Watson Lake YT

.
No trip down the Alaska Highway would be complete without a stop at Watson Lake and its famous "Signpost Forest". Watson Lake was created as a construction camp during the building of the Alaska Highway. In 1942, a simple signpost pointing out the distances to various points along the tote road was damaged by a bulldozer. Private Carl Lindley was ordered to repair the sign, and decided to personalize the job by adding a sign pointing towards his home town, Danville, Illinois, and giving the distance to it. Several other people added directions to their home towns, and the idea has been snowballing ever since. Today there are over 70,000 signs in the "Signpost Forest". The town adds new posts as necessary.



Dorcas had previously carved our message into a cedar shake we had liberated from a construction site.  Sign spaces within easy reach were non-existent. I leaned a timber against a post and tacked our sign up at about the 9-foot level. I hope we can find it if we ever go back!

We had read about The Northern Lights Centre and thought it might be interesting and fun. It was both. The main feature was a cool 3-D like video animating space travel and Canada's participation in the International Space Station, projected on a domed screen. It was like being at Disney. The second video presentation showcased the beautiful dancing northern lights.

Whitehorse YT

.
We departed Dawson City late in the afternoon heading south and east on the Klondike Highway towards Whitehorse. We drove a few hours before spending the night on a roadside pull-out on a bluff overlooking the Pelly River and Pelly Crossing.



Whitehorse is by far the biggest town we have been in for a long while. About a week ago and a million miles away, in the boonies of Alaska, an engine warning light appeared on the coach. The error code indicated loss of engine RPM signal. The error appeared to be intermittent, and there seemed to be no loss of power or performance, so we had continued on. What else could we do?  Whitehorse has a Cummins engine service facility, so I dropped in to see if they could take a look. No go. It would be a week before they could get to us.  Besides that, they didn't have the part I need, the Engine Speed Sensor.  They located me the part at a Cummins facility in Fort St. John, BC, 825 miles away, but on our route.  If the part fails completely, the engine dies.  We're keeping our fingers crossed.



We decided to park at the local Walmart, partly because we still thought there was a chance we could end up in a service bay, and didn't want to waste money on a campground if we needed to move. We frequently park at Walmarts; most are very hospitable to RVs. This one actually had a large sign welcoming RVs and directing them where to park. During our 3-night stay in Whitehorse there were perhaps 40 more RVs in the lot. Cool!



Whitehorse is near the headwaters to the Yukon river and the stampeders passed through here on their way to Dawson City and the Klondike. At Dawson City the Yukon was wide and muddy, but here it was clear, green and relatively narrow. There is a hydroelectric dam just outside of town, and we viewed the king salmon negotiating the fish ladder. These fish have migrated over 800 miles from the Bering Sea to spawn in the creeks in the headwaters of the Yukon. They hold the fish on the ladder in a viewing area for a short while so they can count them and determine their sex and whether they are hatchery-bred or wild.

The Yukon Transportation Museum here was very interesting and chronicled modes of travel from snow shoes and skis, dog sled, sleigh, horse drawn wagons, boats, all types of airplanes, buses, trucks, cars and trains. Lots of military vehicles were on display since Whitehorse was a military town. Nicely done museum.   A restored DC-3 was mounted on a post in front of the museum and served as a working wind vane.

Perhaps the highlight of Whitehorse was a tour and tasting at the Yukon Brewing Company. We sampled a number of brews and bought a couple of growlers. The brewery has a bottle washing machine and recycles used bottles from other breweries that have been shipped to the Yukon.



At Whitehorse we have again entered onto the Alaska Highway and have basically turned the corner and are headed towards home.

Dawson City YT

.
One thing about the town of Chicken. There is no shortage of puns and cute sayings on T-shirts and bumper stickers related to chickens, eggs, etc.. Anyway, we scrambled out of town about 11:00 am, headed for the Canadian border. We continued on the Taylor Highway, until it cut north to Eagle AK (is there some sort of bird theme working here?) We then continued on the Top of the World Highway and crossed the border into the Yukon Territory. The crossing was smooth, but the border agent kept asking if we had been searched or had any trouble at any previous border crossing. The answer was no, but I figured if we had had trouble, he would have already been aware of it. So why ask?





At this point the road improved significantly. It was paved and relatively smooth. The topography also changed; it became almost alpine-like in appearance, with few trees. After a few hours we came to a high bluff and saw Dawson City from above. We descended the hill, crossed the Yukon River on the free ferry and proceeded to the Gold Rush Campground, where we made camp.






Dawson City is where it all happened. It is located at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers and this is where the stampeders were all headed. Gold was discovered in 1896, but the word didn't get out until 1897. By 1898 the rush was on. About 100,000 stampeders headed for Dawson City, most through Skagway and Dyea and across the White Pass or Chilkoot Pass. After a grueling 40 mile hike, hauling 2000 pounds of gear, they could build a boat and put-in at Bennett Lake, the headwaters of the Yukon River. From there they could paddle, row, pole or sail to Dawson City about 600 miles down-river. Only about a third of the stampeders made it, and when they arrived at Dawson City, they found all the best claims had been already staked. Most went broke.





