Dawson City, Yukon to Chicken, Alaska

Before we left Dawson this morning, we went to see the oldest hotel, the Westminster, which opened in 1898. My Dad had sent me an email in which he wondered if it is still here. Apparently his cousin Lena used to work in it. It is pink and leaning a bit but still going strong. I took a few pictures before we left town:

It was really cloudy and threatening rain, but we drove up to the top of Midnight Dome Mountain (2,600 ft climb) anyway. Really couldn’t see much, other than clouds, though. The locals had a big party up there last night in celebration of the summer Solstice. Part way down the mountain, I took this picture of the mining operations. There is still quite a bit of gold (placer) mining going on in the area.

So, our next plan was to drive the 40 kms back toward Whitehorse so we could go see Tombstone Territorial Park. From the junction of the Klondike and Dempster highways, it is 70 km north to Tombstone. After having lunch and fueling up at the Klondike River Lodge, we started up the dreaded Dempster. And it was dreadful. All the rain we’ve been having had made a real mess of the road. It is basically packed dirt and it was full of potholes, washboard sections and really soft spots. So after 10 km of being shaken to bits, we turned around and retraced our steps back to Dawson.

The sun was shining by the time we got back to town, but I couldn’t convince Fran to drive up to the top of the Dome again (didn’t try too hard actually). So, we boarded the little ferry and sailed across the very quickly flowing Yukon River. After one more futile trip – this time into the campground on the west side of the river and a walk along the riverbank to see if we could spot the sunken sternwheelers (we couldn’t), we started on the ‘Top of the World’ highway.

The very scenic ‘Top of the World’ highway connects Dawson City, Yukon with the Alaska Highway (175 miles to the West). It is sort of paved to the U.S. border (lots of gravel sections) and it winds along the top of the mountain ridge. After the U.S. border, it’s dirt, mud, etc. Almost as bad as the Dempster. The road is very narrow, rough and the shoulders are very soft so if you meet someone, it’s best to just stop in a slightly wider section and let them by you. There are no guard rails and it climbs up and down and around the mountains. Quite the road! Fran says he won’t drive it again.

This shows some of the Canadian portion of the road:

This shows some of the U.S. portion of the road:

Anyway, by driving 30 – 40 km/hr the whole way, we made it to our destination for the night – Chicken, Alaska. There are three RV parks in Chicken and not much else. The story behind its unique name is that the miners who were the original inhabitants wanted to name the town Ptarmigan in honour of all the little birds that fed them when food was scarce. However, they couldn’t agree on how to spell ‘Ptarmigan’ so settle on Chicken instead.

We are staying at the Chicken Gold Camp. It’s the nicest of the three. About half the guests are transient like us and about half are settled here for a longer stretch of time. The campground includes a gold mine claim and guests are allowed to pan for gold all day long if they want to and some do! We talked to a Swiss couple who are here for six days panning gold. The camp ‘gater’ transports them to the creek at 9:00 a.m. and picks them up at 5:00 p.m. Quite a few people have their own quads to go off prospecting. Not my cup of tea!

We’ll be on our way tomorrow. We are still 66 miles from the Alaska Highway and Tok, AK. Apparently the road turns into sort of pavement again a few miles from here. Travelling by ferry is looking better all the time!