2005/08 Alaska and Back Again - Top of the World Highway |
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Monday August 1st
To our surprise we had a sunny morning, but the rain was supposed to return at noon. We did our shopping and mailing in Tok and then set off north along the Taylor Highway. Last year’s fires had taken out about half the trees along the highway, but it was still scenic with mountains in the distance. The road was quite good, with blacktop almost all the way to Chicken, but we found that there were breaks and bad potholes at the bottom of some of the hills. These required some very heavy braking, and after a few sudden stops we had a strange rubbing noise and lots of smoke from one wheel. The bearing and brake seemed to be OK other than very hot, so we continued slowly to Chicken just a few miles on.
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Chicken and Top of the World Highway |
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Chicken was supposed to be named Ptarmigan but the inhabitants couldn’t agree on the spelling and compromised on “Chicken” as a name. Chicken has a gold mine, a gas station, a camp ground, and a tourist trap called Beautiful Downtown Chicken, a row of three shacks. It doesn’t have anywhere to fix a wheel, so we decided we might as well continue on to Dawson City, only a little further than going back to Tok.
In the meantime we might as well enjoy the delights of Chicken. The biggest of these is the Pedro Dredge, one of 
those giant floating dredges that were used to mine for gold. This one, I believe, was brought all the way from Fairbanks to be a tourist draw, but perhaps they underestimated the difficulty of restoring it as it is only viewable from the outside. It’s still very impressive.
From Chicken onward the road is a pretty rough mix of gravel and rock and we crept along using the gears and trailer brakes to slow us down on hills. The suspect wheel stayed cool, so the bearing was probably OK. The road took us past the Jack Wade dredge. This great machine used to dredge the valley that it’s now decaying in. We passed the turnoff to Eagle that Sandie and I took last year. Back then the road had only just been opened after weeks of fires. This time Eagle was again surrounded by fires, but, luckily for us, the wind was taking the smoke elsewhere.
We passed the roadhouse at Boundary and crossed into Canada and the Yukon with no problems, and entered the Top of the World Highway.
This is appropriately named, as it runs along a ridge high in the mountains, with views to range after range of mountains to the north and south of us. The road is a mixture of blacktop and gravel, mostly good, but the dropoffs on each side are a little intimidating. The temptation is to look at the scenery but the driver really has to focus on the road!
We camped for the night on a pulloff with a great view. It was quiet too as the border closes overnight and no one lives on the road, so there is no traffic until morning.
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