Day 20. Wednesday 7 September.

Last night the group visited Diamond Tooth Gertie’s establishment for a meal and a show. Some of the members got into the spirit of things. T still wants to know what D said to the showgirl: he can’t (or won’t) remember.

The title is not a reference to finally using up the boiled eggs (well, D did anyway). It was a long (527 km) trip today over a road that wound both up and down and around and around. It was in mostly pretty good condition – in parts excellent – although T did remark on its patchwork state, much like Australia, compared to the very good roads in Alaska. Again, the colours were magnificent….gold upon gold.

The occasional glimpse of the grand Yukon, rushing to the Bering Sea. Lakes came and went and patches of burnt forest from past bushfires. It seems that fire performs as in OZ, re-generating the ecosystem. Still no wildlife to write home about…a few squirrels, but no elk, nor bears, although a ‘black bear’ had been seen around a trailer park at Pelly Crossing (where we stopped for a caffeine fix).

And an hour stop to take in a walk down steps/trail to view the Five Fingers spot on the Yukon…a place where ingenuity had overcome the narrow river passage between rocky outcrops. Until they dynamited the rocks out of the way, steamers winched themselves through the rapids to deliver essential cargo.

Arrived at Whitehorse (capital of Yukon) for happy hour, celebrating a significant birthday of one of our fellow travellers, and then retreated to the warmth of the van, wondering when the first snow might fall.