Lunch: Bannocks and Chili - Aboriginal Day in Canada

We are resting in Dawson City today. We putzed around this grand city of the gold rush era, chatting with folks, listening to music, watched more riders roll in for the start of D2D tomorrow, and enjoyed the music at the tr'ondek hwech'in heritage center in celebration of Aboriginal Day. We sat on the lawn and ate bannocks; very similar to Navajo fry bread in the southwest. The music was pretty decent, and I kept commenting how more contemporary the native music is in Dawson than in Alaska.

 Native pride in Dawson

Bannock and chili

Canadians recognize National Aboriginal Day (well..most do) as a day to honor the First Nations. amerika does not have a nationally recognized day set aside as a Federal holiday for natives, however the second Monday of October annually marks Columbus Day in many parts of amerika but not all states follow this observance. Instead, they celebrate other events on the day. For example, South Dakota's official holiday on this date is Native Americans' Day (also known as Native American Day), while people in Berkeley, California, celebrate Indigenous People's Day.

We met Wee, a dual-sporter up from California doing a solo trek to Anchorage round trip. He was sporting a nice jury-rigged hand guard set he rigged up along the way to protect his hands from the bugs. He was a nice fellow whose wife was tracking him using his spot. Aside from spot he was technology free, and I got the feeling that allow this was not ideal, he was enjoying the break. We also met a fellow that put a Texas flag on his bike when he left Dallas, his flag was shredded to less than half it's original size from the wind... we wondered if it would make it to Prudhoe Bay.. his final destination. He informed us that he had a second flag for the return trip. Got to love that wind drag from Texas!

A proud texan..

 Wee's modification... laundry soap containers turned hand guards..

The sun shone all day and we had to fight the urge to just sit still and soak in the rays. Don't get me wrong... we did a lot of that too. I also booked a Thai massage tonight, and we plan on getting dinner at the Drunken Goat Taverna... a left over must due from our last trip in Dawson. We sat around and drank cappuccinos at Riverwest Coffee and noted how timid the dogs in Dawson seem to be. They shy away from us... course it could be the road stench?

Bike after bike rolled in to town filling up the street sides with geared up diehards congregating underneath the Downtown Hotel. I looked around and saw maybe two women present so far in about 150+ men. Dual sporting seems to be one of those areas that women are still crossing into.

 Bikes line up on 2nd street as part of the Dust2Dawson 2012 event

We can't help but feel like we haven't stumbled into a British movie... there seem to be a lot of Brits in town. Everywhere you go you see a Brit (not the usual German). While having dinner at the Drunken Goat, we sat at the bar and were soon joined by 2 older British couples. Dottie ("call me Dot" for short) stuck to us like a magnet; she thought we were "lovely biker women" and wanted to know all the details of our adventure.  At some point her hubby came over and warned Jazz not to corrupt his wife... I think Dot wanted to be corrupted.

Tomorrow we hit the road for Whitehorse with a possible detour to Keno. Another British couple staying in at the b and b with us.. warned us to not go to Keno. We were told the road was too dangerous to do by motorbike and that it was only passable by 4-wheel drive. We both decided they were stuffy brits.. and we needed to check out for ourselves to see if it's true. I'm good with dirt.. let's leave the call to Jazz tomorrow.

Pups in Canada are shy, unless peeps are in cars... then it's okay. We watched this pup divert traffic for over 20 minutes before it got bored.

Death, Catholic misery, and more bread...

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It has been a whirlwind of a trip so far! We went to Notre Dame and toured the church, as well as sat across the street in a small café and sipped to the gargoyles and listened to the church bells. Apparently only one of the original bells is left. We have done a lot of people watching from the street side cafés. I have gotten tired of baguette and cappuccino and have switched to ciabatta and Caffè macchiatos to mix things up a bit. AMAZING.

We then moved on to the Catacombes de Paris, a Nikole-driven exploration of death; it was pretty creepy and strange. The catacombs are a series of tunnels underneath Paris that were created by rock removal to create the buildings of France. When the quarries were no longer used, the place became an underground cemetery with an estimated 6 million people buried in the tunnels. What makes the place creepy is that the majority of the dead arrived here because of a consolidation of cemeteries city-wide of all the bones (for sanitary purposes).. and they arrived in stacks.. the bones are just piled around lining the tunnels, sometimes in patterns. Very CREEPY and the walls are slimy and dripping… the place is dark and musty… the floors are slippery. It took an hour to tour the underground tunnels.


lots of death...


Nikole in the catacombs (CREEPY)

We resurface and traveled across the city to the Arc de Triomphe which honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. The circle around the Arc was crazy traffic and we sat and watched all the craziness of the drivers and were glad we did not have a car. We walked the entire length of the Champs-Élysées and did more shopping.


Nikole and Linzy under the Arc

We spent the next day exploring the Musée du Louvre - one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument.. The Lourve was fantastic; we saw Ruben, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Monet, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and the Venus de Milo to name a few. The buildings themselves are amazing and the ceiling paintings alone could keep you very busy. We had a wonderful dinner and walked the city at night. We have managed to do everything on our list.


The 3 of us outside the Louvre


We leave Paris tomorrow morning for the countryside... follow along at the link above and to the right - "hucklberries GPS"