The End of the Alaska Highway

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End of Alaska Highway..............And that's what our poor vehicles feel like
Another milestone - we finished the Alaska Highway. The official end of the highway is in Delta Junction, AK, about 100 miles west of Tok.

Before we moved west, though, we visited Chicken, Alaska and Dawson City, Yukon.

Chicken started out as a Gold Rush camp. These days it is a very small community of miners and people who provide services for tourists driving from Dawson City to Tok. There one place there called Downtown Chicken - a souvenir store, liquor store, bar, gas station and cafe all in one building.


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Tom at Chicken...............................................Original Miner Cabin



The original mining camp is still there - they offer a daily tour of the townsite. It was in use up till the late 60's. Earlier in the century people lived there year round. They dug up "paydirt" in the winter and "sluiced" out the gold in the spring. Later on, they shut down in the winter. One year, they packed up for the winter and the company that owned to claims just never went back to do any more mining. The gold is still there but it costs too much to mine and they can't make a profit. Many of the cabins and buildings are in pretty bad shape, but you can still go into some of them and get an appreciation for what it meant to live up there. If you want to know more about Chicken in the time period, there is a book called Tisha - a true story about a teacher who taught in the school in Chicken in 1927.



Dawson from the air....The Ferry.............Tom on Stage



Dawson City is another mining town - it was once the biggest city in the west of Canada, over 30,000 people lived there but the mining is very limited these days and the main industry is tourism. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit - Tom especially. We went to the show at Diamond Tooth Gertie's Saloon and Tom participated in one of the acts. As a prize for being a good sport he got to keep the dancing girl's garter. You guessed it - he had to take the garter off in order to keep it! Well, we have a garter souvenir.

.................On Top of the World .............

The drive back and forth from Chicken to Dawson is called "The Top of the World Highway". Not sure whether that's because it's so far north or because so much of it is above treeline. At any rate, the views were spectacular. The road was pretty good - mostly gravel but not too rough.

Reunion at Tok

After visiting Chicken and Dawson City, we stayed in Tok for an extra day in order to meet up with Warren and Carolyn. They worked with us last summer in Bethel and are going to work this summer down in Homer at the Fish and Wildlife Service Visitor Center. We had a nice visit and made plans to head down to Homer after we finish up our job in Healy.


Speaking of Healy, we are less than 150 miles from there right now. We're spending a few days in North Pole visiting museums and stocking up on "stuff" we'll need. Yes, that's right - the North Pole. We are parked right next to Santa Claus House.


See you!






Travel Log:

5/25 - Tok
5/26 - Chicken
5/27 - Dawson City
5/28 - Chicken
5/29 - 31 - Tok
6/1 - Delta Junction
6/2 - 6 - North Pole (Fairbanks)