June 16 - Dawson City to Tok

We woke up this morning and the sky was overcast. After 2 days of fairly sweltering heat, it was a nice reprieve BUT, lurking and looming in the distance were purple bruises of clouds threatening rain and thunderstorms. Today is the day we were heading up over the Top of the World Highway and the ONE THING everyone said to us that was consistent was "Don't go if it's raining - the rain makes the calcium on the road turn to a greasy consistency and, if it's wet enough, the mud will cake and stick to everything.

Just as we packed up, it started to rain a bit... figures.

What the heck, we thought. Let's give it a go.

So - we headed off to the ferry that takes you across the Yukon river. It's just a wee one that carries about 12 cars max, or one very large bus-sized RV towing a small car (as it turns out). The line up included about a dozen huge RVs and then there were several of us smaller chump change. The  ferry alternated taking one HUGE RV on a run and then coming back and taking a load of smaller vehicles. The round trip only takes about 10-15 minutes so it wasn't much of a wait (about an hour or so) but if you're an RV, it can be a long wait! 

Once on the other side, we started up the hill and very quickly, the road starts to run along the ridgeline of the mountain range. It's similar to the Dempster Highway in this regard. For this reason, the views (when you can peek through the trees) are spectacular and you really do feel like you're on the top of the world. At points, it is dramatic in that the land drops away steeply off each side of the highway, making you feel like you're driving along the ridgepole of a mighty rooftop. The landscape, in both directions, is a bounty of hulking mountains as far as the eye can see and a million miles of tundra, black spruce and tundra shrubs. We were astonished that we didn't see one animal along this part of the trip - not a bear, not a cariboo, not a moose, nothin'. A little disappointing that way but the terrain was breathtaking. Several kilometers up the road from the ferry, the pavement runs out. Goodbye nice pavement... see you again in a couple hundred kilometers! 

The dirt road was in remarkably good condition for the most part. It's amazing how in tune one becomes to the variations of gravel and gravel road conditions when you're driving it on a bike. You've got your loose sharp small gravel (OK) and your loose deep pebbly gravel that moves like marbles (NOT SO OK), then you have your compact gravel (GOOD) and then you have your gravel that has been solidified by calcium and is smooth as pavement (FABULOUS!). Then you have the deep loose dirt and gravel mix that crews put down to maintain the road. Before it's compacted by a roller, it's awful business - 4x4ing on a Harley is not my favorite, gotta say. Last but not least, you have the snotty muddy gravel that sticks like goose poop on everything which we also had (DEFINITELY NOT FUN) when we hit several rain pockets. Thankfully, they were short lived but they sure made a royal mess of us, our gear, our bikes - everything! 

The road climbs up and up and up and again, we started seeing snow packs and the edges of the treeline. It got cold and we were happy for our cold weather gear, especially our electric vests and electric handgrips. At the top, we hit the American Border at Poker Creek - the northern most land-accessible American border. 

From there, you get a DIVINE stretch of about 10 miles of freshly laid tarmack - just enough for a bit of a break and a teaser before the gravel hits again.

After about 170 kms of gravel road, we were VERY excited to hit the town of Chicken, Alaska. As the story goes, Chicken got it's name because the local miners back in the day couldn't agree on how to spell Ptarmigan which are in abundance in the area and were a favorite in the stew pot. The colloquial name for them is chicken so the town was called Chicken. Chicken is a groovy little tourist spot - mostly a few RV parks capitalizing on the tourist draw and then the original Chicken townsite which consists of a gas station, a gift shop, a bar and a cafe. The week before we arrived, hundreds of people descended upon Chicken for their annual music festival which could ONLY possibly be named... (you guessed it)... Chickenstock. Many people travel hundreds of miles to come to Chickenstock and it's become a much celebrated annual event. The town also boasts a giant metal chicken sculpture and an old mining dredge. It's worth a stop and the food at the Old Chicken Cafe is really good.

Shortly leaving Chicken, the pavement starts again - oh Happy Day!!! On gravel, we were averaging about 50 kms/hour so you can imagine how happy we were to make some quick miles. The rest of the Taylor HIghway down to the Tetlin Junction is just a million more miles of tundra, black spruce and mountains. 

FINALLY, at Tetlin, we saw a moose! From there, we headed northwest into Tok (pronounced TOKE) - a small highway strip of a town. We stayed at the Tok RV Park. It was awesome. We had a nice wooded campsite, they had CLEAN bathrooms with free showers and they even had a do-it-yourself car wash for all us dirty, dusty, muddy travellers coming off the Top of the World!