Day Three: Dawson City to Stewart Crossing, YT

Highlights from Thursday, July 24:

• We woke up around 7:30 (deciding to sleep in just that little extra bit). Our B&B had a great breakfast, although Kiersten didn’t really want to eat. She's being finicky, so we put her leftovers in a container knowing she'll need it later.
  
• We go to Dawson City's old theater (now a historic site run by Canada's National Parks service) just in time for the start of the 9:30 tour. Our tour guide gave us a historical tour of the city and showed us the sights, including old bars, brothels (yes, brothels), banks, riverboat docks, and anything else you'd expect to see in an old mining town. Much of the town is a restored and preserved artifact; they really go to great lengths to give it that old-town feel (although the dusty streets and wooden sidewalks look very odd with modern automobiles). The tour is very interesting, although we only hear it in pieces. Kiersten wasn’t interested, so we had to take turns watching her and had to relay the parts we missed to each other.
• We go food shopping around 11 at the local supermarket. We've been buying food to make our meals instead of going out to lunch at restaurants. Although it's a little more work, it probably saves us 25% over the cost of meals out twice a day.
• After lunch, we drive out of town to the historic site where gold was discovered. It’s now just a little stream where people can try panning. Kiersten found a stick and pretended she was hiking, which looked adorable.
  
• We then drove to the top of Dawson City's "Midnight Dome." I get the impression that it's so named because it's high enough (in elevation and in latitude) that it doesn't get dark there in the summer. The Dome gave us an excellent view of Dawson City and the whole valley. Kiersten is very tired by this point.
• We drive back to Dawson City to visit its main museum. Kiersten goes down for a nap, so we're able to enjoy the museum in peace. We learn about life in the Klondike days, and we see recreations of old Klondike cabins (barely enough comfort room for two people...turns out tempers were short and fights were frequent). We also see a demonstration of a “rocker box,” which is a simple machine which uses water and motion to extract gold from a pile of dirt. Finally, we check out the train museum next door and learn about the short-lived railroad which ran through the Klondike until 1913.
• We gas up and drive out of town around 5 p.m. It costs about $50 to fill half a tank of gas.
  
• It only takes us 2 to 3 hours to drive to Stewart Crossing. (There's not much here, but since it's pretty far to our next destination, we wanted to get at least some of the next drive knocked out early.) Kiersten wakes up, but she's easily entertained for the short drive. There's some rain, but not enough to impair the drive.
  
• Still no wildlife anywhere. Very disappointing.
• We get to our cabins around 7 or 7:30. We're a little intimidated, because the place looks a little more rustic than we expected. The cabins do have some interesting made to look like a mosquito, moose, and a person, so I show them to Kiersten. We also see chickens in the back, which reminds Kiersten of the ones at her grandmother's house.
  
• I note that our cabin is a few steps above what the Klondike settlers lived in 100 years ago. We're in much better shape than those people, however, since it's summer and we're only there for one night.
  
• Kiersten has trouble getting to sleep, but eventually goes out. All this travel is warping her, and she doesn't appear to know how to handle it.
  
• Results: B+; good breakfast, good tour, good drive. We're a little put off by the cabins, so that keeps Day 3 from being a perfect day.

Distance traveled to date: 615 miles.