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Yukon Gold, pt. 1

So its a dream of many adventurous Canadians (and others) to visit the 'true' north of the Canadian Territories. Dreams of wide open spaces, opportunity, freedom and, yes, adventure fill the mind. Yet at the same time there is respect for coming to a place like the Yukon. The distance to get here. The distances and isolation here. The weather. The short and long days. The mosquitoes, expenses, bears and cabin fever! "Oh," say many of those inclined to travel "I'll just hop on a flight to BC/Thailand/Cuba".

So it comes that I finally made one of my dreams come true and take up a unique opportunity to visit the far north, the experience the 24 hours of daylight, opportunity and dreams of gold in the rivers.

I had a couple friends who found themselves already spending their summers up here. Steve is working as a gardener at the Westmark hotel in Beaver Creek, and Tanis is working with Women's rights and advocacy organizations in Whitehorse. So fresh off of adventures in the waters around Vancouver Island I headed north.

The drive was long but scenic. There were rainbows and mountains and I made it to Prince George on the first day. From there I picked up Tanis (who was just off a trip from Cuba ironically). We headed west and north and stayed the night camping on a like on the famed Cassiar Highway. Sections of this road are still not paved. At day three we made it into the Yukon. We ate at the first diner there and noticed that people are more friendly here, but also seem to succumb to cabin fever. She's a (relative) Yukon veteran and pointed out some of the scenery and sights, like certain mountains and a wildlife exhibit. Truth be told we were both pretty out of it, my third day of all day driving, and she was off of a roller coaster of plane trips and 12 hour layovers, and she was on her way to a bicycle race to boot so we were in a bit of a sleepless rush. We spent only 3 hours at her place in Whitehorse (where I met many of her nice friends) and we were off to Haines Junction. We spent the night, I helped fixed up bikes for the race.

I saw the bikers off the next day on their race in all their glorious costumes and rides, and continued 4 hours up the Alaska Highway (the one that's 1200 miles long built in 8 months in WW2) to Beaver Creek to meet Steve. He was easy to spot, the only one around, watering the flowers. I immediately liked the place. Its a rustic hotel mostly catering to bus tours. It has more than a dozen buildings and has a fancy frontier themed dinner theatre which is actually quite good. I know my mom, a fan of such things, would be very interested.

I mentioned that the Yukon has opportunity, and citing my carpentry experience they hired me on to work with Steve, even thought I said I would only stay for 8 days originally. It was good, it was flower growing planting season - late June.

Another thing about this place: it is definitely not cold in the summer. True enough the winter begins in September by most accounts, but at that time there is no night and lots of sunshine, and plants are rushing to get a chance at it. So we started planting and doing other things around the place. And there is lots to do! Melting permafrost and 7 months of winter tend to make things deteriorate.

I must say I really like it in Beaver Creek and the Westmark. The hotel reminds me of a place called Garezers, my Latvian friends know what that is. It sort of runs by its own standards. I found I did well in a grounds maintenance capacity, and soon I was booked to keep working for my entire three week duration I have given myself in the Yukon - mostly because (with all the extra baggage and bus washing shifts) I was making good money, and I hadn't really planned on what to do next up here at the time.

So besides doing grounds keeping and general maintenance, I was making new friends and having a ball here! Beaver Creek is a small place, but you never seem to be bored. There's the old army camp to visit, trails to hike and mountains to climb, gold to (futilely) pan for, camp-sites to visit, solstice parties (with real 24hour daylight!), Settlers of Catan nights to go to, theme parties, the museum and visitor centre to see, and so much more. And whats more people here really appreciate you for being you and the work you do. And people are nice. But I guess  people have to be nice when everyone knows everyone.

Other happenings in that time included a crazy hail storm the likes of which the locals had never seen and a ride in a Suburban with 16 friends in the mountains with rainbows which made me realize I had arrived in one of the best times in my life.

But all good things come to an end and soon I was on my way back south. On the way back I managed to get two old Peterborough friends Andrew and Cheslie (who had since become partners) to come with me, so it was nice getting some companionship for the ride. We stopped to appreciate mountain flowers, gaze at a forest fire scarred landscape covered in fireweed at sunset, stopped at some rivers and camped every night and saw the northern lights.

Got to Vancouver. The next few days were a bit of a tragic whirl wind I don't want to get into to much detail. My relationship with my girlfriend ended. Sometimes you realized things about someone aren't what you thought they were and practically it is incredibly hard for someone to spend the rest of your life with. In then end I decided to come back to the Yukon to continue to work.

My mom was visiting BC for the first time so my first stop was going back to Revy to visit her and my sis and some friends. It was nice, and did many Revy touristy things. Then I kept driving. And driving and driving.

The general manager wanted me back to work, mostly because there was lots to do maintenance wise. I busied myself with taking every extra shift I could get to busy myself and keep my mind occupied. It was still fun here, but a little more focused on the work.

There have still been adventures, events and the like, but I will tell more about that soon. But I will leave it at that for now.

















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