Meandering Our Way Out of Alaska

Chicken, Alaska

The Richardson Highway goes from Valdez north up to Fairbanks with a northeast cutoff for Tok. Tok is a junction town whose sole purpose, it seems, is to provide services for those folks going in and out of Alaska via the Alaska Highway.  We spent two days going up the highway to Tok, stopping at many of the turnouts and taking lots of pictures of the fall foliage.  Boy, the leaves are changing fast! I get the sense that fall lasts all of about two weeks and then winter is here.

Unfinished train tunnel.  Efforts were stopped after some men were killed during fights between competing train companies.

A view of the fall foliage.

An Alaskan RV.

The Copper River. Some of the best salmon in the world comes from this river.

Birches with fall colors mixed in with spruce. The tree leaves are approaching their peak.

The Alaska Range.  I think Denali is in this picture, but Russ is not convinced.

Spent another night at Tolsina Wilderness Campground.  Got the same campsite with the beaver dam. Just as beautiful as before, just a bit chillier.

Our own private beach.

Stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor Center and saw a beautiful film on the park.  The size of the park just amazes me – it is more than six times larger than Yellowstone.  It has an ice field that is larger than the state of Rhode Island. And one of its volcanoes (Mt. Churchill) had the largest explosive eruption of the past two thousand years (six times larger than Krakatoa.)  It is theorized that this explosion forced some of the Athabaskan natives to migrate down south to Canada and the lower 48 states. The Athabaskan language and the Navajo language have the same origins.  In fact, we talked to an Athabaskan young man who said his grandfather has spoken to Navajos and they understood each other.  The distinctions are in the names of the animals and plants since they have different sets.

The top vertical cloud is stream coming from Mt. Wrangell.  There are several mountains in the Wrangell Mountain Range that have erupted in the past two thousand years.

Decided to spend both Friday and Saturday in Tok so that we could watch college football on Saturday (don’t ask, the game wasn’t pretty.) Got some work done around the van and trailer.  Took a couple local drives and generally took it easy.  Remember when I said that we hadn’t seen too many RVs on the road the past several days?  Well, when we arrived at the Tok RV village, I think there were only about 5 RVs in this whole immense campground.  A big difference from when we went through Tok on July 4^th – the campground was practically full. On Saturday, that all changed.  Started seeing a particular brand of RV (A Sunseeker Class C RV) show up.  First one, then another two, then a whole bunch.  Pretty soon we were surrounded by 21 of the exact same brand of RV. Turns out it was a group of 42 Australians on a month-long tour of Alaska and Canada. They were on their way out of Alaska and on the same route as us. Fortunately, they were not spending the night at Chicken, which was our next destination.  So we won’t catch up to them until Dawson City and won’t be part of that huge crowd.

The next segment of our trip took us out to Chicken, Alaska and the Top of the World Highway. At the turn of the century, the miners in the town wanted to name the town Ptarmigan, but could not agree on the spelling, so they decided to call the town Chicken (another common name for the grouse-like bird.) Nowadays, Chicken has about 50 residents during the summer and is a stopping place for hunters and for tourists traveling over the Top of the World Highway. Gold mining continues in the area but not at a commercial level. But back in the day, a lot of gold was taken out of the area.

We stayed at an RV park that had previously been a gold claim.  There were a lot of old mining equipment scattered around the park including the Pedro Creek Dredge which is a National Historic Site.

Two sourdoughs sitting on the porch and having a visit.

A view of Chicken from a nearby hillside.  Don't worry if you can't find it, there isn't much there, a couple RV parks, saloon, and a post office.

This post office was built in 1901.  There is an outhouse behind it.  There is no running water, electricity or sewer in the entire town.

The saloon collects hats from the tourists that pass through.

Corrigan is amazed at the size of this chicken. They grow them big in Alaska!

The Pedro Creek dredge.  There were several dredges like this that were used in the Alaskan and Canadian creeks up until the 1960s.

Drove over the Top of the World Highway the next day.  This all dirt road is about 100 miles long and crosses the U.S/Canada border at the northernmost border crossing. It was a clear, cool, dry day and the road was not as bad as we had heard.  Lots of potholes and ruts, but we went slowly (averaged about 25 mph) and had no problems.  Well, that isn’t strictly correct – managed to break the rail for one of our kitchen drawers. But that isn’t a major issue, we can wait until we get home to fix it. The highway runs through the range for the Fortymile caribou herd, one of the largest in the world.  Of course, we didn’t see any. Did see a porcupine, though.

Top of the World Highway.

Entering Canada at the northernmost border crossing.

The highway winding into Canada.

You can see roll after roll of mountain ranges.

The highway is called Top of the World because it runs along the crests of mountains rather than down in the ravines and valleys.  Had incredible vistas almost everywhere.  And with the fall colors, it was spectacular! Ended up in Dawson City in the early evening. You have to use a ferry to cross the Yukon into Dawson City.  That was exciting – the ferry is small, only holding a few cars and trucks at a time.  And it has to battle a pretty strong current to get to the other side.  We slipped and slid across the river.

Our first glimpse of the Yukon from the Top of the World Highway.  The Yukon is the fourth largest river in North America.

This ferry operates 24 hours a day during the summer.  During the winter, they build an ice bridge.

Our rig on the ferry headed over to Dawson City.