Layover in Dawson City YT

Today we were supposed to ride the Top of the World Highway from Dawson City YT into Alaska, including a stop at the curiously named village of Chicken.  Much to our disappointment, we awoke to discover the highway was closed for the second time in as many weeks due to a washout.  It had rained pretty steadily in Dawson City over night, and apparently the TotWH got much, much more rain than we had.

There was no way we'd get to Alaska today, so we took advantage of a break in the rain to cut some wood for the bath house I complained about in the last post.  There was no chopping block, and I didn't want to abuse my hatchet so we used the unbelievably dull one (hereto referred to as a "mallet") provided by Dawson City River Hostel, as well as a buck saw we found that was in good shape.  We sawed logs into lengths with one of us on either end of the saw, and split them with the mallet.    We started a fire using our own matches, and continued to cut more wood for the next weary travelers.  I did my best to cut up some of the shipping palettes using the mallet, but it mostly just bashed them into splinters.  I cut up one ankle when one particularly bothersome board finally exploded.  While Dad enjoyed the bath house, I kept at the wood.  When we were done we had a pretty good pile, nicely stacked in a dry section of the wood shelter.  We also stacked wood and kindling neatly under a bench in the bathhouse.

If there is dry wood available, you've got your own sharp hatchet, time to cut wood (including sawing the tree, not just splitting logs), your own matches, and time for the water and bath house to heat up, then the bath house is a great way to get clean!  The sauna aspect was very relaxing, and it felt great to pour that hot water over myself and finally wash that Dempster mud off and out of my hair.  Unfortunately, the bath house is not a reasonable way for a tired traveler to get clean at the end of a long day, if it's after dark, or if it's late enough that chopping wood would wake up other guests.  It's a novelty, not an amenity.

We took the ferry across the Yukon River into town, and stopped by the visitor's centre for news on the wash out.  The repairs wouldn't start until the rain stopped, and the rain wouldn't stop for a day or two.  We'd heard stories of motorcyclist being let through previous wash outs, so we decided to stay around one extra night and see what news came from other travelers.

We went to the Dawson City Hotel for some food and to look for the previous owner, now employee, Dick.  The adv riding couple we'd met while at Liard Hot Springs knew Dick, and said we should look him up if we had time.  We definitely had time now.

Dick is one of the founding riders of the Dusk to Dawson ride, which now attracts hundreds of riders to Dawson City each year.  He knows all about traveling by motorcycle in the north west (as well as other locals, I'm sure), and is The Guy to Know if you've got motorcycle problems while in the area.  He's got a collection of used tires that can help you get by if you've a flat or need help changing a tire, he let us use his wash station with a pressure washer out behind the hotel, and is a great guy to have lunch with on a rainy Yukon day.

I stayed in the hotel's restaurant, The Jack London Grill, all afternoon catching up on blog posts, while Dad went out and played tourist for a while in the rain.  I washed my bike up, in the rain, which might sound funny unless you saw how muddy it was after the Dempster Highway in the rain.  We were still sitting at the restaurant come dinner time, so we had dinner there too before heading back to our tents.

Even though I'd already used the bath house in the morning, I thought I'd do so again before heading to bed.  After all, we'd cut, split, and stacked a bunch of dry wood up that morning, so it should be pretty easy to get hot water this time.  We discovered that the wood we'd stacked under the bench in the bath house was taken and scattered in front of the wood shelter, getting soaked on the ground in the rain all day.  Much of the wood we'd stacked in the shelter was missing too.  Dad gathered enough wood to get the small bath house warm again, and I went to ask the camp owner if he knew what'd happened to our wood.

He told me it was very dangerous where we'd stacked the wood under the bench.  The sharp splintery bits (because we smashed the wood with a mallet instead of having a proper ax) could poke people.  I agreed that made some sense, but wondered why the wood was scattered on the ground instead of being moved as a stack to a dry place.  "Look, it's not my job to cut and stack wood."  He was quite upset.  I wanted to complain about his false advertising of a "hot bath", but decided to just walk away.

The next morning, as we were getting ready to leave we struck up a conversation with a fellow motorcyclist.  Like us, he was turning back because the Top of the World Highway was still closed.  At one point he asked if we'd had any problems with the camp owner, noting that he'd found him to be odd and in a really bad mood yesterday and this morning.  The camp owner had even gotten angry at him for shaving after dark!

This happy HD rider from Michigan also found the owner of Dawson City River Hostel to be a angry oddball!