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Day 7 (August 29, 2021): Yukon Farewell and Good Calgary Times!

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Our last day in Canada’s North! And a partial day, at that. We just had time for one last activity, before taking our flight to Calgary at noon. The Yukon Transportation Museum was of much interest and, being located next to the airport, we had decided to leave it til flight day. At 10AM, the museum’s opening time, we returned the rental car at the airport and walked over to the museum with our carry-on luggage, which the staff kindly stored for us while we visited. The museum has an eclectic collection, covering anything and everything “transportation” in the Yukon over the last century and a bit. And with such a large territory, many transportation themes have played integral roles in Yukon’s development. Our most interesting finds are detailed below.  By 11AM we had viewed the collection essentials and then walked back to the terminal building. Whitehorse airport only has a half-dozen daily departures these days, but four of them were clustered to leave around noon. So the plac...
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Day 6 (August 28, 2021): Kluane National Park

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When we woke at 7AM, we heard heavy rain and we knew that the certainty of rain that had been forecasted was a reality.  With only today to spend in Kluane National Park, the sound of the rain was disappointing, for sure.  But we set out after breakfast at the Village Bakery in Haines Junction with much optimism that the fog-shrouded mountains would indeed make an appearance at some point. We had been planning to take a float-plane flight over the Kluane ice fields, but a call to the air tour company revealed the bad news that the cloud ceiling was too low to permit the plane to take off.  As if that wasn't bad enough news, after driving 50KM from Haines Junction, we realized we were on the highway back towards Whitehorse, and not toward the northern end of Kluane!  So around we turned and headed back to Haines Junction. We decided to stop at the park's visitor centre to watch a 20-minute film on Kluane.  What an experience that was!  Kluane is an incredib...
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Day 5 (August 27, 2021): Buildings and Mountains

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Into every vacation, a little metaphorical rain must fall. Well, today felt like a total downpour on that front. It all started with a power outage across Dawson City just after we got up. It made finding any breakfast or even coffee, impossible. But that sort of thing happens everywhere once in a while and you just live with the inconvenience. No biggie.  On empty stomachs, we joined our pre-reserved Parks Canada walking tour of the historic core of Dawson City at 9:30 AM. As with the two Parks Canada tours yesterday, the quality and information was second to none. It really gave great insight into the foundations of Dawson City, which were rooted in the short-lived Gold Rush in the last few years of the 19th century. After the tour, we returned our rental car and were driven to the airport. And that’s when the second chunk of bad news for today hit us: Air North told us they had oversold the 42-seat flight by two seats and that we had been identified as the two standby passenger...
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