Back to Whitehorse for Two Days - Day 2

Day 62, Monday August 15, 2016                  Whitehorse, YT               Pioneer RV Park, site 138
0 towing miles

Made a fire and our neighbors, who are leaving today, joined us for coffee.  They were headed up the Klondike to Dawson City.  They also wanted to ride up the Dempster like we did over a month ago, but we heard it’s washed out from a mud slide at km 103.  So they will go that far and back.

Called Whitehorse Motors to see if I could get in for oil change, but had to leave message.  Made sausage and eggs with sourdough toast for breakfast.  A non-travel day.  We got time.  We tried the Ford dealer again, but no answer.

About 08:30 we drove into Whitehorse and went to the dealer.  They were closed because it was Discovery Day.  Went to the Envirolube oil change place close by, but they were also closed because of Discovery Day.  So we gave up on oil change for today.  We planned on moving on tomorrow and I needed to get this done.  For the next week or two, we will not be anywhere where we can do this. 

Next was grocery shopping.  In a real grocery store.  We went to Canadian Superstore, which is like a Meijer.  It was very, very crowded.  Maybe Discovery Day is grocery shopping day.  There was a tour bus that unloaded a group of Germans into the store to buy munchies for the day.  They were clogging up the place, too. 

The store had carts with a little lock box on the handle.  You had to put in a dollar (a Loony) to get the cart to release from the others.  When you brought it back in the rack, it will give you your loony back.  Very clever.  It keeps people from leaving them in the parking lot and it reduces the number of cart boys you need to gather them up.  Some people will forfeit a dollar so they don’t have to bring the cart back into the store.

We were at the deli counter and couldn’t believe the prices.  $3 or $4.  Wow.  Well that didn’t last long.  In metric countries, (the rest of the world), deli meats are priced per 100 grams, which is a little less than ¼ lb.  So something costing $3 per 100 grams is about $12 or $13 per lb.  That’s about what we paid in Fairbanks.  So to order a lb. of Black Forest Ham, we asked for 450 grams.  This was a new experience for us.

How to by deli meats outside the U.S.  Multiply the price
per 100 grams by 4.54 to get the price per lb.  This turkey was
$14.44 per lb.  That's Canadian dollars.  It translates
to about $13.31 at today's exchange rate.

Returned to campground to pack away groceries.

Went back into town to a Parks Canada (same as our National Park Service) National Historic Site.  It was a restored river boat, the SS Klondike, that was used on the Yukon River to move goods, ore, people, and supplies up and down the Yukon River between Whitehorse and Dawson City from the early 1900s to the 1940s.  It was a self-guided tour and was very interesting.  We have lots of pictures.  Here’s a few:

The starboard side.

The port side.

The boiler fire side.  Wood fired, fire tube boiler.

Made in Toronto.

Fuel and cargo.

Crisco and beer.

Crisco and shredded wheat.

The engine order telegraph.

The piston that turned the paddle wheel.  One on each side. 

They were in line, high pressure, low pressure double acting cylinders.

Steam driven pumps and generators in the engineering deck.

Officers and passenger (1st class) cabins.

Galley

One of two life boats.

The emergency fire system.  A row of buckets of water on deck.

Afterwards we went to see Miles Canyon.  The Yukon River comes out of a canyon upstream of Whitehorse and at one time, had rapids as one emerged from the canyon.  Now the river is dammed by Yukon Power Co. and the lake behind the dam has covered the location of the rapids and raised the level in Miles Canyon.  There are trails along the canyon and even a foot bridge.  We went to an overlook and to the foot bridge and took some pictures.

Miles Canyon taken from an overlook.

Someone taking a boat ride in the canyon.

View upstream taken from middle of foot bridge.

Foot bridge across the gorge.

Downstream from the foot bridge.

When we got back we took showers in the campground shower building to get ready for our date.  We were going out to dinner at the Klondike Rib & Salmon in Whitehorse.  Very highly rated and recommended. 

The place was crowded and they sat couples at shared tables.  Another couple was seated at our table and they turned out to be very interesting.  They were from Inuvik, Northwest Territories.  That village of 3500 people is about 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle on the Dempster Highway.  If you recall, that’s the highway we drove to the Arctic Circle and Eagle Plains.  They had been there for 26 years.  They were in Whitehorse between planes, flying in from Newfoundland, visiting relatives.  How many people get to have dinner with people that live above the Arctic Circle.

The food was incredibly good.  I finally bit the bullet and tried the $30 halibut we see everywhere.  But they had three large pieces of beer batter (made from local brewery beer) halibut and fries and it was worth every bit of $30.  Marsha had ribs were equally good.  Will go there every time we are in Whitehorse, which so far, has averaged once every 63 years.

All tables had an etched piece of wood with

the leaded and unleaded beverage selections.

Half way through the meal, Marsha took a picture.  Ribs and a

piece of my halibut I donated.  She gave me some ribs, too.

Next time you are in Whitehorse, Yukon, you gotta go here.

Down this corridor were the washrooms, as they are called in Canada.  The doors for the men’s and lady’s rooms weren’t labeled in the typical manner.  And there were no symbols on the door.  They merely said “Sourdoughs” and the other was labeled “Sweetdoughs”.  I guessed correctly which one to use.

Am I a sourdough or a sweetdough?

Sourdoughs were the gold seekers during the gold rush in the Klondike and Alaska.  They brought sourdough starter with them so they can make bread in the backcountry.  Now, I was told, anyone who has spent a year in Alaska and lasted through the winter, can be called a sourdough.  Just a little background there.