Chicken, on to Dawson City

Thursday-Friday, August 12-13.  We settled in for our day in Chicken.  We kept checking with the businesses to see if the Friday Convoy was still on, and so far so good.  Us women decided to try our hand at gold panning again, since the creek was right beside us, and it was, historically, one of the most prosperous creeks in the area.

No luck again, so we gave up on that.  We did get to see them haul a piece of heavy equipment through the creek, a track-hoe Joe says.

We did another drive around to the other gift shops, then came back to get ready  for our second round of panning.

Here I am, Prospector Wilma.  My back about killed me after this round, so I don't think I will take on prospecting as my second career.  (I forgot my hat this time).

Now, Joe has assumed the role of "gold panning pimp" and we are his women, I guess.  He usually drives us to the creek (this time, he didn't have to), sometimes he shovels a little for us, and just keeps an eye on us.

See him up on the bank in the chair.  Here's a better shot of him in his supervisory role.

We stuck with it for quite a while this time, firmly believing we would surely find something.  We think we might have had some gold dust in our pans, but didn't know how to capture those grains (which were probably sand, anyway).  Although we were armed with a little plastic suction bottle, a pair of tweezers, and our vials for our find, we came back empty-handed.  We had a free consultant parked next to us, Thunder Jack, who told us the secret of panning, but it didn't help any.  Mostly, he was an expert at B.S.

We walked around our campground and came upon this pint-sized bulldozer that we thought Cody would like to have for his bike track.

We all had an early night so we could be up bright and early, and in line, the next morning.  Here's the convoy, ready to pull out. 

This is the line-up in the campground (above).  Here's the one on the road.

We counted 46 units in our convoy.  David had to pull out of line to let a semi out, hauling equipment, so we graciously allowed him to cut back in when we started moving.  We got started at 7:55 a.m.

And up the road we went!

We had to eat David's dust for the next 2 1/2 hours.  We got to the Eagle turnoff (where the convoy ended) at 10:30, approximately 30 miles.  We did see a lot of road damage and evidence of flooding as we drove along, and we saw where they had put in a couple new culverts the day before.  There were 28 units in the convoy waiting to head to Chicken, and they didn't give us much room to pass.

On this part of the trip, we had mostly been down near the creeks and rivers.  Once we got past the Jack Wade Junction, we started to climb and really saw some pretty mountain scenery for the rest of the drive.  This highway is called "Top of the World," and it lived up to its name.  It was beautiful.

We came up on the Border Crossing about 10:30 and got right through.  They questioned Marilyn a little more thoroughly because she was driving the dinghy separately, but we all made it through.  Here we are coming up on Customs.  You are not allowed to take any pictures right at Customs.

We didn't stop at any of the viewpoint pull-outs on the way to the Border Crossing because we didn't want the rest of the convoy to get in front of us.  But there was a pull-off just a mile past, so we got some good pictures of the "Top of the World" highway from here.

There were some berries here that we think are "low bush cranberries."  Wasn't much of a bush to them. 

It was mostly a gravel road the entire day, with a few patches of chip-seal.  All of our rigs got filthy, inside any openings and certainly on the outside.

We thought we had been seeing beautiful scenery all along, then we picked up a new mountain range far off to the north.  It didn't have any snow that we could see, but the mountains were very high.  We don't have a map with us that shows what this mountain range is, so we'll have to look that up when we get home (unless someone lets us know).

Finallhy, we got to the Yukon River.  We had to cross the ferry here to get over to Dawson City, where we camped. 

The Klondike River converges here with the Yukon.  Here's the ferry that took us across.

The town of Dawson City is celebrating Dawson Days this weekend, so we'll see what kind of trouble we can find.  It has tried to maintain its gold rush flavor, so we'll check out the town and get some pictures tomorrow.   Here's the view of the town as we came down the hill to the ferry.

Chicken

Thursday, August 11.  Well we made it to Chicken!  We found some new information in Tok, saying that we could get "to" Chicken fine, but the road on to the Border was closed.  However, they hoped (and were working toward) opening it this weekend because Dawson City was celebrating "Dawson Days," and from the Alaska side, this was the road to get there.  So after some debate, we packed up this morning and headed to Chicken.  It was 44 degrees in Tok this morning and we forgot to turn the furnace on, so it was 51 inside when I got up (while Joe laid in bed waiting for the RV to get balmy).

BTW, Mazie had picked up a brochure at the Valdez Fish Hatchery that provided the numbers they try to harvest every year during the spawn.  I have added that information to the Valdez blog, so if you are interested, you can read that one again.


The road to Chicken was actually not that bad, mostly chip-sealed, with a few frost heaves and pot holes.  We took it pretty slow and got to Chicken without incident.  The drive was a different kind of pretty, with mountain views.  There were supposed to be blueberries along the way, but we didn't see any for sure, though maybe we did, but didn't stop.

We had views of the Alaska Range again, off to the left.

This highway showed evidence of severe damage from a 2004 forest fire, which burned 1.3 million acres and closed this highway for several days.  2004 was our last trip here, and it was a very hot, dry summer, very unlike this summer.  Alaska had 707 fires that summer (not an uncommon number), but the acreage burned was tragic -- 6,385,496, making it the largest recorded fire season in recorded Alaska history.

Anyhow, we got to Chicken.  There is not a lot in Chicken.  Chicken got it name (according to legend) when the miners and residents wanted to incorporate, and were told they had to have a name for this place where they had lived for 7 years.  They wanted to name it ptarmigan, after the willow grouse that is prevalent here (and eventually was named as the state bird), but they realized that none of them really knew how to spell ptarmigan, and they didn't want to risk later embarrassment if they spelled it wrong.  Finally, one of the old miners said, "Hell, let's just name it Chicken."  And "Chicken" it became.

