ATM jackpot!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

WHITEHORSE, YK — We had some errands to take care of this morning, so we went in search of the Ford dealership to see about an oil change on the truck, which has covered nearly 7,000 km since the last one and has earned every drop. They couldn’t take us, but recommended a place around the corner, nicely located near the Tim Hortons, to Val’s delight.

Next stop was the bank for an infusion of cash. We’ve been living on plastic pretty well the whole way, but they kind of look at you funny if you try to buy a pack of chewing gum on Visa. So we needed a bit of the paper stuff. Well, believe it or not, when we stepped up to the ATM at the bank, it spat out a wad of cash before I even got my card out of my wallet! There was $120 in cash that the previous customer had, amazingly, forgotten to retrieve. The bank staff was very pleased to take the money off our hands in case the panicked owner should return. Too bad there wasn’t a lottery counter somewhere nearby; I was feeling pretty lucky.

Truck oiled, Val caffeinated and the wallets warmed, we headed for the Yukon Visitor Centre to get some recommendations on what to see. There is no shortage! There are four museums here, a wonderful sternwheeler, the SS Klondike, to tour, a fish ladder where you can see the salmon leaping upstream and the Miles Canyon near the town. We picked a good day to be near the river, because the annual Yukon River Quest was starting at lunchtime, so we hung around to watch.

Dozens of teams, ranging from one to a dozen paddlers, were gathered at the start point at the centre of town. They were to sprint from there to their canoes or kayaks, jump on board and start paddling like mad down the river all the way to Dawson City. They had three days to get there, with only one mandatory stop of seven hours, according to a photographer, who was waiting for the race to begin. He told us these people have some kind of mania about the race, and some push themselves to the point of hallucinations. The contestants — young people, old people, dressed in all kinds of gear including tights, foreign-legion-style caps, fleeces, straw boaters, some with great whiskered chins, some with dreadlocks — were a raggle-taggle bunch indeed. We went down to where the canoes were tied up and waited for them at the end of their sprint. Soon the whoops and hollers of bystanders told us they were on the way, and they came bounding down, leaped into their crafts and pushed off. The swiftly flowing current scooped them up and before long the flotilla was out of sight.

After all that excitement, we came back to the trailer to make ready for our houseguest. My mother joins us tonight from Ottawa to spend a week in the Yukon with us. At nearly 82, she has the gumption to pack her things and fly out on her own to Whitehorse, and bunk in with the two of us in our RV as we venture yet further north! When we invited her to do this, as our Mother’s Day gift, she didn’t hesitate for a minute before saying “yes!”

We have a pull-out couch, so Mum will have the master suite upstairs, as it were, and we’ll be down at the other end where we can get up and make coffee and whatnot if she prefers to sleep a little longer. Val and I have a sort of ballet worked out for our morning and evening ablutions at the sink, so it will be interesting to adjust our duet to a trio for a few days.

Our plan is to look at some more here in Whitehorse, take in the Frantic Follies tomorrow night (a Klondike can-can show) and travel the Klondike Highway to Dawson City on Friday. We’ll be up there for Canada Day, so that should be fun. Then we’ll head back so Mum can catch a plane next Thursday to Vancouver where she’ll visit my brother John, and on to Victoria to see my brother Alan, before returning to Ottawa. She arrives just after midnight tonight, but it will still be daylight, so that will be her first northern exposure!