Alaska Ride News, Vol. 1, Dispatch No. 7 (July 2023), pp. 18/7/2023: Today’s ride takes us from Eagle Alaska, on the Yukon to Dawson Canada, also on the Yukon and the historic highway known as the top of the world highway. The Top of the World Highway is a 127 km-long (78miles) highway, beginning at a junction with the Taylor Highway near the unincorporated community of Jack Wade, Alaska travelling east to its terminus at the ferry terminal in West Dawson, Yukon, on the western banks of the Yukon. I thankfully arrived all covered in mud and so did the little Klondike. Roberto 1 was spotless and Paul was a little dusty but, not too bad. The only real difference is the fender. I’m missing mine.
The weather went from sunny and warm with limitless visibility to as far away as the eyes can see, to cold, to wet with rain, to sections of fog where visibility was less than 100 feet away. The roads surface also kept changing from the Canadian border crossing all the way to the Yukon River. One flagger had us stopped briefly for ongoing road construction.
The ferry crossing is free from West Dawson across the mighty Yukon to the town of Dawson. This is where the miners found the fun. There’s your bath, your liquor, your hair to cut, your laundry, your steak and finally your recreation consisting of drinking, dancing, music, cards and enterprising women.
The Sourdough toe. One of the right of passages here is to take a sourdough cocktail that includes a real life gangrene toe in it. It all started during prohibition, with a nasty case of frostbite in the 1920s, with the rum-running Linken brothers – Louie and Otto – both got caught in a blizzard.
Louie put his foot through a patch of ice and soaked his foot. When the brothers got back to their cabin, Louie’s right foot was frozen solid. To prevent gangrene, Otto used his axe to chop off Louie’s toe. He placed the toe in a jar of alcohol to commemorate the event.
In 1973, legend has it that Captain Dick Stevenson found the jar (and the toe) in a remote cabin. He came up with the idea of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club – an exclusive club, with one membership requirement. In order to gain admittance to the club, potential members must drink the legendary sourtoe cocktail.
There’s just one rule: “You can drink it fast. You can drink it slow. But your lips must touch that gnarly toe.” We all did it respectfully.
Last night Roberto and I slept in a twin bed room. The kids beds were previously inhabited by a cat, a homeless person or maybe both. My larynx started closing up soon after hitting the bed and pillow; soon I was hacking and coughing like an old man and the sleepless night began.
I moved to the sofa on the main floor but, the three dated and overstuffed cushions caused me to fall to the floor so, I moved yet again. Finally, I was on another couch.
Thankfully we’re now done with lodge stays. Dawson City is located on the Yukon River in northwest Canada. It was once a base during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush. The town is frontier like and I’m now sitting on my bomber jacket writing the blog; on a wooden sidewalk by the Taqueria, Klondike ice cream and Joe’s Sourdough restaurant. The mighty Yukon is between the road, a park and me.
And in the end all we can expect out of life is something as simple as the following Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.” –
This is to have succeeded!
End
Trawlercat Chronicles 