Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of sirens, a lot of sirens!

Turns out it was the second wave of them, because they first went out in the 5am hour to the cabin at the end of the street, and I slept right through it. It was an old log cabin, no longer in use, at the corner of 8th Avenue and Front Street – the first thing you see after you drive into town. Historical, and totally suited to the theme of this old town. It was on fire, and although they put the fire out before it burned to the ground, the structure has been lost.

The other sirens were heading to a roll over accident. I haven’t heard if everyone was okay, but they had sirens again when they drove back to town later, so maybe not.

It’s been a rough week on our roads. A father of 3 was killed on his bicycle on the Alaska Highway in Whitehorse, and I heard there was another fatality up on the Dempster this week – possibly a motorcyclist? Lots of tourists up here now and the roads are busy.

I took Hank for a Saturday morning walk to check out the cabin fire, and there were burnt leaves on the dyke walkway for 2 blocks! Good thing we had all that rain this week so it wasn’t too dry and that fire didn’t spread.

The weather this weekend has been glorious. The sun is warm, the sky is clear, and the mosquitos aren’t too thick! It’s 26°C right now! No humidity. Perfect!

We had a bunch of rain mid-week, and many thunderstorms, which was great (I like a good storm!), but the rain was well-timed to help extinguish all the lightning strikes!

Hank and I hiked between a couple storms on Tuesday, and spotted a plume of smoke when we were hiking down the Dome road:

It was another fire across the river, in a similar spot where we’ve had other lightning strikes spark up fires. They brought up the fire retardant planes and hit a boundary around it pretty hard for a few hours.

If my truck wasn’t in the shop getting a new clutch and flywheel, I would have gone up the Dome to watch. Instead, I watched the flight patterns online.

They were able to bring it under control, fortunately!

More from that hike with Hank:

Hank and I did pretty decent alone together this week. He’s not super keen on my hour long morning walks. He ends up dawdling and I just hate stopping for any reason when I’m in my zone, let alone every 3 steps! So I shook up my routine and took him for a walk later in the day, and sometimes two.

After our walk together on Saturday morning, it was just too nice to stay home. I grabbed my wallet and backpack and walked around town. There were yard sales and the Farmer’s market was on. And there was an artist event in the park, and tourists everywhere! Even live music! Here are some photos from around town.

After visiting with Glynnie in her shop for awhile, I ended up at the new Yukon Spa for lunch. They’re doing things their own way and are serving plant-based foods only. I had a pepperoni and cheese sandwich, on the freshest lightest fancy bread. It was almost like Grandpa Verkley’s fresh bread, in taste. The plant-based meat and cheese is a bit strange, but I’ll try anything at least once (except eggs). I told Lee I was hot and thirsty after walking around town, so he made me a carbonated fiery ginger drink that was perfect! And since he was setting me up with a tray, I had a chocolate chip cookie on the side. He warmed up the sandwich and the cookie!

We are so lucky to have this place! I’m eager to try out their saunas and steam room! Their cardamon buns are my favourite so far.

Here are a few more photos from my walk back home.

Jeff got home mid-afternoon and we went out to the Triple J for supper. And we did again tonight after planning some delicious burgers, but then discovering we were out of propane, and the propane filler place was getting new master tanks installed. Triple J for the win!

I usually get the avocado chicken burger (with goat cheese and a garlic aioli that comes on it), with a side garden salad. They have the best salad in town! Dried cranberries, shredded beets (worst part), shredded carrots, sliced almonds, diced peppers and tomatoes, feta cheese, with a balsamic vinaigrette house dressing.

Today we finally got our friends Tim and Liz out for a boat cruise! We went upstream in the Yukon River to where the Indian River flows in, about 45 km.

Such a beautiful day, lots of warm sun. It still gets cool enough when you’re cruising on the boat that you can put a sweater on. And our hottest sun is only like a UV of 5 so you don’t burn that badly.

We are so fortunate to live in such a beautiful place!

I always like getting out and exploring random shorelines. (okay okay, you know by know I jump out to explore random shorelines so I can go pee!) There were moose tracks here (mom and baby moose I think!) and a set of bunny tracks! And some older human tracks too! Just when you think you’re the first one to ever stop here, hahaha.

So there you go, we’re all caught up. Hank is eager for his evening walk. He’s going to have a long tongue on this warm walk!