Day 23 - Onwards to Dawson City, Yukon Territory

Travel   From: Whitehorse, YT   To: Dawson City, YT   Distance: 333 mi (535 km)   Travel time w/brks: 5 hr 44   Distance since start: 5,835 mi (9,383 km)

Thursday 7/13/2006

As we left the Takhini Hot Springs campground, we also dumped our tanks. There was a share dump station near the exit. It was also very tight. We left the campground without looking back. We were soon on the road towards Dawson City. One of the stops we made was a Five Finger Rapids along the Yukon River. You could take a hike down, but we were in a bit of a hurry to get to Dawson. Nevertheless a nice viewing area.

Five Finger Rapids along the Yukon River

We continued along the road towards Dawson. And then, the dreaded check engine light came on again. Ugh. We were about 30 miles south of Stewarts Crossing and had to limp along at a very slow speed. The engine appears to prevent us from going above 2,000 RPM. In tow-mode that makes it very hard to climb any hills. Once it shifts down, it does not want to rev up. And then it is forced to shift down again. After some tinkering around, I discovered that by taking it out of tow-mode in select places we were able to accelerate a little bit more. We had some hope that there would be a mechanic at Stewarts Crossing. Unfortunately, this was not the case. So now I was faced with making the change myself. The memory was still fresh of the technician that changed it in Augusta, Montana, diesel fuel spilling all over the place. By a stroke of luck, a technician had stopped at the fuel station to service their pumps. He lent me a pan and some fuel absorbing towels. We let the truck sit a little while, hood open and the towels covering the filter area. The objective was to tell the difference between genuine engine heat and solar heat. When we had eaten, I managed to make the change myself without spilling any fuel. It took a while to get the engine primed. We are still learning how much we need to pump the filter.

Fuel filter change #3 in Stewart Crossing, Yukon

I was also able to leave the dirty filter and residual fuel with the pump technician. We could clearly see both water in the fuel as well as some red dirt material. Fed we hit the road again and the truck worked like a charm. We hurried along towards Dawson City. At one point we hit an extended road construction area. We came to a complete stop for about 15 minutes. While we were stopped, I jumped out of the truck to inform the motor home driver in front that his exhaust pipe was about to fall off. The owner worked on it, while we were waiting, while I held the pipe in place. They were from upstate New York. We talked a bit about where they were going later on in their journey. I mentioned that we were going up to Deadhorse in about a week. The other guy said he had thought about it, but that it would probably not happen during this trip. After a while, the pilot truck showed up and we followed it through the construction area. The road we drove on was packed gravel/dirt. To reduce dust and to improve how things are compacted, water trucks drove over it and poured water on it. This made the truck very dirty, at last as far as we experienced on this trip..

Driving through road construction on our way to Dawson City, Yukon, behind the MH with the broken exhaust pipe

When we arrived at the campground in Dawson City, we caught up with Kushman's group of Airstream trailers from the Charter Oak unit. There were four trailers in that group: Richard and Kathy Kushman, Ted and Lois Price, Mike and Sandy Sasuta and Joe and Sarah Ribeiro. It was so nice to park next to a group of friends again, especially friends with Airstreams. It looked like we had picked up more dirt on our trailer than our friends. Perhaps we hit that road construction at a different time from them? When they all returned we had a happy hour. That was very nice. Isabella showed everyone some pictures from our trip.

Isabella shows our friends some trip pictures

Erik calls some of his friends at home in New Hampshire with WiFi/Skype

After dinner, Ted Price proposed that we should drive up to the Dome and look at the view. That is a mountain that overlooks Dawson City and its surroundings. The start of the access road was not far from the campground. Isabella drove our truck and she had a hard time keeping up with Ted's Suburban. The view up on the top is awesome. It is virtually 360 degrees. The town is right at the merge of Klondike river and Yukon river. In the picture below you can see the merge, since Klondike is crystal clear while the Yukon is full of brown silt. A small fox approached us and begged for food.

Erik looking down on Dawson City with the merge of Klondike (left/clear/small) and Yukon (top/brown/large) rivers

A fox hangs around the top, begging for food

Us posing on a huge bench on top of the mountain, overlooking mountain ranges around us

Our original plan was to stay just one night here in Dawson City, but with we were quite exhausted from getting up here and it was also nice to meet friends, so we decided to add one night while taking one out from Fairbanks. We went to bed, tired, and ready for a new day.

Campground   Name: Bonanza Gold RV Park   Our hookups: Water, Sewer, and 30 amp   WiFi: Yes and two bars (free)   GSM service: None   TV Channels: Unknown   Cost: $31.54 CDN/night   Reservation mode: Phone call (via Skype)

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist, Background features the Yukon Sky.