height. It turns out the sun sets at 11:30pm on top of the dome, which I think is close enough. The people were all dressed very nicely, with the women in long dresses...which makes me wonder how comfortable it was for them to hike it up there.

We camped on the far side of the river and you have to take a short ferry to get across. Along the edge there is a boat graveyard of broken boats (steamers and dredges I think).

Once we left Dawson we drove the Top of the World Highway over to Alaska. It was slow going but so worth it! It's just as it sounds--you drive along the top of mountains while surrounded by other mountains. I don't have any photos of it, but this time I have an excuse. It was raining the whole time.
Speaking of which, I have friends who drove the highway last year and they told me that the weather was great on the Yukon side, but when they crossed the border it changed to cloudy and rainy so they turned back. We had the same, but opposite experience. It rained and rained until Alaska and then it was sunny blue skies.
We drove through Chicken Alaska, which has a funny history to its name. The town wanted to name it Ptarmigan but decided that was too difficult so they went with Chicken instead.

We camped by a river with this view:

As we were driving in there was a lynx sitting at the start of a trail. It got up and left so we didn't have much of a chance to see it, but it was my first time seeing a lynx. There were also moose tracks right beside our spot but we didn't see any come by.

Our next stop was Fairbanks Alaska. It's a pretty cool town surrounded by woods with lots of trails. It rained for most of the time we were there and, according to the locals, it was unusual to have that much rain. Consequently, there was a fair bit of flooding. We did to a hike in the intermittent rain to the Angel Rocks. Here's one of the views:

And here's one of the rock formations:

Does anyone else see a face there?

These mushrooms are all over the place in the area. There's a theory that they connect to the origin of Santa Claus. And the Smurfs lived in them.

Next we traveled through Denali National Forest. It's huge and beautiful. It was more commercial than I expected (when you learn about 6 million acres of wilderness you don't expect to see a mini mall with Subway and $6.99 t-shirts) but not as bad as Yellowstone. We didn't do any of the main road into the park but we did try to do the Ferry Trail that gives great views and has Boot Hill (a place where Alaskans bring the boots of people who have passed away). I say we tried because we went down the wrong trail that wasn't very scenic (unless you consider grizzly bear tracks scenic). We might go back to do the real trail.
We also checked out Stampede Trail which goes to the bus where Chris McCandless died (check out the book or movie Into the Wild if you're interested in his story). It was pretty wet and boggy, so we didn't go far. The river you have to cross can be very dangerous so you have to be smart and plan ahead if you're doing the full trail.

Since we didn't go up the main road (you can only drive the first 20ish miles, then you either have to take one of their buses or bike or hike) we didn't get any of the money shots. However, here's the famous mountain from a distance--Mount McKinley to some, Denali to others.

 We are now in Anchorage. The weekend is supposed to be a bit rainy but the rest of the week is supposed to be great. We'll be heading to the Kenai Peninsula next!