ALASKA!!!!

  ALASKA! 25 days of traveling

June 13, 2013 Thursday 70*

This morning we made our way down to the ferry to cross the Yukon to start our trek to Chicken Alaska, only took a few minutes and we were on the other side. Just after the ramp is a Provincial Park that Dale wanted to check out because there was a paddle wheel grave yard. Dale and I hiked back thru the woods in search of it, about a couple hundred yards maybe and we found it. It was very interesting in that these old paddle boats which were once haulers of cargo and people were just abandoned on the shore, these are not row boats but ships probably 70-100 feet in length, some were collasped and a couple the hulls were still intact. It was pretty awesome to see this as it really took you back in time, the boilers and transmissions were still in place and waiting for their turn again to be used but alas that will never happen, the wood has been weathered badly and rotting and parts of the ship just falling apart, yet a paddle wheel still existed although the paddle boards were non existent. Quite a bit of history and a pleasure to experience. With this adventure done we headed off towards the destination of Chicken. 

This was quite the trip with only being about a 115 miles you would expect it to be a couple hours plus a few minutes to make it, WRONG! This trip was probably 6 hours. Dirt roads for about a hundred miles and that is being conservative. Now some of this road was hard packed and actually better than their paved roads on the Klondike Highway, parts of it though was terrible washboard and 5-10 mph at best and mind you the largest majority was like this. Now this road leading from Dawson City to Chicken Alaska is called "The Top of the World" Highway and with good reason. The elevation climbed to probably 3700 feet, now envision 3700 feet high, dirt road, loose gravel, narrow and NO guardrails with some drops being probably 1500-2000 feet! Just a little un-nerving when that drop is on your side! Granted it wasn't a sheer cliff but I guarantee you that if you fell over the side,  there is no way in hell you were going to stop yourself unless you either hit a tree or the bottom of the cliff! This went on for a Hundred miles! Beautiful scenery but I was a little preoccupied trying to keep the rv from tumbling over the edge or meeting another vehicle head on in a curve, the last thing you would want to do is swerve to miss them! Again we saw no sign of life on this highway.....................probably cause they all fell over the edge! There were spots where snow drifts still lived, this highway is closed during the winter as there is nothing between point A and point B so don't break down or run out of gas! You would think with it being the only way in and out in this area that the traffic would be busy, we probably didn't pass a dozen vehicles coming our way in that 100 miles. Mostly rv's and tanker trucks. We did get some pictures on the way of some of it and hopefully some dash cam that I will try to post on youtube when we get a real internet connection which probably won't be till we get back home.

Now if that sounds like that was a little nerve racking when we crossed the border into Alaska the roads got WORSE! The next 30 miles were horrible! Ruts, washboard and pot holes were the name of the game, although when we crossed we got a really cool stamp at the border on our passports! :-) This was the perfect day to arrive in Alaska as it is Deanna's birthday, although she could have done without the drop scenery it will always be a reminder of being here when her birthday rolls around in the future.

We finally arrived in the huge town of Chicken Alaska population 17 around 5:45, we lost another hour of time when crossing the border so we are now 4 hours behind home time. One thing I can say about being in even this little tourist trap, gas was only $4.49 and as high as that is and sounds it is a welcome sight to the high ripoff prices of Canada of nearly $7 a gallon. The farther north we went the more gas went up. I can't wait to see gas at $3.79~ LOL.

Mileage has been better than expected so that helped offset the fuel prices but the camping prices have been crazy ranging from $40-$50 for very little. Wifi that was never really available or limited to 4 hours total and slower than snail chasing a turtle.

The cool thing about Chicken at our campground was you could gold pan for free, Chicken had one of the richest gold veins in Alaska. There is a big pile of gravel and dirt you are welcome to pan through and I took advantage of it, I grabbed my pans and shovel and headed off. I probably ran 25 pans of gravel and mix and I probably found gold in 75% of the pans, may have only been flakes but it was gold! This is something I had really been wanting to do on this trip and now can mark it off my list although if another opportunity arises I will surely do it some more. We saw lots of people on the way to Chicken along the creeks panning for gold.

Now lets talk about sunset, the sun is suppose to set probably about 11:30 and be back up around 4am or so. This would lead you to believe that at least you would have almost 5 hours of night WRONG! What that means is the sun barely goes out of sight over the mountains and stays there till 4 am when it pops back up! There is NO night just a dimness for about an hour or so. Last nigh at 11:30 you could still throw a shadow on the ground, 1 o'clock, just a little dimmer than 11:30 3 O'clock, Days on! Bright as bright can be!

Our total distance to Chicken was about 4800 miles and tomorrow is the town of Tok, hopefully better roads in store and a cell connection.