June 14, 2010

We took the ferry back across the Yukon River into town. We drove to see Dredge #4, a massive dredging machine used for mining gold dust. It had an arm with 56 buckets on an extendable and swinging arm that scrapped dirt into a rotating drum with holes in it. Water rinsed the heavy gold dust into mats which were later rinsed and the gold dust removed. The remaining rocks were ejected out the back and the rocks made hills that looked like gopher trails. We looked around the historic town which was the site of the 1890's Klondike Gold Rush. Some of the buildings were leaning because they were built directly on the permafrost when they should have used pier and beam construction. We took a tour of the Palace Grand Theatre and watched an episode of "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" from 1956. We toured Robert Service's cabin. He was a poet and his most famous poem was, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". We stopped by a relocated partially-original cabin once occupied by Jack London. A writer, his famous book was "The Call of The Wild". We drove up Dome Road for a view of the town and of the Klondike and Yukon rivers. In the picture you can see the rock trails left by the gold dredgers and the hills that were blasted by water cannons. I talked to Mom and Elton today and she sat up in a chair for about 2 hours this morning. I called Elton at 9 and he said they moved her to a regular room today. She is still not well enough to go back to Liberty but she is doing better.