Alaska 2019: Dawson City

Today was a travel day, but instead of continuing on the Alaska Highway, we decided to add about 100 miles on to our trip and take highway 2 to Dawson City. We drove about 7.5 hours and the roads were overall good. We did experience a few frost heaves (bumps in the road that give you a scare). There were many lakes and forests of pine and cypress. We traveled along the Yukon River for some of the trip.

We arrived at Dawson City and found a campground. We set up the camper, then went sightseeing in the town. The town was a base during the Klondike Gold Rush and several of the frontier style buildings have been preserved. We bought a few things at the local grocery store. Everything was quite expensive. The town is also surrounded by huge piles of rocks everywhere you look. After some research, we discovered the piles of rocks remain from where the mining companies performed dredging.

We also learned a lot about permafrost. Permafrost occurs when the ground remains frozen for a minimum of 2 yrs. The soil about the permafrost that freezes and thaws is called that active layer. In the Yukon, 50 to 90 % of the ground ins underlain by permafrost. At Hunker Creek which is not far from where we are camping they recently discovered a swath of frozen mud and ice that was 740,000 years old, the oldest ice ever uncovered in North America.

We expect to leave here tomorrow and finally arrive in Alaska with the truck and camper. The next month or so we will be touring through Alaska.