June 5, 2010 by Rae

Scenes from Dawson City

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

this sign always amuses me

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.

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

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!

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.

June 2, 2010 by Rae

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.

May 30, 2010 by Rae

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!

May 29, 2010 by Rae

The Running Together of Days

Thank goodness for the oh-so-long Dawson summer days!

The days have started to run together with a sameness that makes me feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day! 😀

It’s good to be working so much and 100% for myself. I really feel like I am a legitimate business now, especially since I’m in negotiations for a short-term project that will do some good things for my bottom line if it goes through.

Yesterday, we hit 32 in the shade, so I’d hate to know what the temps were in full sun! There was a lot of wind, too, which brought up impressive clouds of dust that chased people indoors. At least, it gets quite cool in the evening, making for comfortable nights. With windows and roof hatches open, I haven’t yet had to turn on the air conditioner.

I’m waiting on my toast and upon breakfasting, I will mosey on over to the office to start my day. We have a Hollywood film crew moving in! Well, the Canadian folks they hired. 🙂 Whenever I go into town, I’ll be keeping an eye out for Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin who are filming their movie ‘The Big Year‘ a short way up the Dempster Highway. You never know, I could get lucky. 🙂

No such thing as a dull day in Dawson!

May 26, 2010 by Rae

What Passes for Entertainment In Dawson City

This afternoon, my friend Nathalie came to me at the front desk and asked the always loaded question: “What are you doing this afternoon?”

The answer was, of course, working on my contract, but I asked her what she had in mind.

“Wanna go gold panning?”

And that’s how we found ourselves trundling down to Claim No. Six, a free claim, where anyone can go play in Bonanza Creek. For me, it was mostly an excuse to go soak my feet and toast myself under the sun. 😀

Nathalie is originally from France, but has been in Canada for several years. She arrived in Dawson last fall, just as I was leaving, and spent the winter. She’s therefore a ‘true’ Dawsonite, and she has a lot to teach me about how things work around here! She also met a miner over the cold season and he told her all about gold panning, so we put her lessons to work. We had fun but didn’t find anything (of course 😀 ).