Big Creek to Mendenhall Creek, YT Part 2 (6/24/2017)

Saturday, June 24, 2017 (continued)

We have now arrived in Whitehorse, YT.

1964: SS Klondike (Dr M)

2017: SS (Steam Ship) Klondike (1937)

The paddlewheeler Klondike I was built in 1929 with a shallow draft and size requirements for traveling on the Yukon River between Whitehorse and Dawson City, YT. It ran aground in 1936, and much of the wreckage was salvaged to build the Klondike II, the largest of the Yukon River fleet. This ship continued carrying freight until 1950 when the new highway was completed. After a failed stint as a cruise ship, the Klondike II was beached. When it was restored, the ship was moved to this location in 1966, as a tourist attraction.
Note the red Adirondack chairs in the photo. Parks Canada has been placing these chairs at different locations in their National Park sites, to "connect with nature in the country’s most unique and treasured places... to truly discover the best that Parks Canada has to offer."

The Yukon Territorial Government Administration Building/
Yukon Legislative Building (1976 in post modern style);
Whitehorse has been the capital of the Yukon Territory since 1953
(previous to 1953 the capital was in Dawson City since 1907)

The former White Pass & Yukon Route Railway Depot (1905);
the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway was established to
carry freight and passengers during the Klondike Gold Rush

1964: The MacBride Museum (Dr M)

1964: Looking down Front Street from the MacBride Museum (Dr M)

2017: The MacBride Museum, which is undergoing major expansion
and the original building is entirely covered for protection

The wagon that was in front of the original building, needs some work

1964: The Explorer Scouts in one of the perhaps two-room museum (Dr M)

2017: Kent peruses photos from the
building of the Alaska Highway

2017: The moose head has a new location (KSS)

An exhibit on the Dempster Highway (1959) that
follows the patrol tracks of the Northwest Mounted
Police (NWMP), predecessors of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)

Native artifacts include this waterproof parka
made from the "hides" of 70 ducks and loons;
note that the mannequin is also wearing
native snow goggles to prevent snow blindness

The MacBride Museum has its own
Wildlife Gallery, with polar bears
under the aurora borealis/Northern Lights

Featured is a 7' tall grizzly bear

Sam McGee's Cabin at the MacBride Museum

Sam McGee was a miner, a teamster, a sawmill operator and a leading road builder, as well as a lodge owner at Canyon Creek. He lived in Whitehorse from 1898 to 1909. Robert Service, the Canadian Poet, used the Name of Sam McGee for his poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee (1907), about a prospector from Tennessee who could never get warm in the Yukon.

1964: View of Front Street in Whitehorse (KSS)

2017: View of Front Street in Whitehorse

Healing Totem (2012) (KSS) for former residential
school students who were taken from their Native families

In creating the Healing Totem, the wood chips were saved and marked with the names of the students. The wood chips were then burned, and the ashes placed in a bentwood box to be placed in the totem, allowing the students to "return to their moms."
Kent's parents visited Whitehorse in 1984, where they had dinner at the Parthenon Greek Restaurant and stayed at the Regina Hotel, before taking a motorcoach to Beaver Creek.

We don't know what happened to the Regina Hotel, but now
on the site is the Canada's Best Value Inn

The Parthenon Greek Restaurant is now Tokyo Sushi

Tamiko with The Conversation (1986, by Alyx Jones),
sculpted from Tyndall Stone in which fossils can be seen (KSS)

The heads are too small for the bulky bodies of these figures outside the Philipsen Law Center. The artist explains this size discrepancy illustrates the gap between the ideal and the actual practice of law.

Log Skyscraper (1947 by Martin Berrigan),
built in response to a housing shortage

Another Log Skyscraper, which also has the pole railings
(they didn't bother cutting down the vertical poles?)

Old Log Church (1900) along with its rectory are the oldest buildings
in Whitehorse still in their original locations

Trompe l'oeil storefronts on the back of the actual stores (KSS)

A cute little trailer by Little Guy Trailers

We crossed the Yukon River on the Rotary Centennial Bridge (2005)

View of the Whitehorse Rapids Dam

The Whitehorse Rapids Dam fish ladder (1959), the longest wooden
fish ladder in the world, allows chinook/king salmon to migrate, as
smolts to the Bering Sea and as adults back to their home waters to spawn

Looking upstream to more of the 366 m/1,200' fish ladder

It was not king salmon migration season, and we saw only a lone grayling, a freshwater fish in the salmon family.

Colorful fish migrating along the fence

At the Yukon Transportation Museum, enormous US Army equipment (KSS)

The world's largest weather vane, a Canadian Pacific Douglas DC-3
that began life as a C-47 in 1942 and flew transport missions in Asia
during WWII; from 1946 to 1970 it flew commercial flights and in 1981
it was mounted on a rotating pedestal (a Roadside America attraction)

Elijah Smith Building (1992), a leader in sustainable building management,
with a Winter Garden for residents suffering from cabin fever

Yukon Prospector (1992, by Chuck Buchanan) (KSS)

Birthplace of McGee and McGrew (2010, by Molly Keizer),
a stylized memorial desk to the poet, Robert Service, who wrote both
The Shooting of Dan McGrew and The Cremation of Sam McGee

Robert W Service (1874-1958) was born in England, and wrote verse while he also worked as a banker. At age 21, he decided to become a cowboy, and wandered through western North America. He was able to have some poems published, but needed a real job. He was hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce in Victoria, BC, and after promotions, was eventually sent to the bank branch in Whitehorse, YT. Still a frontier town, Whitehorse inspired a book of poems titled, Songs of a Sourdough (1907), which was an immediate success. This book included the two poems mentioned in the photo caption.

Dinner was at the popular Klondike Rib & Salmon, where we received
a table right away because we were willing to sit outside

2000 Arctic Winter Games Torch (by Béla Simó)

The Arctic Winter Games were founded in 1969 and first performed in 1970. They occur every two years, and provide a forum for athletes from circumpolar North regions to compete on their own turf. Initially athletes were from Alaska and Canada and its territories, but now includes Greenland and Nunavut.
Because overnight camping is not permitted at the Mendenhall Creek pulloff, we stayed at the Stratford Motel in Whitehorse.

Except for the new door and an air conditioning unit,
this brings back memories of motels in the 1960s!

Towels in the motel (KSS)

Apparently this Peugeot 403 (c.1960) estate wagon from
Western Australia has already traveled from Perth to Paris in 2015,
and this year is traveling the USA, Canada, and Alaska

This photo was taken at 11:30 pm