Dawson, Yukon Territory is a great looking town, small city. We drove here from Fairbanks across the Top of the World Highway, see the story here. Dawson’s streets are dirt, sidewalks are raised wooden boardwalk, the buildings are old, original old. Parks Canada has about 20 of the buildings designated and protected. There is still a fair amount of small scale gold mining going on. We had lunch at the location of the first restaurant in Dawson. We spoke to a young lady there who has lived in Dawson and until recently worked at her family’s gold mine. How cool is that? We impressed her with our story of striking it in Fairbanks. Our first night in town, after crawling out of Alaska, we dumped the trailer and drove into town for 
dinner at one of the old hotels.
Next day it was a walking tour of the town, up and down each street, checking out the insides as well as the outsides of the building. Our last day in town we purchased a ticket to take part in a guided walking tour with a Parks Canada guide, in period costume, who gave us access to many of the protected buildings. Different tours access different buildings so a couple of tours are needed, but at 6 bucks a head, why not. We bought a pizza from a non-franchise shop and it was really good, might have been the cold beer but we were happy.
We ended our day at Diamond Tooth Gerties, https://dawsoncity.ca/diamond-tooth-gerties/. The place has a small casino, stage area where the Cancan show is held plus a bar with fo
od. The $12 entry fee gets you in as many times as you want during your time in Dawson. There are 3 different Cancan shows each evening. I’ve seen the Vegas shows and this one was much more fun and personal with the small audience. We got a balcony table and enjoyed the show as well as watched the winners and losers at the tables. The Klondike Visitors Association operates Gerties as well as other businesses and all proceeds are reinvested in the community.
We also spent one day driving to the Arctic Circle. This close you have to go. It was 890 kms , 13-1/2 hours round trip, a flat bum day with good, not so good, and crummy roads. Prior to going with stopped in the Yukon Information centre to get some info of the trip up the Dempster Highway. Turned out it was the NWT info centre as the sign above the door and Dawn’s name tag shouted at us. Could be a reason I shied away from the detective office.
We were looking around when we overheard Dawn (the centre’s guide) explain the Dempster to a couple. We stood by the counter and listened in to save her from repeating herself. It wasn’t too long before Jennifer realized that we have ticked this lady tourist off by listening in. My one question cemented that feeling. They wanted to drive to km marker 278 to see something then come back. They were having trouble grasping that 278 was an additional 40 km from Dawson and there small car only got 600 km to the tank. They also wanted to know what was at the Arctic Circle and were not impressed with the fact it’s “an imaginary line, sir”. My snicker definitely cemented the feeling.