On the road
It’s about a 20-hour drive from Fairbanks to Dawson, Yukon–if the roads are good. Thankfully, this year, they weren’t bad. We drove to Whitehorse on Wednesday and spent the night and drove the rest of the way to Dawson on Thursday.
On the way, I figured out that handlers on the Yukon Quest put about 2,000 miles on their vehicles. Thank god for iPods. Disco is alive and well in my house, so Donna Summer and the Bee Gees, as well as Rod’s eternal affection for Kiss, AD/DC and Aerosmith kept us awake for the trip. At least I don’t have to worry that any of my music critic friends will want to bum a ride anywhere.
The Yukon territory is awe-inspiring. It’s a wilder, leaner landscape than Fairbanks. The bones of the earth are much closer to the surface than in Alaska’s Interior and Klondike Gold Rush history is around every corner.
Dawson is a fascinating place. It’s a small, quiet town, with wooden boardwalks and dirt roads backed by blocks of century-old buildings drunkenly surrendering to gravity’s pull. The checkpoint is in the visitors center on the street facing the Yukon River. One corner is given over to the media, while mushers, handlers and volunteers mingle, munching on goodies from the bake sale in the back room. Author John Firth, who wrote one of the definitive books on running the Yukon Quest, was in town Thursday night.
The Quest is a good excuse for a party in the middle of February in Dawson, not that this town has ever needed an excuse to have a good time.