In town Whitehorse--June 25

We were late getting up but Marvin and Dee waited on us and we went to breakfast at a place called Ricky's. The food was good but they didn't have enough help and it was slow. The 3 of us went in and had most of our meal before Bob joined us. He had to make some calls back to the states.

We went to visit two museums: one was the Yukon Beringia Interpretive
Centre which presents the Ice Age giants that ruled the sub-continent of Beringia. This is the area that joined Russia and the North American continent. I never knew it had a name before now. They had a film telling how it came about--which has to do with all the ice forming lowered the ocean levels and allowed the ground to show and connect the continents. This part of the Yukon was not under the glaciers but when these animals died they froze and were under the perma-frost. The bones and skeletons are being discovered by place miners and some of the First Nation people who still live off the land. These people report or bring their finds to the palentologists and then they also link their old stories with what they find and are discovering the stories are built around some fact. Very interesting.

The other museum was the Yukon Transportation Museum. This brings together over 100 years of transportation history. You see how the first miners travelled up here by steamboat or overland by sleds on runners or wheeled sleds pulled by horses, dogs or themselves. These people were very ingenious and very determined to get where they were going. It was certainly a hard life. It shows pictures of the old airplanes and the men that flew them and also has one old plane hanging from the ceiling--the Queen of the Yukon which is the same as the one Lindberg flew on his unforgetable flight. The hard labor of those who built the first railroad is unbelievable. When the steamboats could go no further because of rapids they either put the cargo and people on raft type boats and shot the rapids or built a small tramway and from the river they went over the land beyond the rapids and loaded them onto another boat. Our life has become too easy and we have lost our ingenuity and imagination. When they had a problem they had to find a way to solve it by themselves and not depend on someone else. These are the people who built North America. In front of the Museum is the world's largest weatervane--a DC-3 mounted up on a rotating pedestal and points its nose into the wind. It does actually work. It was originally a C-47 built in 1942 and flown in Asia during the war and then converted to a DC-3 for civilian life and flown until 1970 when it was stripped of its innards and later recovered for its present purposes.

We came back to the coach and on the way back we saw a red fox just trotting along the side of the road. I guess Marvin saw one in our campground earlier in the morning. We took a quick nap before we took off again for a boat ride on Schwatka Lake and the Yukon River.The boat could only hold about 25 people between the top and lower deck. We managed to get upper deck seats on the way out. I got my first sighting of a loon on the lake before we took off and after. That was on my list of birds to see. We were also blessed to have an eagle perched up on the top of a tree right beside the lake. We received a a great view of him--quite majestic. He just sat there. We also saw planes take off and land on the lake--there are several moored there.

There is also a swinging bridge across the narrowest part of the river which we had walked across earlier in the day but when we went under it our tailgunner Spence and his wife Madi were up taking pictures. There is a hiking trail that takes you around the lake and down the river and we saw a number of people with their dogs. They take their dogs everywhere with them up here. Halfway thru the 2 hr. ride we switched with passengers downstairs so they could come up but those who were below could go to the bow of the boat and stand and watch if they wanted so that is where I spent the rest of the ride. It was so beautiful and on the way back there was no wind because it was coming from the rear of the boat.

Another lady joined our group. She travels by herself but she had been with another caravan and had health problems so she stayed up here and worked on them till joining us for the rest of our trip.

We went to a Mexican place for dinner. It was good but different and more expensive than ours back home and no chips and dips before the meal. A pop was $3.50. Everything is higher up here. After dinner we went to one of their big stores called Canadian Tire but it is like a larger WalMart with no food. Hopefully I found the binocular harness I have been looking for all along the way. I will try it and see. On the way home Marvin took a backroads way to look for animals but saw none. Home and to bed. I went to bed at 10 or 11 and it was still quite light. I've never stayed up yet to see how dark or when it gets dark.