Chicken, Alaska, United States
Trip Start
Jun 25, 2009
1
31
74
Trip End
Sep 10, 2009
Chicken, Alaska, United States
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Dawson City is located on the Yukon River which we had to cross by ferry on our way to historic Chicken, Alaska. Yukoners call the road to Chicken the 60 Mile, to Alaskans it is the Klondike Loop, but to everyone who has driven this road, it is known as the “Top of the World Highway.”
Art renamed it "Divorce Highway." This has to be the most abominable, atrocious, beastly, dreadful, godawful, inferior, stinking, substandard road on the face of the earth!
From Dawson City to Chicken is only about 100 miles and it took us approximately 5 hours. We may have averaged a whopping 15 mph the entire trip. The road, I mean caribou path, is mostly loose gravel and filled with frost heaves, long washboard stretches, and twisting turns with no guardrails
Dawson City Ferry
. It was truly awful. Our rig is taking a beating.Despite the road conditions, the scenery is awesome and, after all, we got to re-enter the good ol' U.S.A. WE MADE IT TO ALASKA! Soon after going through customs, we stopped to take some pictures of a caribou herd.
When we finally reached our campsite in Chicken, we discovered that we had a flat tire on the car hauler. We couldn't even tell while we were driving that the tire had gone bad. So while I straightened up the motorhome, Art put our spare on.
In its glory year, Chicken boasted a population of around 400. Now, it ranges from 50 in the summer to 6 in the winter. As the story goes, the gold miners who settled here wanted to name the town ‘Ptarmigan’ after the bird which is common in the area. Unfortunately, people couldn’t agree on how to spell the unusual name, so they settled with Chicken.
At 2:00, we had a tour of the Old Town of Chicken and Tisha's Schoolhouse. Tisha, one of the area’s most famous characters, once taught school here
Dawson City Ferry
. We met at the campground gift shop and walked up the road and down a forest path to see run-down, dilapidated, most likely rat-infested cabins and an outhouse that some old gold miners left. While this may have enchanted some people, Art and I were completely baffled at why anyone would want to see something like that. It seems like anything that has been abandoned in this area is fodder for a tourist trap.At 6:00, our Wagonmasters have invited all of us to a "Welcome to Alaska" dinner. Jean, who used to be a caterer, prepared pans of Chicken Tettrazini while still at home. The pans have been kept frozen in different vehicles' freezers until today. I volunteered to wipe off the picnic tables in the pavilion and then stopped by Jean and Les's motorhome to ask if there was anything else I could do. The rest of the menu is green beans and Texas toast, with strawberry shortcake for dessert. It was decided that we needed fried onions for the green beans, so I went back to our rig to cook them...miracle of all miracles!
As with all of our group get-togethers, the dinner was very enjoyable. We both went to bed at 8:30 - another miracle!
Comments
roads
kathy, I can emphasize with you on the road condition. But you need to go across Costa Rica's roadsd an then tell me yours were worse. It is every word you mention for your road, but didn't say it was hellacious. That was our experience. Glad Art is feeling better. STill raining, raining, raining here and cold.
Cheryl
Howdy!
Hi Kathleen & Art,
So glad that you are in Alaska! Sounds like you have traveled some rough roads to get there. I'm sure that you are seing the sights. What a fabulous opportunity. I am enjoying reading your blog. I feel like I am on the trip also.
Safe travels to all!
Sharon P.
Re: Howdy!