Dawson City, Yukon Part 1

The last two days we have been in Dawson City, Yukon. We arrived Thursday night, just as the grocery store was closing down. We had a stressful 2 minutes to pick out dinner (chicken, broccoli, and rice-a-roni) and then headed to our campsite.
Dawson City is separated into two parts, West Dawson City and Dawson City, each on a different side of a large fast moving river. We were camping in West Dawson. Dawson City is basically a museum town that hasn’t changed a whole lot since the turn of the 19th century. Because of this, they don’t have a bridge, just an old terrifying ferry. It runs all night for no charge!
We drove the Blue Avenger on and cracked the window so we’d be able to get out if we sank. We waited nervously as we took the 5 minute voyage with a brick in front of our tires to prevent us from sliding in. All the locals laughed at us as we sat white knuckled and clutching our seats.

When we arrived at the Yukon River Campground it had started to rain. At this point, we were all pretty hungry and cranky. We were being really sloppy with setting up, and things only got worse when we realized a few poles were missing. Rachel blamed me; I blamed her. Sophia drove off to pay for the site and hit a large boulder along the way. We were definitely losing it. We tried using sticks to hold up the tent, but it was useless. Our tent is now lopsided and about a foot shorter than it used to be.

We decided to just move on and fix the tent later. We headed over to the picnic building to cook dinner. As usual Sophia cooked. A nice man had given us an extra cooking stove and cast iron frying pan in Watson Lake, so cooking was actually quite a breeze. I made a raging fire and we ate our delicious meal, all stress fading away. After dinner, we pulled out the guitar, spoons, and harmonica and had a fantastic jam session! We even composed our first joint song. It is excellent and we will post it once we’ve added a few finishing touches.

The sun was still high in the sky, so naturally we felt it was fine to belt out and really let our creative juices flow. After about an hour, we decided we should probably check the clock. It was midnight! Our poor neighbors.

We packed everything up, and after debating whether to just leave the dishes or clean them, we went in search of the washroom. There were none, just signs explaining that all waste and water has to go into the outhouse. What is normally just a tedious everyday task became particularly unpleasant. We all huddled into the outhouse and scrubbed the pans with our remaining drops of water. The outhouse was tiny and long overdue to be emptied out. Needless to say we almost died due to lack of oxygen.

We then returned to our wet, lopsided tent. We fell asleep in our proper spots, only to wake up all smooshed together in the far right corner. All in all, a really fantastic night.