Our Retirement Trip

We traveled from Tok, AK, to Dawson City in the Yukon Territories via the Top of the World Highway.  Expansive views as we traveled on a dirt road on top of the ridges and hills.  The only thing we passed for miles was the border station which is barely visible on the left hand side of the photo below. Dawson City is the home to the Klondike Goldrush.  Most of the people you traveled through Skagway, up the Chilkoot pass and down the Yukon River got to Dawson too late as most of the stakes had already been claimed.  Jack London was one of these people.  He lasted less than a year because he got very sick and had to return to the lower 48.  This cabin is a replica of the cabin he lived in while he was in the Klondike.  Actually, the bottom two rows of logs are from the original cabin.  The rest of the cabin is on display in Oakland, CA. The SS Keno, one of the many paddle wheelers that plied the Yukon and its tributaries. The Palace Grand Theatre The Bank of British North America Red Fe

Our next stop was Fairbanks.  We visited Gold Dredge #8, the Museum of the North, and Pioneer Park.  We took a riverboat ride on the Chena River with a stop at Trail Breaker Kennel, the kennel started by four time Iditarod winner, Susan Butcher, and a recreated Chena Indian Village.  We also had dinner with my cousin Jane and her husband, Jim, long time Fairbanks residents.  And as you might have guessed, we did manage to see a moose cow and calf in a pond in the Chena River Recreation Area. But first the pipeline: Gold Dredge 8.  Later in our trip, we got to see exactly how these monster floating machines transformed the landscape in Dawson.  They scooped up the gravel at the bottom of a stream bed, sorted out the gold, and dumped the remaining gravel in a long serpentine pile behind.  The last photo in this group shows a bit of these long piles of gravel in Dawson. Dinner with my cousin, Jane, and her husband, Jim, on the Chena River. Museum of the North - If you ever visit Fairbanks