There are 3 businesses (gift shops, campgrounds, a saloon, 2 cafes that serve a lot of chicken).  We got a campsite right by Chicken Creek, which we intend to pan for gold while we are here.

Chicken does have an old dredge that you can tour, and they do tours of the Original Chicken daily.  We didn't tour the dredge, but we did tour the old town, which is just cabins  in different stages of disrepair.  They are trying to renovate some, and there is a book "Tisha" about a teacher in Chicken, so we got to see her school/cabin. 

Here's Dave peering into a cabn.  Collins stayed back at the campground because he wasn't feeling good, so we hope he might take this tour tomorrow. 

Here's the photos of Tisha's school, which was also a roadhouse at one time.  It was two rooms, and she lived in the second room.  Some of the people on this tour with us had read the book, so they were really re-living some of her experiences.  David bought the book that evening and will pass it around the 6 of us so we can all enjoy it.

The photo above is the classroom.  The next picture is where she lived.  One of the ladies in our tour group said she could just imagine her sleeping next to the outside wall and her blankets freezing to the wall.  Our tour guide said it gets 60 below every year here in Chicken, so it was mighty cold!

This is the road we have to take to go on to Dawson City.  They took two convoys through today before we got to Chicken, but they are installing culverts tomorrow and are not supposed to be taking any through.  The plan is that they will take two convoys through on Friday, at 8:00 a.m. and noon.  We intend to be ready for the 8:00 a.m. trip.

I guess the bridge over Chicken Creek had some damage from the flooding too because they told us some of the heavy trucks are fording the creek down by the campsite.  We saw a front loader go through there a couple times, but no semis so far.

Then we drove over to the other area, where there is a saloon/mercantile store (gift shop), and another campground/gift shop.  Joe thought we should all come back to the saloon later.  We drove out to the airport, where one little plane set on the runway.

Here's our trip to the saloon. 

There was over 500 hats stapled to the ceiling, along with various pieces of women's underwear.  Next to the saloon was a chicken pen.

But here's the chickens we really need to be aware of!

After our exhausting day, here's Joe "just hanging out in Chicken."

You can see that life is pretty rough on our Excellent Adventure.

Tok Again

Monday, August 9 - We headed to Tok this morning, to meet back up with the Brundiges and decide whether or not the Chicken trip was a possibility.  Marilyn had learned that the road from Chicken to the Canadian Border was closed indefinitely, so our only option was to drive up and back from Tok.  However, that highway was reputably not in very good shape, and none of us wanted to damage our rigs, so decisions had to be made.  The highway to Tok was really rough, with a lot of frost heaves for miles, then a good stretch.  If the road on to Chicken was this bad, it probably was not a good idea to attempt that trip, because part of that highway was just gravel.

We drove through the Alaska Range on the way to Tok today.  These were not real tall mountains, but they were pretty.

We also crossed the Little Tok and the Tok Rivers.  I got a picture of the Tok (didn't think to get one of the Little Tok).

There were supposed to be Dall sheep on the mountain ridges, and moose in the wetlands, but we saw none.  We got to Tok about 1:30 and checked into the campground.  Marilyn and Collins had been there for a couple days already, and Marilyn had gotten her hair cut today.  Mazie and I drove down to the beauty shop and made appointments for tomorrow for ourselves, and for Ar'gent!

This campground is right beside a restaurant, Fast Eddys, and we decided to walk over there for dinner.  I wish we had taken the camera with us.  Collins ordered nachos, and the plate was piled so high it looked like the volcanoes the kids made in grade school science class.  He has left-overs for tomorrow.

We have some maintenance issues to take care of tomorrow (besides our hair cuts), and will probably try to get the laundry caught up again.  The trailer hitch for our tow car is pretty loose again after today's rough roads, and Dave needs some rivets put into the panels by his water tank.  Collins managed to cut the end of his finger off while they were on their own, so in addition to his shoulder, I'm not sure how much work we can get out of him.

Copper Center

Sunday, August 8 - We headed back toward Glenallen this morning, stopping about 15 miles short of there at Copper Center.  This drive out of Valdez is so pretty that seeing it again, going the opposite direction, was a joy.  We go through Keystone Canyon before we cross Thompson Pass, and this is where the Bridal Veil and Horsetail waterfalls are.  It is just a really pretty canyon, with a river right beside the road.

We had our first roadkill today - a ground squirrel or chipmunk that ran out in front of us.  I think, though, that we might have hit a bird somewhere in Canada, and I think Dave or Collins did too.  We saw a porcupine on the road that someone else had hit, so it was a rough day for the little furry critters.

Here's Willow Lake, with the Wrangell Mountains behind it.  Very pretty.  The Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve are somewhere over there, but I think it is a 93-mile side trip, over pretty rough roads, so we skipped that.

Our 105-mile day ended about 1:30, at the King for a Day RV Park just south of Glenallen.  The campground is a little rustic, but it is in a beautiful setting, on the banks of the Klutina River, another tourquoise-colored river.  There's fishing here, but that river flows pretty fast, so we didn't attempt that.

You can see the river in the background, but here are some better views.

We saw an eagle where we stopped for lunch along the highway, and there was another eagle here, in the top of the tree across the river.

It's in the treetop with the cloud behind it, if you can pick it out.

We took a little drive into Copper Center, but it didn't have much to offer.  Mazie and I got ice cream cones, though, so it wasn't a total waste.

We should meet back up with the Brundiges in Tok tomorrow.  Marilyn found out that the road from Chicken to the Canadian Border is closed again, after the third wash-out, so that trip is not looking very likely.   But we'll probably be heading out of Alaska when we leave Tok.