June 15th, 2012, A Day in Whitehorse

Decisions, decisions, should we go to Dawson City and the Top of the World Highway, or should we go to Destruction Bay and then cross the border to Tok? The guidebook tells you to go to the Visitor Center at Whitehorse and get the current conditions, so off we went.
Now we did have some repairs to make, our water pump has quit working and a pin fell out of the slide mechanism and the slide jammed so we first stopped at a rv repair shop where I almost fell over at the one hundred and fifty dollar price for the pump. I mean its only sixty five bucks online so I decided we could dry camp for a bit till we got to Alaska,(we do have water jugs and showers are not that important).

As to the slide, I found a cotter pin that allowed us to open and close it and we didn't seem to damage anything so that too was taken care of for the present. The next place should have been the Visitor Center but there is a rock shop here, so we made it our next stop.
The Yukon Rock shop is located in the downstairs level of a house and is filled with beautiful mineral specimens, including many from the now closed area copper mines. We had a nice visit with the owner but he deals with mineral specimens and doesn't have much workable rough or slabs. We actually left without buying any and actually drove into town to the Visitor Center.

Now the first thing you see of Whitehorse is the Klondike River Steamer, which carried passengers and freight to Dawson City. It would then head back down river and pick up silver ore bags which were then shipped to Kellogg, Idaho for smelting.
The Klondike has a forty inch draft and is an amazing piece of steamship and paddle wheel technology. Because it has no keel it would have broke in half, loaded, so it was built with a reverse suspension bridge design and the weight was actually supported by the wires which ran on masts above the ship. As it was loaded with ore the crew would turn steel buckles to adjust the new weight of the ship.
We enjoyed the tour, took lots of pictures, and next headed to the Visitor Center. We did take a slight detour and stopped downtown to look at some of the local jewelry and ivory carving. I was disappointed in that much of the jade was carved overseas and no one could answer me when I asked the grade of the jade and whether or not it was treated.

So we finally arrived at the Visitor Center. After looking at the displays, we approached the desk and asked about the road conditions on the Top of the World Highway. The attendant simply said it was fine and I didn't get much information in that answer. I then asked as to the availability of fuel, driving to Dawson City and the attendant said, "There are people living along the Highway and they need fuel too", and did not go into any further detail.
Now there are nice displays at the Visitor and there is a ton of information but the information you get there is only as good as they information they have, plus I think I met the only Canadian, on our trip, that was having a bad day, hmmmm.
Luckily we have free Internet at the rv park and so I was able to access the 511alaska and 511Canada road conditions, where I basically learned that they would be some delays as road construction was going on in a few places on the roads. So the question still is which route should we take, and more important, is the weather forecast predicting rain? Clear skies


ps its not really dark here at this hour and so sleeping is difficult and as the sun rise is at 3:47 am.....