Restaurants

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Scenes from Dawson City

Just some random photographs taken during my aimless wanderings the other night:

this sign always amuses me

this sign always amuses me

the Eldorado Hotel, home of the Sluicebox Lounge bar

the Eldorado Hotel, home of the Sluicebox Lounge bar

My 'Dawson truth' lies somewhere between the gaudy carnival and the harsh, sobering reality. Of course, I only know SummerDawson.

My ‘Dawson truth’ lies somewhere between the gaudy carnival and the harsh, sobering reality. Of course, I only know SummerDawson.

the above text comes from this exhibit; it's free and open super late

the above text comes from this exhibit; it’s free and open super late

this building is just a façade; far as I know there is nothing going on inside

this building is just a façade; far as I know there is nothing going on inside

Bombay Peggy's pub & inn

Bombay Peggy’s pub & inn

This pizza place is accessible only through an alley (hence the name Back Alley Pizza). I've found the building after much searching and am now trying to figure out where the entrance is!

This pizza place is accessible only through an alley (hence the name Back Alley Pizza). I’ve found the building after much searching and am now trying to figure out where the entrance is!

Nothing much has been going on over the past few days; it’s just been insanely busy! The movie crew has checked out so life should be a bit less zany for the next couple of days. I am also going to be starting a new schedule on Monday which will give me several days a week to go out and explore the things I meant to explore last year.

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Pictures from Diamond Tooth Gerties!

I brought my camera to town tonight in hopes of getting a shot of some of the stars staying in town, but it was for naught. I had to settle for Owen Wilson brushing by me too quickly for me to get a picture. Ah, sucks to be me. 😀

After that excitement and a pint, my friends and I headed over to Gerties where I got some decent shots for once!

These are from the 10:30 show. The lady in orange is ‘Gertie’, but not the one I normally rave about. This is the first time I’ve met ‘the other Gertie’, who takes over on Amy’s nights off. She was quite good, but I feel disloyal saying too many nice things about her. 😀

The pics are from various moments in the show. You can see the swirly, multi-coloured skirts and kicking legs in the first few shots as well as some of the tap dancing routine. One of the highlights of the show is when they bring a male audience on stage and make him do a little song and dance. In this case, it was “There was a farmer who had a dog and poker was his name-o. P-O-K-E-R!” with the guy having to play a variety of instruments in tune. As a reward, he was inducted into the coveted Order of the Garter. The guy walking around the audience is ‘Spencer Doorman’, who is ‘discovered’ by Gertie in the 8:30 show.

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Backroads of Dawson

My friend Nathalie is currently in vacation mode with a lot of time off AND she has a 4×4, high clearance vehicle perfect for driving on washboard routes. So, she has been very content over the past two days to show me some of the far reaches of the Dawson area that she discovered over the course of her winter here.

Our adventure started last night, with a bit of a tangent. We went out just before 9 and spent so long trying to decide what we wanted for dinner that our only inexpensive option wound up being the casino. The dining choices in summer-time Dawson are incredible! We didn’t realise just how big the variety is until we started the whole “Greek?” “Nah. Italian?” “Nah. Fish and chips?” routine. We wound up getting pizza at the casino and then sharing a veggie dog from the hot dog cart. 🙂

We left Gerties just before the 10:30 show because we were in a talkative mood. Nathalie suggested we hop on the ferry so she could show me the location of west Dawson and Sunnydale, two neighbours on the other side of the Yukon River where homes are 100% self-sufficient. She and I are sort of interested in buying property in the area and have pretty much narrowed our options to west Dawson, so we also spent some time looking for and at empty lots.

West Dawson feels like a remote suburb–houses are fairly close together but there is quite a bit of tree coverage for privacy. Sunnydale, though, is isolated. Roads are maintained in west Dawson so folks can go to town in their vehicles in the winter via the ice bridge, but Sunnydale residents rely on snowmobiles and dog sleds. There are a few businesses on that side of the river, including a kennel and the Top of the World golf course, but otherwise it’s still almost pristine wilderness.

Let me pause here to get back to the buying property topic since I know that raised a few eyebrows. I’m entertaining the idea of buying a small chunk of property that I won’t need to build on just to have a physical address of my own to firmly establish my ties to Canada and Yukon. I would like for it to be RV accessible so that I could use it as an RV pad. I started to think about this last year, and the idea continues to grow on me. If I choose to buy in Dawson, the time to do so is now as prices are starting to sky rocket. This is still very much a project written in sand.

Today, we were going to go gold panning again, but decided instead to check out the gold fields route. I will come back to this route in greater detail when we go again since today was really a scouting mission with no time for pictures. As a teaser, I will say that this route has you climb up so high above the Dawson valley that rivers were still choked with ice and there was several feet of snow in places even though the mercury was at over 30 degrees!

I can’t get over how big this country is, country in terms of the wilderness expanses. There is just green as far as you can see with a swath of golden road cutting through it. I have to say it–it’s like driving on the yellow brick road through the Emerald City!

We’d been driving for over an hour when I started to get concerned about returning to work on time. The landscape was always the same and we hadn’t seemed to make any progress, so I was happy when Nathalie recognized a landmark and told me we were 45 minutes out, giving us an at home ETA that would give me a half hour to spare.

