Day 14 – Whitehorse, YT to Dawson City, YT

There’s a saying that goes “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. Well, today our lemonade came in the form of a brand spanking new (<50 kms on it) Ford EcoSport from Budget Rent-A-Car.

The good folks at Yukon Yamaha sourced new bearings for LiB, but

when they tried to put them on, they were the wrong size. That meant that they now had to source the correct bearings – plus the collar and the ABS sensor – from a Harley dealership and since there are no Harley dealerships anywhere near Whitehorse, that meant that they would need to be flown in. This would mean that with the upcoming Canada Day long weekend, we would have had to sit around in Whitehorse until Tuesday at the earliest to get the bike back. The decision was quickly made to go and get a rental car, continue on with the trip as planned and then pick LiB back up when we get back to Whitehorse on July 6. Puts a small damper on the plans, but it beats the heck out of sitting around and doing nothing for 5 or 6 days.

And so, off we went – Vicki and I in the rental, Brian and Jana on Matilda. We veered off of the Alaska Highway and picked up the Klondike Highway (YT2) all the way from Whitehorse to our destination in Dawson City.

It was once again, a very different landscape, with very little in between places – lots and lots of burn areas from various years and even as we drove, there was a haze in the air from a couple of forest fires that are currently active. The road itself is not in too bad a shape, at least as far as construction is concerned, but does have a few frost heave bumps along the way.

We arrived in the beautiful little town of Dawson City around 7 pm, checked into our hotel for the night – The Westmark Inn – and then immediately headed out to the Downtown Hotel and some dinner and drinks AND the infamous Sourtoe Cocktail!

After that we walked around the town and checked out all the old, colourful buildings that form the core of the town – some of them completely renovated to make them look like they were back in their day, and others that have been left untouched since they were put up back in the early 1900s.

For the day, we logged just over 540 kms for a total to date on the trip of 7,242 kms