We had a walking tour of town at 1 PM. Our tour guide was dressed in period clothes and was really cute and funny.
Dawson City's boom only really lasted a few years before it started its decline. When most of the prospectors who made the Chilkoot Trail alive and then came down the Yukon river to Dawson City, the gold miners who were already here had pretty much mined out the gold. So, they tried to establish a town using the professions they had before they contracted "gold fever". Some of the original buildings still exist with the fronts being restored. The most interesting was the morgue. They tried to estimate how many would die during the winters and pre-dig the graves during the summer. If they ran out of graves, they just stored the bodies until next summer. With the winters being on average -40C (-50F), it wasn't a problem.
After the tour, a group went to lunch at the Triple J Hotel. Very nice. The walking tour of town was pretty exhausting, so we went back to the RV to rest before having our drivers meeting and going to Diamond Tooth Gertie's. At the drivers meeting, it was decided that about half would go on over on the ferry tonight and the rest would follow in the AM. That was fine with about half the group as they thought they would get to sleep in the next day. At 11:15, we heard the WM say there were still 5 to board the ferry. More on the ferry later (we stayed in the campground).
Diamond Tooth Gerties's was singing and some dancing. It was fun but we all agreed the Frantic Follies in Whitehorse was better as it had more variety. Gertie's was a casino with a few slots and table games. I lost my $20.00 in the penny machine and Denny lost his at roulette. It was a non-profit casino where the money went back into the town and was owned by Parc Canada, so we felt like we helped the economy there, which really needed it.
Back at the RV, we watched some of our friends pull out, before we retired at 11 to get ready for the big day. Little did we know!!!
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