Day 3 - Dawson City

I did a little bit of wandering around Dawson City. The large white area left over from mining is used to identify Dawson in a lot of old photographs. This is on the street down from the B&B that I'm staying in. The central place for the D2D (Dust to Dawson) is at the Triple J hotel very close to this. Most of the streets are dirt with the exception of the main drag along the waterfront.

Just one of the many old buildings in town. Many of the shops that were here the last time we were in Dawson have closed up including the gift shops along the waterfront. I didn't think that this place was suffering too much from the reduction in tourism following high gas prices but maybe it has. I'm told that events like D2D really do bring more money into town than some of the organized tours. I was surprised to see 737 flights coming into the airport but I'm told that tour companies run one way trips to Dawson as many tourists don't want to travel the gravel roads both ways.

This is just a shot of the Yukon River looking down towards the ferry. It's very pleasant

This morning (Friday), I rode up to the top of Midnight Dome, which is going to be a real popular place in a couple of days as the claim is that you can see the sun for 24 hours from there. Dawson isn't quite close enough to the Arctic Circle for that but it makes a good story. This is looking towards the west and you can see the smoke from the fires in Alaska. I'm afraid that it may be a really bad fire season in Alaska.

This is looking down at the two rivers coming together with the clear water of the Klondike River mixing with the sediment filled waters of the Yukon River. The dark is the Klondike River water. I'm not sure how far down river it will stay distinct like this but I suspect that there must be a Wikipedia article about it.

This is BobC from Fairbanks on his R100GS getting ready to leave on the poker run. He arrived in Dawson on Tuesday making the ride in a single day. I don't think that I would be able to do that with the Ural. 300 miles seems to be about the limit for "reasonable". Steering takes a lot more effort than on a solo bike. I figured that I didn't need an additional 80 miles on the clock and just relaxed and talked to other like minded folks. Some treat the poker run as a race.

This evening are some "bike games". I'll include pictures of those events on my next post. The group photo is scheduled for midnight tonight.

This morning the valves sounded a little noisier and both of the right valves were about 0.002" loose. Hopefully not an indication of a problem. Plus I needed to add 400 ml of oil to the engine after only 623 km. Also something to watch. On the Taylor and Top of the World highways I spent a lot of time in 2nd and 3rd gear with the engine running at higher RPM. It's something that I need to keep an eye on.