Throughout our drive, Nathalie shared her tales of life in winter Dawson and told me about a really colourful local character. I may come back to him if I get to meet him and he agrees to give me a formal interview. He officially made life in Dawson feel like a novel. 😀

In other news, the weather is HOT and DRY and SMOKY. The fire season is almost a month early this year and it promises to be a bad one. Anyone heading north better keep on top of road closures. A very bad fire just west of Tok closed the road between Tok and Fairbanks and nearly took out a full community. Meanwhile on the 40km up the Dempster highway a huge fire broke out today and will most likely close down that road within a few days. Interestingly enough, it’s the same customers who complain that we’re in a territory-wide fire ban (What, no fire pits?! You guys suck!) who also complain that there is poor visibility on the Top of the World and Dempster Highways. *shakes head*

It’s been a couple of full days and I can’t believe that we’re about to roar into June!

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Food, Food, Food, Food, and More Food

Today started off slooooooowly. I needed to go in at noon, rather than my usual eleven, so, of course, I woke up quite early by my standards: quarter past nine. I then made up for that by spending more than an hour in bed with the cats reading, checking my email and getting work done on my iPod Touch (I wish I was kidding. Or maybe not!).

Our fishmonger left today and I thanked him once again for a gift he gave me yesterday: a big bag of frozen shrimp!!!  I’m going to have them on the grill soon as I take the time  to get it set up.

The morning was pretty sedate, but active, since I needed to do some work on the property, including sweeping which really feels like a futile endeavour. The best way I can describe what the property looks like is to imagine the set of the show M*A*S*H, only with RVs instead of tents. There are a lot of similarities in the layout (including mountains in the background) and that ever present coating of dust that turns to mud soon as it’s wet out. Whenever I’m put to beautification detail, I think of the episode where the colonel had the camped spruced up for a general’s visit, which culminated in a fountain being made with bed pans. I suggested we make a fountain with gold pans, but that didn’t go over so well. Hmph! 😀

Just before I went on my afternoon break, I was treated to a slice of watermelon. It was a tad pasty, but by Dawson standards it was excellent and I savoured every morsel. I’m almost at the time of year when my junk food cravings are going to give way to an insatiable appetite for fruit and salad and the watermelon was a nice way to inaugurate the season.

Unfortunately, we’re also at that time of year when the sun is really bad during my time off (3 to 5), so running to the post office and back was quite a chore. I was glad to return to Miranda’s cool interior and get some work done on my contract. As a side note, I received an email a couple of days ago that the contract had been canceled. I was understandably devastated! But some inconsistencies in the correspondence I got made me ask a few questions and I was able to learn that only part of the contract has been terminated. So, I can still count on some hours a week, just not as many. This served to show me that I really can’t rely on that contract for any sort of income this winter which led me down another alley for the winter. It’s much too soon to start on that subject, however.

When I came back to work, late afternoon, I snagged an apple (Golden Delicious!) from the manager and then attempted to show her how to transfer ebooks to her iPod. I believe I may have added ‘ebook transferer’ to my job description. 😀 We were interrupted when a caravan rolled in and I had fun watching the RV ballet. Once everyone was squared away, the organizer came in with treats for everyone–a huge container of cashews and a cinnamon bun the size of my head! It came from the Braeburn Lodge… known for their huge cinnamon buns. A couple of us tore into the bun right away, but we left more than half for the morning folks (ain’t we nice?). I had thought of making shrimp for dinner, but between the cashews and cinnamon bun slice, I think I’m done for the night. 😀

So, needless to say I was thinking breakfast, not dessert, when one of my colleagues (who was a neighbour in Oliver!) handed me two beautiful carrot cake muffins with cream cheese icing when I handed her the night phone. They are going to be soooo yummy with my coffee in the morning!

Been a good day; slightly crazy, which is what passes for normal around here. 🙂

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Lunch at the Riverwest

I went into town today to take out some money and check my mail, so I decided to pop into the Riverwest Bistro for a quick bite to eat.

The Riverwest is what passes for a fast food joint in Dawson. You order at a counter and are given a number to display prominently at your table. There are magazines and newspapers available to pass the time until someone brings you your order. You can also take your order to go, and there are always cold sandwiches and other items you can grab on the go. They serve breakfast and are also a popular place to grab a coffee. The only negative is that they close at 7, so forget grabbing a quick dinner on the way home if you finish work late!

The food is good, fresh, and quite cheap, as compared to an equivalent meal at McDonald’s or Wendy’s. Today, I tried their ‘peppercorn ranch chicken wrap’ which ended up being cold diced chicken with fresh tomatoes and lettuce drizzled with peppercorn ranch dressing wrapped up in a tomato tortilla, for $7. I like their ‘curly fries’ and added them to my order, for a total cost of just under $10. It was all very YUM.

My $10 wouldn’t have gone far at the general store, and the tomatoes and lettuce I would have gotten there would have been respectively mealy and limp while the bread would have been stale.

Proper sit down restaurants aren’t that much more expensive than the Riverwest, but they are quite a bit slower, so the Riverwest is the place I go to when I just want to do a quick in and out. Or catch up on my Macleans magazines. 😀