All is right in my world again. I’ve got a sunburn on my face, my clothes smell like a campfire, and the Yukon River broke late yesterday afternoon!

The last few days, there has been open water on parts of the river, and some loud chunks of ice banging around, but the entire river wasn’t moving out, just little areas. Here are some photos from the evening of May 1st:

Yesterday the sun was shining and we had a campfire weenie roast at our friend’s gold mine. I got a lovely sunburn on my face (it feels so good to cook in the sun after a long winter!) and my clothes all smell like campfire. I played with a puppy and cooked a smokie sausage over the coals.

When we drove back into town around 5pm, we could see people lined up along the dyke looking at the river, so we knew it had probably just broke, so we parked and ran up onto the dyke to see.

Yep! All sorts of ice chunks and slush were rushing by!

Two incredibly large ice flows went by.

Here’s a video of them moving:

It didn’t look like the ice was continuing to flow after it passed town, and sure enough the water level was starting to rise, as it would if there was an ice jam. We walked by again later in the evening and the water level was quite low again. We’ll see how the week goes!

This dyke was built in the years after the last great flood in 1979, to protect Dawson City from the floods that regularly impacted the town during the spring break-up. So far so good!

Even the little ice rink our fire chef made and groomed all winter has thawed now.

We had a good weekend. I’m taking multiple shorter daily walks and trying to nurse along my aching body parts. I’m even back to eating like a normal person again.

We went to check on our trailer after its long winter sleep. It had a flat tire! It looked like it sat too long and the tire was cracked, but we checked a day later and it is still holding strong! Maybe it will be okay?

With the forecast for this week, I think we’ve finally moved from winter into summer and we probably have already had our last fire in the woodstove until.. well usually August we’ll have a couple.

Last night one of our summer restaurants, the Triple J, opened for the season through their new pickup/ordering window. While we stood there for 20 minutes waiting for our supper to be cooked, we ran into so many of our friends and acquaintances. It sure felt like summer! Even while we weirdly stood 6 feet apart across the boardwalk sidewalk and patio.

Here’s hoping all our summer returnees will keep isolating for their first 2 weeks and soon we can reopen at least patio seating and perhaps the hair salon. I’m getting shaggy! Currently we have zero active cases of COVID-19 in the Yukon!

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