Whitehorse

Our host had to go to Whitehorse herself the next day, so she kindly took us along.  Whitehorse is the capital of The Yukon, and built in what was a prehistoric lake, so at the bottom of a huge gully.  The Yukon river runs through town, the same one we crossed over and back on the Dalton in Alaska.  It was weird to think we were at the same river again, another thousand miles inland.

The town was name for the rapids that used to run through it, but after a hydro electric dam was built the river looks like this:

We stayed at the Robert Service (named after a Canadian poet) campground, for two nights.  It was $20 a night for a tent, plus extra for firewood (we just gathered some from nearby trees as this seemed to make more sense), so not the cheapest but reasonable, and there were showers etc and it felt more secure to leave bags there, especially as 'unauthorised' camping is illegal in the county so anywhere we'd snuck off with the tent could have been discovered by police.

The first day we hired some bikes.  Whitehorse has various really decent options for doing this.  We just got a couple from the campground and went out first on some trails

and then, because apparently we end up in some kind of refuse site wherever we are, we visited the town dump.  This makes more sense than you might think.  First of all there are loads of birds there.  We saw about four bald eagles and dozens of ravens - much cooler than eagles really, scruffy black commoners that can chase them away ;).  Also, next to the recycling they have a 'free shop' of things people are chucking that still have a bit of life in them, so other people can come and look and take what they want.  A pretty civilised way to go about things.

  We were told back in Alaska that they have a similar arrangement there, though a bit more informal, and there was much anger when Fairbanks local government suggested taking away 'dumping rights'.

The next day we visited the 'Beringia centre'.  It's all about the land mass, animals and people that lived in Beringia, when you could walk between whats now Russia and Alaska.  It was really interesting and the staff were really enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and it was cheap too.  We got to prod mammoth bones, see a 26,000 year old horse pelt, and a reconstruction of a prehistoric Musk Ox (amongst many others).  The Musk Ox, turns out, hasn't changed at all and could have been the same guy we met on the Dalton.

Having used price to help select our activities we'd also decided to go on a tour of the town brewery, five bucks and profits to charity, and they have loads of interesting and tasty looking different beers.  However when we got there the tour was full.  So, concluding with sound economics that we now had ten bucks to spare, we spent it (and a fraction more) on beer, and conducted our own tasting session.

Rather than pay for another night at the campsite, we decided to try our luck hitching in the evening, and we started thumbing at half eight...