Looking for gold…

Today is our weekly rest day when we take a day off. We slept in this morning and then awoke to a drizzly cool morning. All day it drizzled and the temperature never got above 13 deg C. Well, so much for the weather, it is what it is, nothing much we can to about it anyway. Since the hotel has no wireless Internet, we went to the local Internet cafe and posted my blog from yesterday and fired off some emails. We also enjoyed a nice cup of coffee and muffin while we’re doing our computer stuff.

We did our laundry at the local RV campground since there are no commercial Laundromats here. We also did a bit of grocery shopping to replenish our larder.

After lunch we decided to visit a gold dredge that was situated about 12km up the Bonanza Creek. This was the creek where gold was first found in 1896. After the initial gold rush, the miners left for other areas in the Klondike and later on Alaska when gold was found in Nome. The Yukon Gold company in the early 1900’s decided to mine gold on an industrial scale and imported a number of dredges to mine the gold bearing gravel along a number of rivers and creeks. I won’t bore you with the details on how and when this took place. Parks Canada has preserved one of the largest dredges, No. 4, and we took an hour tour to see it and learn a lot of interesting stuff surrounded the dredge and how it fit in the local history of this region. These dredges were monstrous in size. The bucket chain that scooped the gravel contained 66 buckets, each weighing 2.5 tons. Each bucket scooped 16 cubic feet of gravel.

The interesting thing is that you find the tailings that were left behind, everywhere around here. These consist of miles and miles of rock and gravel piles dotting the landscape. Even today, there are still quite a number of prospectors mining for gold in the Yukon. These are hardy individuals and loners mostly just enjoying the lifestyle. The lady that runs the hotel we’re in has a partner who is somewhere in the bush mining for gold. He’s here from spring till early fall and then they go back to Toronto during the winter months. I guess together they make enough money to make a living. Of course it helps that gold prices are at record levels. BTW, there are quite a number of Ontarians working in the Yukon we found out. There is basically zero un-employment here and actually a shortage of workers.

It’s interesting to observe the people here as well. There are a lot of “characters”. Hippie types, bums, funny looking European tourists you name it and you’ll find it.

There is a mountain behind the town of Dawson called Midnight Dome. We traveled up to the top to enjoy the vista. You have a good view of the Yukon River and the town of Dawson below. On or about 21 June you can observe the Midnight sun here. It’s high enough that even though we’re a bit below the Arctic Circle, you can observe that phenomenon.

Also, Steve Martin and Jack Black are in town staying in the hotel beside ours. They’re shooting a movie here in Dawson apparently or at least part of a movie. Being the weekend, I think they may have flown back to Hollywood though. At least we haven’t seen either of them or any movie making activities.

Well, that’s it for now. Tomorrow we’ll cross into Alaska and hope to be able to blog from our hotel again.