Portrait of a Roadtrip: Alaska Part 6 Dawson

        We awoke in Whitehorse, nice and early. The sun rises at 4.45am at this time of year, so we’d only had about 4 hours of darkness. Still, our cabin in the garden had provided us with a good nights rest, the blinds closing out most of the light in the early hours. 

At round 7.30am we got up, hit the showers in the main house of the Beez Kneez hostel and tried desperately not to wake anyone or draw any attention from any of the guests or the odd manager. Fortunately the only one who appeared to notice our movements was the lovely blue eyed husky. 

We made a pit stop for gas and bought a camping mosquito proof gazebo from the huge outdoors shop before blazing out of town and onto the now familiar, dirty unpaved roads of the Yukon. 

The day was long. One of those days that your memory just doesn't bother to hold on to. We drove about 8 hours straight. The scenery was of endless pine forest in all directions stretching for thousands of miles. If we’d been dropped there on day one it would’ve been a spectacle, but after a couple of weeks of this, it appeared monotone and bland. Steph slept a lot of the journey, despite the bumpy nature of the rocky dirt road. I couldn’t look away from the road too much anyway, needing to constantly keep the car out of ditches and huge pot holes in the gravel.

At around 4pm we suddenly pulled in to one of the coolest locations on earth. Dawson.

        Dawson was one of the few places i’d pre-booked us accommodation, and the only place on the trip where we’d stay in a hotel. The Westmark in Dawson is a beautiful hotel, spanning a couple of streets, and in fitting with the rest of the town, had wooden walls of washed blues, greens and reds. 

The town of Dawson was like a beautiful treat, a marvelous reward at the end of a long vast journey. The streets, which are nothing more than dirt and sand, where straddled by wooden boardwalks. The buildings, originals everywhere you looked, reminded me of every western i’d ever watched, except less gritty and more beautiful. It had a feeling of potential, like everyone in town was either seeking adventure or living one. 

After getting a feel for the hotel room, we went strolling around town and found a quaint pub with a lovely outdoor beer garden. The food was epic, and Steph had a fairly standard size plate of calamari, which produced anything but standard effects an hour later. We drank beer and wine in the sun, soaked up the ambiance and relaxed. 

        When we got up to leave, Steph complimented the waitress on how ridiculously pretty she was (as is Steph’s way), and we walked to the riverfront. Steph has a habit of getting overly full from food without actually consuming an incredible amount. She found herself learning over at right angles, hands on thighs, trying to right herself. 

“I need to lay down, i’m gonna vom.” 

“You serious??”

“No I mean it, its bad. I need to lay down now.”

We sat on the grass, Steph on her back whilst I rubbed her stomach, trying to alleviate the symptoms. Eventually she began to feel better and we were in fits of giggles joking around like teenagers. I walked to the river and watched as an old fashioned steam boat fought against the mighty current of the Yukon river. 

We walked back to the hotel at 10 ish and had a cocktail, then Steph went to take a bath and I decided on a final stroll, this time with the camera, wanting a record of these cool old frontier streets.
        Dawson now has a small population, even smaller in the winter, when the snow comes in and the world turns to almost perpetual darkness. This was the Yukons capital, until it was moved to Whitehorse in the 1950's, due to being missed off the official Alaskan Highway by 300 miles. When the gold rush hit in 1896 the town grew and became it's centre, two years later its population hit 40,000, then by 1899 it had declined to 8,000. During the 70's the population was down to just 66 or 700 hundred, but thanks to a connecting road through the mountains to Alaska (which we'd hit the next day) and some tourism, its sitting pretty now.

        This is where it all went sour.

I ambled down the stairs at the front of the hotel, and halfway down misplaced my flip flop. My right ankle turned inward at a rather odd angle, as I began a pain filled fall toward the stairs. I heard one, two, three and then a loud fourth and final crack as the ankle continued it's bend towards my leg, an area of the body it has no right to shake hands with and get to know in any way. 

I went down the flight of steps into the dirt, and made sounds that didn’t make a lot of sense in English, but snakes might have recognized. The pain was immense. 

I eventually got back up and attempted to put my foot on the ground. I struggled, but could do it. The sensible part of my brain was shouting at me to hobble up and get ice. The ‘man voice’ inside my head told me to walk it off. The sun would be going behind the hills soon (being about 11pm!) and I wanted the light. So, in my stupidity, I hobbled the length of the town and back, taking photos and of course, missed the light. 

        As I got back to the room, Steph had already climbed into bed. 

“I had a bit of an accident,” I said. 

“What?!”

“Think i’ve broken my ankle.”

“Oh my god! Get onto the bed!, i'll get ice.”

        She jumped into action, thrusting a pillow beneath my legs, supporting it, and fetching ice to put on the joint. When I explained that I hadn’t returned immediately after the fall, she continued to treat me like a pro, but let me know I’d been a total dumb ass, which was of course completely accurate. 

The next morning we had a good drive, including loading onto a ferry to cross the Yukon river, and the a few hours through the mountains, where we would finally hit our target and cross the Alaskan Border. My ankle got bigger and bigger through the night, and by morning I was practically unable to move it at all. It was an issue for two reasons. The first being that it was my driving foot. The second, and more troublesome issue being that in about 2 weeks we’d be hiking for days on end in the wilderness of the Denali backcountry, with bears and wolves at our heels. Not ideal.

         Putting these worries to the back of our heads, we rose in the early Dawson light, and headed for our Yukon river ferry crossing, we would reach Alaska today. That was the main thing.

Come back next week for part 7, into Alaska. Check out more photos at www.howlandphotography.com and support us on Facebook. Hit the store at the top of this page for prints!