THE ALASKAN ADVENTURE Day 7 May 23, 2009 Dawson City,YK to Tok, AK

We got a pretty good start today as we planned to travel to Chicken, AK via the Top of the World Highway and we knew that the conditions would not be very good. The highway has only been open for 2 days. Prior to leaving Dawson City we filled up gas, topped off the propane tanks and took a drive up Dome Road for one last look at Dawson from a higher altitude.

We then headed back into town to catch the ferry across the Yukon River. The ferry runs 24 hours and is provided free of charge by the Yukon Government. It is not a very big ferry and so the wait was minimal today, however in the summer it can take up to 5 hours to cross the river.

Once we were across the river we took a few more pictures of Dawson from a different prospective and then headed out.

We headed west on "The Top of the World Highway" which travels from Dawson City to Tok, AK

I use the term highway very loosly as the conditions were not very good to say the least. The first 66 miles we not that bad as it was paved but has a lot of broken patches where we travelling on loose gravel. There was also areas where you were looking straight down with no guardrails.

The 66 mile point was the US / Canada border crossing and after clearing customs we were in Alaska.

This is just about where we crossed into Alaska.

Poker Creek with a population of 2. The two custom agents who man the border in the summer

Once we left the border we found out very quickly that the section of highway we had just travelled was the good section. The next portion of the road from customs to Chicken, AK saw the road narrowing, the pavement ending and the road getting very twisty and curvy.
At times the road was not wide enough for two vehicles and you just hoped you didn’t meet oncoming traffic in those spots. Again at times you were looking a long way down with no guardrails.

There were a couple of areas of the highway where you can see that they had a lot of snow as the banks are still quite high. This is understandable as the highway is not maintained in the winter and if fact had only opened two days before we travelled it.

In spite of the road the day was very exhilarating as the scenery was just awesome. I could have stopped and taken a picture every half mile except for the fact that there were not a lot of places to stop.

The same spectacular scenery followed us onto the US side and we took as many pictures as we could. We had originally planned to stay the night in Chicken, AK but realized after we crossed into the US we had gained an hour so we pushed it through to Tok.

I can understand why people are drawn to the north. It is not the towns or the people that is the draw. It is the sheer beauty of the landscape that just grabs hold of you. We are finding that we would much prefer to dry camp in the state parks amidst the trees and animals than stay in RV parks.

We have settled into a nice RV park that has a lot of trees and sheltered spots for the night. Tomorrow we are heading for Faribanks and hopefully we take a couple of days to relax and rest up. We need it.

Animal Count for the Day

Fox 1