June 15-17 North to Alaska Days 9-11

We moved into our sites at the Gold Rush RV Park. We were the first to arrive. We set up the tent and wandered around town as we waited for the 4 errant riders to come from Keno.  Once they arrived our sites became quite full. We all broke off into small groups and walked around town.  Wayne and I found the liquor store, and then lunch at the Alchemy Café, a funky, hippy type place with good food.  Then we walked back to camp. Dave, Ken, Wayne and I went back out to walk around, and had a great bowl of Seafood Chowder for dinner.  We then rode our bikes up to Midnight Dome to look down at town.  These pictures were taken at about 8:30 PM.  Really!!

The view of Dawson from above

The river downstream from Dawson

The mountains from the Midnight Dome

The moon was up at it's normal time, however so was the sun!

Look at the difference in color of the river water.  The Yukon is on top, the Klondike is the lower one that comes in from the bottom left.
 

On Thursday the group went back to Midnight Dome, then off to Claim 3 where they have a number of old cars.

Wayne and Lyon checking on the old stuff

These birdhouses were all along the road up to Dredge #4.

Check out the dredge buckets in photos 1 & 2.

This is what they are used for by the residents now

 We saw this guy all around town.  He has about a million Go-Pro camera cases on his bike, one on his helmet, one on his chest and often has his camera drone bungeed on the back of his bike! Must be a photo-journalist.  Either that or his hobby is his life! 

Friday was the beginning of the Dust to Dawson Bike Games.  It started with a Poker run. I chose not to go, but the rest of them went. They were given a map to each of the checkpoints where they could draw a card, hoping to get the best poker hand. At check 5 they were given the GPS co-ordinates to the secret check with the bonus card.  6 cards and we still didn't have a decent hand in the group!  

Instead of riding on the long dusty run, I walked around town and did some banking and shopping. I also hung around in the sun.  It was sunny and 85 in Dawson City today and as a bonus I don't think the sun ever really went down.

Wayne at the Fire House Museum.  They had the typical number of fires for that time, including a huge one on Christmas Day.

When Wayne returned, with his lousy poker hand, we went to the Fire Truck Museum and the Tr'ondek Hwech'in Cultural Center. It was interesting to learn about the First Tribe of this area. When the first white men came they butchered the tribal name of Tr'ondek and it came out Klondike. Go figure.

Then it was time for the D2D dinner, which was very good.  In the drawing I won Wayne a t-shirt. Then it was time for the rest of the bike games.  Cindy is lined up for the slalom race.

Dave in the slow race

 

Spectator bikes during the games, 11:00 PM

Midnight on Friday night, 300 bikes and riders gathered in the courtyard for the group shot. Can you find me?
Then we all got our official Dust To Dawson 2016 stickers. It took a while to get out of the mess of bikes, but we all made it back to camp.  There we were, at 1am in the broad daylight, putting our stickers on our bikes, then starting the packing of the gear.  There was only so much of that we could do, so it was off to bed. As the bakery (i.e. breakfast) didn't open until 9, we won't be in a hurry!