I woke up to Kenric telling me that if we didn’t leave the hotel soon enough, the road to Dawson City might be closed indefinitely if the fires get too close to the highway, and there are many forest fires in Yukon Territory and Alaska right now. The six-hour drive along the Klondike Highway was quite unnerving because of the smoke. My nose started to hurt from it. We didn’t actually see any fire, but we did see crew-members working at the gold mines and on construction projects.

Dawson City is like a wild west movie set to me. I half expected someone to dart out of a saloon and start shooting. Then, I remembered I’m in Canada. Kenric said nothing much has changed here in the last hundred years, but I learned that Madame Ruby’s brothel which was originally a boarding house in 1903 is now a museum.

We’re staying at The Bunkhouse and it’s very bare. Luckily the toilets and showers are only two doors down. At around 9:30 pm, it started raining and we had to go outside to watch The Wild Wild West. The wildest thing I witnessed was a bicyclist screaming out to his friend, “Holy F**k! Can’t even see!” Even if we didn’t have so much smoke and rain, I doubt we would get to enjoy a beautiful sunset because it’s supposed to set at 12:26 am!

Map of Places Visited