Alaska 2024: Roll 11 - Dawson City
We started our second zero day in Dawson City with a nice run from our motel to the downtown area. We had to run along the road for a while but since it was early there wasn't much trouble with traffic. The very early sunrise, about 4:20 A.M. made our run feel almost late because the sun was already moving up in the sky.
After our run we took a quick drive up to the Midnight Dome that gave us some nice views of the town and the surrounding rivers that come together right outside of town.
I decided that I would shoot some Kodak Tri-X 400 shooting again at box speed of ISO 400. I like the little bit more contrast than what I get with Ilford HP5 at the same sort of settings but feel that they are both perfectly good for most of the things that I try and shoot.
One of the things that we learned is that the mining of gold using a technique called placer mining was, and still is, the main way used by gold miners for their task. There are two things that are obvious holdovers from the main days of placer mining. First are the mounds of trailings that you can see all over the area. The second are these old draglines and their various parts. These machines are massive and can moved tons of material with every bucketload.
We spent the rest of the morning in Dawson City doing a bit of exploring and walking around.
One of the sights in town was an old paddlewheel that was used along the Yukon River to get people around. That was fun to see up close.
We walked around the town and then went in for some groceries so that we could eat dinner in our motel room where we still had to do laundry in the afternoon.
Because of the climate, much of the town does not have paved roads and you have to jump up onto the sidewalks and walkways because they are pretty high off the ground. I wonder what this area would look like in the middle of winter.
We ended up joining over 100,000 other members of the Sourtoe Cocktail Club by taking a shot with a human toe in it. The Sourdough Saloon has been doing this for years and I convinced Ed that we needed to be added to the member list. It was silly but memorable and fun.
