Top of the World and Dawson City

At White Horse we decided to take the alternate route of the ALCAN toDawson City which was the site of the Klondike gold strike. The information center provided travel information like there was a short section of gravel road which was in great shape and the free ferry at Dawson City across the Yukon River was not too crowded this time of year. As mentioned earlier we had been experiencing quite warm weather and at Whitehorse we learned there were a lot of forest fires still out of control and a few roads were closed. The road called the Top of the World was open all the way and we decided to travel that section. As we drove the 250 miles from Whitehorse to Dawson City we did come across one of those forest fires. If you enlarge the picture you can see our van and how the smoke distorts views to the mountains. As we traveled through miles of rugged country we better understood how rough the miners headed to the Klondike gold strike had it. They were traveling in the winter and mostly by foot. It is estimated that 50 percent of the miners who started the trail died of accidents, starvation or froze to death along the way. Dawson City was quite interesting and really made us feel like we had stepped into the past. After leaving Dawson City, we drove onto the free ferry across the Yukon River which was a lot smaller than we had expected. After crossing the Yukon we drove up the road onto a ridge which was the Top of the World highway. At the top the pavement ended and we were a bit surprised to find the short section of gravel road was 50 miles! The road was in good shape but our van quickly became infiltrated with very fine dust. The mountains were somewhat hidden in smoke from the forest fires but we thoroughly enjoyed the drive. The surprise came as we entered Alaska from Canada at a state-of-the-art border crossing. We learned it is only open about 4 months of the summer and on a busy day 50 cars might pass over the border. Shortly after the border we dropped off the ridge and down to the town of Chicken, another gold rush town with a restored dredge. The community of Chicken is the site of a school that was the topic of a book a few years back. As you can see the post office was a small log cabin with lots of mining artifacts and trinkets on display. From Chicken we traveled on to Tok where we spent the night at a very nice campground next to a small airport. This picture showing many small planes parked there was taken from our camp, but luckily the runway was quite a distance away so our sleep was not disturbed. Showers for us and trying to remove dust from the van occupied much of our evening. We did take time to go out to dinner at Fast Eddy’s café where we opted for the salad bar as we were really craving fruits and vegetables after several days on the road camping.