After spending the first two days in Whitehorse we drove to Dawson City, the heart of Klondike Gold Rush. The lakes seen from the road were of spectacular emerald colour, which could rival the Carribean.Dawson City, itself, welcomed us with old, pictoresque buildings and wooden boardwalks. Liquor store, photo parlour and former brothels are amongst the first buildings a visitor sees when entering this dust-covered town.( We did spend a night in Bombay Peggy's- a former brothel turned into a lovely bed and breakfast, which lost some of its excitement but none of its charm).
Picture: Lake on the way from Whitehorse to Dawson City
The drive through Tombstone National Park, devoid of almost any people and facilities was as beautiful as it was long, so no one could blame us for feeling relieved when we reached our final (or so we thought) destination of the day: Eagle Plains.
Eagle Plains, proudly boasting to be a village and 'oasis in the wilderness' turned out to be nothing more than a devastated hotel and a gas station with a far too friendly male staff( towards me anyway).
We didn't even have to discuss it, as soon as we looked at each other and heard the owner of the hotel say that ' frankly speaking there was absolutely nothing to do there', we decided to drive to the Artic Circle and all the way back to Dawson City ( each one of us did 500 kilometres that day, almost 1000 in total). Our decision was also influenced by the price of a well ripened (perhaps too well indeed) banana- three dollars. (although litres of black coffee, which I drank there were truly resuscitating)
As we were approaching the Artic Circle, the landscape smoothly transformed from lush green forests with pine and birch trees into truest 'end of the world' with tall, naked trees and a seemingly never-ending road gently winding through hollows with streams and wild flowers.
Crossing the Arctic Circle, even though it boiled down to taking a lot of pictures of a wooden signpost, truly in line with Facebook and Instagram culture( or lack thereof) of 21st century, did fill us with immense satisfaction of crossing that mysterious border.
Interestingly, there is 24 hours of sunlight until 8th of August and even though we were there by evening, it was still very light outside.
When driving back, I kept telling Raph we would certainly see some grizzlies. ( I needed to find a suitable justification for having dragged us all the way north to the Artic Circle)
Yet the road kept winding, kilometres kept piling on and no bears were in sight. We were almost ready to give up on a hope of seeing one, especially because the breathtaking scenery and true wilderness surrounding us was more than enough to make up for it and then suddenly we saw a car standing in the middle of the road.
Out of pure goodness of our hearts we decided to stop and see whether the man needed any help (as if we could provide it! No mobile signal and the closest thing to civilisation was a tiny Information Centre, probably closed at this time of day, 200 kms away)and then we saw them. A beautiful family of three. A grizzly mum with two (by the look of it) adolescent cubs. They were too busy digging out worms to pay too much attention to us and we spent almost an hour admiring them until they turned back and walked away.
The rest of the drive was even more spectacular than the drive to Eagle Plains as the sunset and a menacing thunderstorm added new colours to the Tombstone Park.The grey mountains looked even more majestic against ruby red skies and dark blue clouds. We were completely alone and we've never felt this close to wilderness.
Tombstone
Arctic Circle
Road to Dawson
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