Putting a Foot in my Mouth

After finishing the Dempster, the it began to pour rain and didn't let up for several days. I took advantage of the weather and pedaled west to Dawson City to give my legs a welcome rest. Dawson City is a quaint gold rush town tucked in a beautiful bend in the Yukon River Valley. 

Though it has its share of fixed up tourist traps, there are enough derelict buildings and aspiring prospectors for Dawson City to retain its credibility as a legitimate gold rush town. Where else do you find characters like Caveman Bill, who lives in a cave across the river from town, next to a cave in which he keeps a generator and his chickens. He moonlights as a bouncer at Bombay Peggy's, a former brothel that has been renovated into a nice little Inn. 

The town of less than 2,000 swells to about double that at this time of year as people come from all around to enjoy the Dawson City Music Festival. It's hard to believe this town was once home to as many as 60,000 people. 

The biblical rains that plagued this year's festival didn't seem to dampen spirits, as spectators geared up in rain boots and flip flops to navigate the puddles and mud. i was reunited with several of my friends from Inuvik, as well as Cliff, Georgia and Philip, whom I'd met along my journey down the Dempster. 

I also made a handful of new friends, including a couple from Northern Ontario who were out for the 10th consecutive year, an LA-based film producer/distributor enjoying his seventh visit to the festival, and a researcher who is living off the grid in Haines Junction for the summer and in DC for the first time. 

It was the last of these new friends that was adventurous enough to complete the Dawson City experience by trying the infamous Sour Toe Cocktail with me. Unique to DC, the drink is garnished with an actual mummified human toe. 

The only thing more disturbing than the feeling you get when that slippery flesh hits your lips is the though that it is actually the eighth toe to be used to garnish the drink. 'Accidental swallowing' was the leading cause of the loss of the first seven.