Jeff’s good friend Jaye from his college days came up with his wife Josee to visit us this week – their first time in the Yukon!

It was a hot and smokey week while they were here, which really smoked out our good views!

They flew in from Ontario and Jeff picked them up in Whitehorse before driving them up here to Dawson the next day.

Then we played tour guide for a week, showing them the sites, telling them the stories, sharing the history.

Jeff took them up the Dempster to fish one day and then I took a few days off to I could join in on the fun!

I taught them how to pan for gold!

We all completely struck out using the gravel Jeff shovelled out for us from the base of the hill on the north side of the free claim.

But once we switched to panning dirt and gravel from the pile that someone left near the creek, my fortunes turned around! I got 2-5 pieces of gold in each pan after that! But our guests struck out, until I helped Jo with her pan and found a little piece hiding in the sand remnants in her pan! Yes!!

I most certainly get the gold fever, but once I “read the room” and saw that everyone else had enough of the panning, we headed onwards, touring the goldfields.

We stopped up on a ridge to check on the blueberries. They were ready for picking!

The crop was pretty patchy, or maybe already picked!? We spent 10 or so minutes grabbing some before the mosquitoes found us.

We ate like kings all week, lots of barbequed meals, and even pie!

Then Jaye made us blueberry pancakes for breakfast with our freshly picked berries!

We went out on the river one morning before it got super hot and smokey.

They tried fishing the confluence of the rivers but found their lures were set just too light for the current and they weren’t able to get the hooks down to the level where the fish were. Still fun out on the river regardless!

When we go against the wind I have to cinch my hat down tight to keep it from flying away!

We played it safe the first few times we’ve been in the boat. This means we went up river every time, so we could float back to town with the current if anything went wrong. This time we were brave and confident and went down river a bit too! We went past Moosehide and Sister Island and the old sternwheeler graveyard.

Later that afternoon we drove across the river on the ferry so we could hike to the old boats (rather than pull our boat ashore and explore in our boat shoes (Crocs!))

There are 6 boats here that were winched up on shore, never to sail again. The first was parked here in 1903 and the most recent was parked in 1928. Over the years they have fallen apart, melding into a pile of old lumber and metal. You can read more about each of the boats here.

We met up with our friend Alex for supper one night at the Triple J and then went for ice cream after. Ha, just realized it was me, Alex, and the three J’s at the Triple J.

Afterwards, Jaye joined the Sourtoe Cocktail club! And Jeff did it again too!

Like you probably should after every good shot of liquor garnished with an old human toe, we went out for ice cream.

On their last night we went to Gertie’s for the show.

We took them to the airport at noon on Friday but their flight was late coming in due to all the smoke north of here in the Old Crow area. Unfortunately they missed their Whitehorse connection and had to completely change the rest of their vacation. Bummer 🙁

Today, the smoke is even worse here. The road between here and Stewart Crossing has an advisory that a highway closure is likely. The town of Mayo is on alert for evacuation. My Coway air cleaner was lit up red showing the terrible air quality inside the house, so this morning we shut the windows to keep out all the smoke. Here’s a view on our way to the dump this morning.

Overall a good week! Glad I took some time off work to enjoy a bit of the summer because some leaves are already turning! It’s even kinda dark for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night now. So much still to do!! Firewood, painting the outside of the house, camping, ATVing, birdwatching, video making, fishing, boating, hiking!