Dawson was Awesome!!

Dawson City music festival, where do I begin? I guess I'll start with the drive down there, cause it was epic in and of itself. So my roommate/beautiful friend/super tour guide of the north and I, didn't end up finding a ride until the night before the festival. Although I'm sure hitch hiking would have been an awesome adventure, I am super thankful the Parks Canada birders adopted us into their annual road trip because they were delightful. Dawson City is about a 13 hour drive from Inuvik, down Canada's longest public gravel road, the Dempster. It is 750 kilometres of gravel, clay and gorgeous untouched rolling mountains. No siderails, no lights, 1 place to stop for gas: The Eagle Plains Hotel.

The Eagle Plains Hotel has about 6 gravel campsites that were mud puddles by the time we reached them and a restaurant filled with more dead animals than my childhood pet cemetery. Granted these ones were stuffed and not buried, still a little creepy. We camped out here for the night and ate breakfast before we hit the road again in the morning. Even though we were the only people in the restaurant, our eggs and toast took it's pretty time getting to our table. When we got up to pay, our crusty server was behind the counter ignoring our attempts to get her attention by coughing, rattling cutlery and finally saying at normal volume: 'excuse me'. When the cook finally convinced her to attend to her customers she was happy to stand around and chat with us about all the truckers who come through drinking her bottom-less coffee, chatting 'like a bunch of ol' hens' she told us. 'That's why I make the coffee weak' she said, which after a month in the north my coffee snobbery has mostly subsided and am often just happy to have cuppa anything that faintly resembles coffee.

That afternoon I saw my first Grizzly bear.  Like the dumb tourist I am, I immediately jumped out of the truck to take a good pic. Our naturalist friends reminded us how fast the beasts can run and I promptly got back into the truck.

One of the lovely gentlemen we were traveling with is doing his thesis on Robins and is an avid birder. He kept a record book of all the birds he saw and when I asked him how many he had seen so far he asked me ‘birds in total or species?’ Although I know virtually nothing about birds, I knew my uncle Doug and my late uncles Scott and Bruce would have been proud to know I was in the company of others who care so much about our feathered friends as to always carry the Peterson guide and a pair of binacs that cost more than any single object I have ever bought. The asthma attack he nearly suffered when he saw a Gir Falcon made me like him even more. 

We stopped at Tombstone National Park for a short hike before we hit the bottle of scotch in the back of the pick-up in preparation for the music festival. We arrived to the quaint little town of Dawson City before long and as soon as we set up our tents, went straight to Klondyke Kate's for dinner. As we walked the 4 kilometers into town from the campsite we were told was a 10 minute walk away,  from the highway you would never know there was a music festival happening because it was so quiet.  I was beginning to think maybe we had the wrong Dawson City. There was supposed to be a music festival here and I only see a few people strolling about and no sound other than the Yukon river beside us. When we ventured off the dirt path into the town of about 1000 people  (+1000 music festivalers) all the buildings looked like they were straight out of an old-timey western movie set. Like if you leaned on them,  the boards in the back holding them up just might collapse and they would fall to the ground in a puff of dust. With the gift shops, photobooths and cabaret style casino you get the impression this place is all about tourists. However in the line to get an Elk dog at 2am Saturday morning, which is the ONLY place in town open at the time, I got to chatting to a local who states it's actually quite a lovely spot year round. 

After dinner we went to the main tent where despite the fact that the box office couldn't find my ticket and I had no ID they gave me my weekend wristband I had ordered online. That would NEVER have happened in Toronto. I was beginning to like this town. The first show in the tent was a true blue grass band complete with cowboy hat and harmonica. Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three was their name and you couldn't not stomp your feet at least a little. Le Canailles were the next group with their supercute montreal style and singing accordions. Things were getting a little more dancey now. By the time Larry and his Flask were half way through their fast-paced ska set I was dripping with sweat and having a ball.  We made the trek home with some other Inuvik-ers,  had a nightcap, and put our weary heads to sleeping bag. 

Saturday morning was one of my favorite shows. I was thankful the birders yelled at me enough times to shake me out of my sleep coma so we could get there for noon. It was in this tiny church with incredible acoustics that I heard Bruce Peninsula, a fantastic group of 7 musicians described as prog, rock, gospel, folk and country with the most beautiful harmonies (Holly you would have loved it!) We wandered the town later and had some ice cream by the river while we listened to The Hooded Fang, an indy rock band from Toronto, at the gazebo. 

Later that night we went to the Palace Grand to watch some more sit-down music in a theatre that looked like it could have been in Boston just before the war of 1812 with it's american and Union Jack flags.  

Regardless of the odd western decor, it was a beautiful place to hear my favorite show of the whole festival, Cris Derksen. She continues to blow my mind as I listen to the disk I bought. She plays a great big cello and loops her music to create beautiful layers over which she sings a mix of modern and traditional aboriginal sounds. At one point if you close your eyes you would swear it was a whale crying and not a string instrument. Sounds strange I know, but do yourself a favor and check her out on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXNoNJLKYV8. 
Things got a bit messy after that as my friend and I tried to dance to the next band, The Born Ruffians from Toronto,  also super awesome indy rock band. In our defense they WERE rocking out on stage, just BEGGING for dancers. Unfortunately we were told by security that there was no dancing in the theatre and just imagine if EVERYBODY got up to dance.. 'it would be a riot' she told us. No, it would be a music festival actually, and it would be awesome! So we moved upstairs to the little booths where we were reprimanded AGAIN for trying to fit too many people in a booth. If I have any complaints about this festival it’s that there are too many rules. We also couldn’t bring our drinks into the main tent which I thought was a little uncivilized. Unlike myself, who is nothing but civilized, particularly in a viking hat.

So we moved on and into the main tent to check out Deep Dark Woods who were lovely but a bit country. Although it did prompt a slow dance with probably the hunkiest man I have seen yet in the north; so it wasn't all bad ;) The shenanigans carried on to the 'Snake Pit', the local pub aptly named for its slouching pit-like dance floor. After 1 too many Jager bombs, some dirty dancing and appropriating someone's trucker hat, we headed back to the campsite. Of course we bumped into a friend on the way back who doubled me on his bike to the Klondyke river where I got the silly idea it would be fun to jump in. Me and my silly ideas..

The next morning after some wonderfully large mimosas from Klondyke Kate’s and a little more outdoor music we headed back to the Dempster, up to Inuvik once again.  It was mostly a blur of mud and napping, but I did have a 'lifer’ that made my trip this weekend even more special.  For the non-birders a 'lifer' is a once in a lifetime viewing, usually of a rare bird, in this case however it was the porcupine caribou migration where maybe five or six thousand caribou migrate hundreds of miles through the Yukon.  It still gives me shivers to think about. And giggles,  because as soon and my friend got out of the truck she jumped off the road and screamed ‘I’m gonna run with the caribou!’ as she started to jog down toward the heard. Again, the ever sensible naturalists advised us against joining the creatures in the field as they pointed to the hunters, just a couple hundred yards in front of the hooved heard.  I am quite sure they also felt pretty damn lucky that day.

We made it home that night around 1am, with the sun low in the sky, a little hungover and a little richer in music and memories.