64° 3' 35" N / 139° 24' 39" W

the final push.

the shortest leg of the wander and for the first time someone who said that it was shorter than the google maps predictions. everything was shorter than what google maps said usually by a good three hours.

filled up at the gas bar where i asked for granola bars as if the food in town was like the hotels, i'd fast. asked if i could use the toilet. no, the town had cut off the water for the day. headed over to the only attraction i saw - a park of city signs from around the world, now augmented by number plates and just about anything with an address on it. i help a couple   the rugged outdoor type that i see a lot of around here - be photographed in the sea of signs then i photograph them for myself.

the people were friendly buddy at the gas bar gave me a pen as a souvenir, the people at the information centre when i asked if there were a café for real coffee in town offered me theirs and one told me of this place in whitehorse - baked - which was supposedly pretty good after she saw me blanche when the other person mentioned starbucks and tims. when i arrived the starbucks - tastefully klondike like was full but bake was fuller and lacked the theme park look. this seems to be a motif for this area.

wasn't looking forward to four hours without coffee or anything but energy bars but it was an impetus to get out of town. again the irony this is the type of place that i would want to find out more. when a trucker says that the place is the "shits" as he is going from hotel to hotel trying to find something to eat, there is something wrong.

but here it took longer to leave. there was the two long tall spindly trees in a clear cut area. wave to a liard first nations crossing the road getting ready to hitch into town as i was heading toward whitehorse trying to turn around to photograph the trees. passing him i could see the wtf i tried to explain that i wasn't heading into town but just up the road.

pass him again with two buddies further down the road also wanting to hitch again they wave as i pass and again they curse me as i turn around to photograph a church this time.

these two buddies come over to have a chat.

-what's up man? 

-i'm photographing the church. i'm not going into watson lake.

-it is only five minutes out of your way.

-which means i'll get to whitehorse even later.

-you'll be there in no time.

find out they had a machine but it was stolen.

they see the wisconsin plates and ask what am i doing here.

tell them and mention that i have now gone from newfoundland to bc and now beyond.

-newfoundland why newfoundland

-why here it seems the same but you forgot the ocean.

make snaps of them. and drive off.

this area is so forgot that even the cbc broadcasts don't reach here. the road cannot decide if it wants to be in bc or the yukon. i have a coupon for 4¢/litre off at the gasbar in teslin. stop. top off, joke with the help and buddy who watches me throw loonies about the place. photograph both of them with the manager looking on. she returns my coupon for use on the return trip. 

ballparks

airports

kilometres of roadside markers where people have left messages using rocks, thought this much better than the sing kingdom down in town. this showed both boredom and remembrance where in town it was simply quirky taken to an annoying degree.

the land had changed the use of the land had changed. i found no lone empty machines at the end of roads. no oil wells behind a stand of trees. there were more turn offs. more views of lakes.

pulled into whitehorse needing caffeine and food and wanting to go to this café that i was told about but i forgot the name. for one while it is small.i hadn't seen so many motor cars, so much traffic and so many people since edmonton. a minor culture shock trying to get around the downtown - i could see why there was a starbucks.

saw buddy on the street with a non starbucks coffee cup and

-sorry to bother you...

-well you already have

-thus the reason that i am apologising

all said jokingly asked where he got the coffee as i was looking for a café that served food.

this one did. entered ordered and was told that they had stopped serving food for the day.

it was 1pm.

left headed to the tim's for the safe standard egg salad and a double double after i got my order and wasa walking back to the machine - metered parking imagine - i saw the sign for baked

the place was packed. ordered a panini - shouldn't it be a panino? - to take away and was so hungry ate it before i arrived at the machine. put more money in and headed back for coffee.

hence the problem with whitehorse, here is a place with great food, there were other places that i saw, a couple of galleries, an almost real camera shop - it beats out central camera in chicago for sure - "almost" as film went the way of the us's AAA status. but it was housed in these really ugly pastiches for the gold rush era well except for the ever present building for the government of canada which went horribly in the other direction. there were cinemas. there was theatres but there was all this theme park crap - written theme park too much - just wait. would have liked to spend more  time but there was the last 500km to get underway.

left the alaskan highway and entered the klondike highway more primitive upper speed limit was 90km/h which meant one had to slow down to 130. large sections under repair. more lodges closed down - am guessing the 90km/h has something to do with it. we weren't allow to hunt sheep in the area nor elk, saw another bear cub, two foxes one mangy in steward crossing better looking on the outskirts of dawson. realised that it would be better to stay overnight outside of towns in these lodges and cabins. which didn't look any worse than the place in watson lake. 

noticed that this part of the territory tends to commemorate forest fires as there were signage for all the past ones passing the areas affected. stopped to photograph the site of the 1998 fire. stopped to photographs establishments that were closed or were again there because someone would need gasoline.

arrived in dawson at 8:30 took an hour to find a hotel as everything is marked hotel. found out that everything is. and just about everything is booked. there were buses upon buses of tour groups of the aarp generation wandering in their pleated shorts and white socked trainers. they seemed in a daze. there were a least a dozen buses from the holland america line.

this i found strange as  dawson seems like a giant epcot version of the klondike. the streets aren't paved, the sidewalks are wooden. it had rained so there was mud. i felt like i was on the set of mccabe and mrs miller. there was no relief from this slavish clinging to the past. except one gas bar which i am sure they consider an eye sore. sometimes i wonder. is it really a good idea to have a hardware shop in a building that looks like it is falling down it seems one would question the competence of those working there.

the place is populated by two extremes as i wrote - the tour groupped aarp crowd and the twentysomething wanderer who end up here - how does one end up in dawson trying so hard to be a the type of person that kerouac came to loathe.  it is like the yukon version of spring break. 

there was this smaller almost invisible group. they looked like the twentysomethings travelled like them but didn't seem at a loss weren't hanging out.

i am in an annex of a hotel because the hotel proper doesn't have wireless internet, this one did after the person came over a fixed the server. but i fear that i am in the kiddie table area as it is 1:30 and a group just came in.

want to wander around dawson to-morrow - across the river is the top of the world highway  to alaska, i am tempted. tempted even more by the woman in watson lake who kept pointing to different areas of the map and saying how great it was there.

-the colours are changing along the dempster toward inuvik which would add another territory

-the kluane is beautiful.

i want to wander dawson not because of the theme park, i will make snaps of that with the digital but because the place is such a mess that it is rife for nice formal snaps.

i only hope that my neighbours pass out soon.