I left Tok at 7:30AM under the cover of very heavy fog. Twelve miles south of Tok, I turned onto the highway to Dawson City. The first twenty miles or so weren't too bad despite the fog. The next forty-five or fifty miles were increasingly scary, but I just convinced myself that the road would get better. At around 11:00AM, I went through Canadian Customs, and the road immediately got better/worse...the road surface wasn't so bad, but the height...the altitude...wow...it just got higher and higher...and it stayed there...for seventy-five miles!
For those of you who know of my fear of heights, this was pretty much my ultimate nightmare.
As to why I, with that fear of heights, would take that road, I can not say.
What I can say is that the "Top of the World Highway" was the scariest, most frightening, no guardrsils, precipitous drops, loose gravel, white knuckle, stomach churning, pants wetting, gut wrenching...let's see, have I left anything out?...no...two hundred mile piece of highway that I have ever driven. It took every ounce of driving skills, acquired over these last fifty-seven years, to complete that drive.
But...you know what...I made it...I made it...I'm in Dawson City and not at the bottom of some mountainside. So...tonight, I'm feeling pretty good because there is nothing and I mean, nothing, that can compare with the sheer terror of that drive. The rest of the trip is peanuts...drive-wise, that is.
Tonight, I will be celebrating my drive by partaking in an unfathomably disgusting Dawson City tradition at Jack London's bar involving a severed human digit, a shot of Yukon Mist and a pair of lips...mine. It's just something that I've got to do.
I'm posting photos of the drive but, believe me, they don't do justice to the experience.
Tomorrow, I'm taking my sluice box, classifier and gold pans to pan for gold outside of Dawson City...should be fun.
And then...ah, then...I'm driving about fifty miles north to Tombstone Territorial Park. The photographer Fritz Mueller has a famous photo of the Park...I saw that photo, and I felt that Tombstone was a place that I just have to go to. Maybe you can see that photo by "googling" Fritz Mueller and Tombstone (see http://www.fritzmueller.com/features/tombstone/tombstone_2.htm)...if not, don't worry, I bought it, and I'm bringing it back.
Oh...one more thing...I'm in the Yukon, so no cell phone service until I get back to British Columbia in seven or eight days or so.
More later...from me...Top of the World survivor...
2 comments:
WOW!!! It is amazingly beautiful! Too bad you can't bring back some of that peace. Or at least some spa water :0) I am really proud of you for your root canal drive: that is something that will stay with you forever. It really is all downhill from here (ha). Have you eaten moose or caribou or any of the other local critters? Are you collecting recipes for the picnic? Found any new vegetables? or is it just the meat that is different from here?
Awe you poor thing...At least there were no human sized spiders or thunderstorms!!! EEEKS!!!!
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