I had a mixed experience today…
It started great. I deeply enjoyed wandering the dirt streets with wooden sidewalks and seeing a mix of the truly original buildings and those that are original but restored. The truly original buildings tend to be lopsided because they were built directly on the permafrost, this leads to a pretty unstable foundation mostly due to melting of the top layers.
I booked two tours, one with a First Nations man who does a small boat tour up the Yukon River. The lady in the campground office did a great job of selling it because it sounded amazing. She warned me to get there 15 minutes early because the boat captain would leave at exactly 3:00. I also booked a walking tour of the town with Parks Canada.
I spent the morning wandering and soaking in the atmosphere. I went to the museum, to Jack London’s cabin, and to the Robert Service cabin. I planned my day around the 2:45 arrival for the boat. So, at 2:40 I was walking the river bank trail over to the boat dock and was almost to the dock when I see the boat going by on the river full of people! Wait! Is that MY boat? Yes. It was my boat. He had left 20 minutes early without me! 🙁 I was pretty upset. I walked to the dock and took a selfie next to the sign so I could prove I was there early and that it wasn’t my fault I was left. As I was standing there feeling deeply disappointed and a little angry, a lady came over to ask what happened. She knows the boat captain (maybe works with him) and said she would whistle to him on his way back by and he would come and let me get on the boat. I was only going to miss the first part of the tour but that was only 15 minutes…it would be ok. Except, I had paid $100 for a tour where the boat left without me and I missed the first part.
So, true to word, she whistled and I ended up on the boat. The captain seemed to not care much about the fact that he left 20 minutes early and without a paid passenger. I’m not even sure he appologized, just welcomed me on the boat. The tour the lady had described was not the tour I experienced either. I did my best to get over my hurt feelings, but even so, it wasn’t all that great of a tour.
What was supposed to last 2 hours was only 1.5 hours and we were back pretty early. I had time to kill before my walking tour, so I wandered a bit and decided to have a beer in a local pub. I found what seemed like a cool place…for locals. I was barely tolerated there and clearly unwelcome. Besides taking my order, I wasn’t spoken to by anyone and I had lots of hostile glares. When I tried to join a conversation next to me (I do this all the time and end up having a nice time meeting people – usually), they gave me a death glare and then the person next to me literally turned their back! Wow. That’s a first for me. I got the impression it was a place “only for locals” and tourists were VERY unwelcome. Dawson City is a small place were everyone knows everyone, so they know when you aren’t local….and non-locals don’t belong.
So, that was definitely making my day feel less fun. I finished my beer and got the hell out of there. I went to check in for my walking tour a little early. As I was waiting, I heard the guide talking to her coworker and making fun of the names list for her group in a very mean and condescending way. It was clear that she had no great love for the tourists either. Well, that made it hard to enjoy the tour, knowing the guide saw you as a barely tolerated nuisance. That said, I did enjoy the tour, especially going inside some preserved buildings.
So, I have mixed feelings about this place. Cool place on the outside, not very nice on the inside. I guess you don’t come to live in such a remote place where you are basically isolated for 8 months out of the year because you like other people. People who live here probably live here for a reason…and they just don’t like “outsiders” very much.