Whitehorse

Thursday, Continued from previous post.

We donned sweatshirts and raincoats, gathered cameras, maps and dogs and set off down the hill to town.


Our first stop was the SS Klondike II, a very well preserved sternwheel riverboat. 240 feet long, 41feet 9 inches beam, it drew only 40 inches of water fully laden with a cargo weighing 300 tons! She steamed between Whitehorse and Dawson City.

Being Canada Day, there were 240 Junior Rangers just finishing their tour! When asked "How do you get 240 kids to stay still long enough for a group picture?" one of the officers responded with a grin: "Work the heck out of them for a week!"






We later learned that the first SS Klondike had been seriously damaged during one of the frequent groundings and the hull was destroyed. Most of the rest of the vessel, including engines, deck and superstructure, was salvaged and placed on a new hull. The staff refer to her as "SS Klondike One and a half".




We signed up for the guided tour and spent a very pleasant and interesting hour in spite of the rain.

Wood plus boiler equals steam for the two engines. Only three firemen in the crew, they worked one at a time, 4 hours on and 8 hours off, feeding the boiler with these 4 foot logs. The downstream trip ran about 18 hours, upstream about 4 days if I remember correctly.


Left to right below: First class menu, lounge and dining room. Second class is a cot on the cargo deck! All classes could mix on the aft sundeck, playing games such as ring-toss.






















Next stop was the outdoor market which is held every Thursday in the summer. Being Canada Day there was a bit more going on, singers dancers, bands etc, though the cool wet must have reduce the expected crowds, the parking lots were full. We met this little character who wasn't all that impressed with the goings on!

We sampled honey, birch syrup (slightly bitter but nice) and bought a filet of Arctic Char which at supper time proved to be delicious!

We had missed the 2:00 PM brewery tour so from there we went up 2 Mile Hill back to the Alaska Highway and turned south to visited the Beringia Museum. Beringia is the term for that huge land mass near and around the Bering Sea that was dry land during the last ice age. It was composed of much of the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia. Again we passed an interesting hour or so. Surprisingly all this area was ice-free during the last ice age, while to the south much of the rest of Canada was buried beneath a mile or more of glacier!

Click on a photo to enlarge it, click the left arrow on the top left of the screen to return to the blog.

Left to Right:

Wooly Mammoth skeleton

Scimitar Cat

Diorama of ice age life

Next door was the Transportation Museum with a nicely displayed Douglas DC 3 mounted on bearings on a tall pole—the world's largest weather vane! It always faces into the wind! Inside was another treasure trove of history. Old vehicles, planes, trains. . . One old bus had Art thinking it might make a nice motothome conversion.

Another interesting and educational time.

Returning to the car we carried on south and in a few miles were back at the motorhome.

That evening we worked on the blog, read, made supper (the Arctic Char) which was very much in colour, flavour and texture like Atlantic Salmon. The filet was sauteed in olive and butter with a little thyme and accompanied by whole tiny potatoes also sauteed the same way and sauteed orange peppers.

It should be noted here that it was Art who made dinner. Not exactly an unheard of occurrence but not common either! Although Gillian frequently wonders when Art cooks how he managed to use so many pans, dishes and utensils to cook so few things, this time he managed to cook three items using only two pans. Gillian of course got to wash up.

Friday: Yukon Brewery--"Beer worth freezing for."

That night the rain came down again and continued through Friday morning. About 1:15 we remembered that the tour of the Yukon Brewery starts at 2:00. A very quick bite to eat then jumped into the car and set off up the highway and down Two Mile Hill, finding the brewery quite easily. Gillian, navigating with map and directions in front of her, was still saying “It should be right here but the numbers don't make sense—it must be further up the road”, as Art pulled up beside the building. Art got a good chuckle out of this—Gillian is usually an excellent navigator—he is the one who gets left and right mixed up!

We enjoyed the tour—it was very well attended, escaping the rain? Along the back wall were stacked oak barrels. The brewery very recently also became a distillery! The first barrel or two will be sampled in August 2012 when the contents will have aged the requisite three year minimum. The rest will likely be stored for further aging. Hmmm. Maybe we'll return in a couple of years for the Grand Opening! The pic to the right is cold room. The snap of the whiskey barrels was out of focus for some reason!

One of the most interesting facts was that they can 3, soon to be 4, of the eight beers they produce due to popular request. Though labour intensive, the cans sell for the same price as bottles. They are only able to fill 2 cans at a time and lid one at a time! An 8 hour shift will fill 8 pallet loads of bottles, but is only able to fill one pallet load of cans. One day when space and funds allow they hope to expand and further automate the canning process.

After the information tour came the tasting—everything from a cranberry wheat beer which was nice, to a roasted coffee stout! This too was enjoyable too but doubt we would want a full pint. Our favourite is the Yukon Red, an amber ale. We also liked very much the Yukon Gold, a lighter, pale though still nicely hopped beer. The only one we didn't really care for was “Lead Dog Ale”, a brown ale; but then we don't particularly like brown ales.

On the way back to the RV Park Gillian spied a trail leading off from Two Mile Hill that had a dog on leash sign. She dropped Art and Tia off at home and took off with Trekker for a long walk while Art and Tia had a nap! As we were leaving for the brewery tour, neighbours Rich and Susan had stopped by to invite us over for dinner this evening, so we didn't have to think about what to do for dinner!

Checking the e-mails we found a message from Dave, a niece's husband, who was in Whitehorse for the night. Since we already had made a commitment for dinner we met him later for a coffee and had a good chat. Dave is a pilot for Air Canada and has made several trips here this year. It was good to see him again. We have been very fortunate with our siblings, nieces, nephews and their spouses-we are all get along well and enjoy their company--friends as well as relatives.