Top of the World Highway - Dawson City to Chicken, Alaska

Tuesday, June 09, 2009 – Wow what a drive today! We left Dawson City and took the free ferry across the Yukon River. I had read that you should watch for the fox where you get off the ferry but sort of forgot about it but sure enough while standing there watching the ferry and waiting for Bill and Pam to cross with their coach there was the fox. I got several good pictures of him and he was really very tame. Bill actually fed him a few pieces of ham – gee I wonder why he is so tame? Our destination for today is Chicken, Alaska by way of the Top of the World Highway. Although it is a mere 114 miles drive, the roads are AWFUL from Dawson to the U.S./Canadian border and they get worse from there into Chicken. You have to drive all over the road just to find the best parts of the gravel and washboard surface. On the bright side however, the views are pretty incredible and after three weeks on the road we finally saw the “Welcome to Alaska” sign! We pulled into the town of Chicken, if you can call 4 or 5 buildings and a population of about 30 people a town. We registered at the RV Park and got a Passport America discount so we only had to pay $12.50 for our site. We got our souvenir pins and a Chicken Fire Department t-shirt for Bill and then visited the Chicken Gold Camp and Beautiful Downtown Chicken. Downtown Chicken consists of a Mercantile Emporium (their name for it), a liquor store (about 6’ square with a few shelves), a saloon, a café, and a four door outhouse called “the Chicken Poop.” The saloon is like something you’d see on television with hats, cards, t-shirts, bras, and what remains of women’s’ underwear after they shoot them out of a small cannon hanging from every wall, ceiling, and solid surface. The town of Chicken was supposed to be named after the state bird the ptarmigan but the original miners who settled in the area could not spell ptarmigan so they called it Chicken. Chicken, Alaska is really someplace you have to see to appreciate.