Fishing and Chicken and Dawson City

We had a rest day built into the schedule after getting to Tok, so after all the normal chores and maintenance on the truck and the coach we packed the ice chest and drove 45 minutes to the Little Tok river and got all the fishing tackle out and waited to be eaten by the bears. We had bought a fishing license at the RV park office, which was really convenient. We didn't catch anything except tree limbs, but it was really nice to get out and do something different for a while. There will be more of this now that we are in Alaska.

The next day, Friday, we hopped in the truck and set off for Chicken, Alaska, and Dawson City in the Yukon. The road to Chicken is called the Taylor Highway, and then after Chicken, as you head for the border it changes to the Top Of The World Highway.

It’s a very pretty drive on mostly gravel roads.

You feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.

 We knew we’d be in for a dirty ride because all the vehicles that had come back from that ride were filthy and we watched them all spend hours at the car wash.


 The Top Of The World HWY goes right over/through the Yukon River so you must ride the ferry into town. The George Black ferry is large enough to handle 18 wheel trucks, multiple large RV's, and has a passenger section for pedestrians. The ride takes about 10 minutes, and is very interesting as the pilot has to negotiate the current with such a large vessel.

 We stayed the night in the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, YT

 The hotel was nice in an old sort of way, the rooms were nice sized and relatively updated. There was a bar and restaurant downstairs, the WiFi was sketchy unless you were in the hotel lobby or the bar.

The town had a European flavor to it. We met a nice young guy sitting in the Drunken Goat Bar, he was a chef that had moved there from Switzerland. He loved living in the Yukon, said he had much more freedom than in Switzerland. He had visited the U.S. a couple of times, as he had a girlfriend that was from Tuscon Az.
The Drunken Goat was actually a Greek restaurant, so we ate dinner there.

 On Saturday, we headed back to Tok, and had to go back through Chicken. The weather was rainy in Canada, which made the roads pretty slick- there is no pavement, just mud and rocks. Passed through the border with no hassles whatsoever- we were the only vehicle for miles in either direction.

Lunch in Chicken, sitting in the bar. The bartender was a college teacher of some sort in Santa Rosa California, who was spending his summer working in Chicken. Nice enough guy- we made sure not to discuss politics with him. He was interesting to talk to, and gave us some insight into how things work in a tiny, tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Oh yeah- the chicken was just ok.

The homemade pies and bakery items caught Nancy's eye, but we were able to maintain some resemblance of a diet. The pies looked so good, except that they were sitting out on the counter with no air conditioning, and there were a number of flying insects getting a snack as well. 

We left Chicken after lunch and a couple of beers, along with the obligatory T-shirt and refrigerator magnet. The drive back was nice- the first 40 miles or so are pot holed, washboard, washed out, dirt road, but at least it didn't rain. The next 60 miles are paved, kind of, with almost no traffic and no animals to see.

We made it back and proceeded immediately to the car wash and removed about 40 pounds of mud from the truck.

Most of this was written by Les.

We had a fabulous dinner with our new friends Carol and Herbie from only 30 miles away in Texas.

And our other new friends Terry and Jim also from Texas.