Dawson City is a very historic town with many original buildings still intact. We took a walking tour of town with a costumed interpreter from Parks Canada (the Canadian version of our National Park Service), where we toured the old post office, the Palace Grand Theatre, the Bank of British North America, and the Red Feather Saloon. A number of elaborate government buildings were also established during Dawson City's boom years. Dawson City has taken measures to assure that the city retains its historic character. New buildings must be built in the 1898 style.







A number of notable authors lived in or near Dawson City. Jack London came to Dawson City during the rush and his experiences inspired some of his greatest works. His cabin has been re-located to the town. Pierre Berton one of Canada's most prolific and popular authors grew up in Dawson City in the 1920s. Robert Service lived here some years after the rush and after he had already been established as a successful author, but still drew inspiration from the tales of the old stampeders living here. Service is perhaps best known for his verse "The Cremation of Sam McGee".

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Service composed the verse one evening while walking in Dawson City. He wrote it down the next morning from memory. The verse was complete except he didn't have a name for the title character; he needed a name to rhyme with "Tennessee". Service saw McGee's name on a bank form while working at the bank in Whitehorse and asked him for permission to use his name.

I personally like the blessing Service wrote on his 6th birthday, said to be his first poem:

God bless the cakes and bless the jam;

Bless the cheese and the cold boiled ham:
Bless the scones Aunt Jeannie makes,
And save us all from bellyaches.
Amen

Finally, We drove up on Bonanza Creek, the site of the Discovery strike that started the gold rush of 1898. The town owns a claim and lets visitors work the claim. We toured Dredge No. 4 one of the biggest gold dredges ever made, almost 300' long. Surprisingly, the dredge used electric power. All up and down the Klondike river, Bonanza Creek and other areas there were tell-tale ridges of dredge tailings.

Photo of the Week - Moose Meets Ram

When a Dodge Ram 3500 hits a moose there are no winners.  This truck hit a moose somewhere on the Taylor Highway, but was still able to drive into Chicken under its own power.  Pretty tough truck.  No report on the condition of the moose.

Chicken AK

.


To get to Chicken AK one must travel up the Taylor Highway from Tok. The first part of the road is paved and has huge frost heaves. It then turns to dirt and becomes very narrow with soft shoulders. When it rains the fine sand becomes very slick. It is barely wide enough for two cars to pass, much less two RVs. There are steep drops and no guard rails. They say one or two RVs roll off the side each year. Joy! It was clear and dry the day we passed, so we had little difficulty. When we met an oncoming vehicle we would pull over and slow down or just stop.




Everybody ought to go to Chicken, at least once. It's a pretty authentic Alaskan bush gold camp. Legend has it, when the sourdoughs were naming the town, they wanted to name it Ptarmigan, after the bird that is so common in the area. The problem was they couldn't agree on how to spell "Ptarmigan" and didn't want to be embarrassed. So they settled on "Chicken" instead. Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but the locals swear it's true; all six of the year-round residents.



There are basically three establishments in Chicken: 1. the Town of Chicken/Chicken Creek/Goldpanner, 2. Beautiful Downtown Chicken/Chicken Creek Cafe/Chicken Creek Saloon and 3. Chicken Gold Camp and Outpost. All provide some camping service ranging from dry camping to 30A hookup. Each operates it's own generator for electricity. There is no cell service and no land phone in Chicken, although one establishment claimed to have a satellite phone, available for emergencies. All three do provide satellite based internet service. Mail comes by air three days per week. The road to Chicken is not plowed in the winter, so most folks leave. About a half dozen hang around and endure the -50F winter temperatures. They have a functioning fire department, although there has never been a call. They have a drill and start up the pumper once a year to make sure it is working.



Chicken is also home to the Pedro Gold Dredge. A dredge is a gigantic gold mining machine. It scoops up ore in a bucket train up front, processes the ore in its belly and extracts the gold, and spits the tailings out the back end. It floats in a creek of its own making and gradually moves forward as the ore is extracted. The Pedro Dredge originally operated on Pedro Creek north of Fairbanks in 1938. In 1958 the the Pedro was moved to Chicken Creek, where it operated until 1967.

Gakona AK

Happy Anniversary! On August 1 I celebrated the fifth year of my retirement. Life is still good.



Upon leaving Chitina we continued north on the Richardson Highway and stopped once again at the Visitor Center for the Wrangell-St.Elias National Park. We watched a film on the Kennecott Mines and listened to a ranger talk on wolves. Unfortunately the clouds were hiding the mountains, as is often the case. We again continued north on the Richardson Highway a few miles past the Tok Cut-off. There we parked the coach at a roadside pull-off and spent the night. The next morning we continued north on the Richardson Highway in the Honda, bound for Paxson and the Isabel Pass. At Isabel Pass we viewed the Gulkana Glacier. After viewing Isabel Pass and the glacier we doubled back and then drove about 40 miles out the Denali Highway. The Denali Highway was built in 1957 and was the only road to Denali National Park until the George Parks Highway was built in 1972. It was cloudy and drizzly, and we had hoped to see wildlife on this road, but nothing was out today. We went as far as Maclaren Summit (4086'). Finally we returned to where the coach was parked and spent another night in the pull-off.

The next morning we doubled back to the Tok Cut-off and headed north towards Tok. We stopped at the historic Gakona Lodge, built in 1929, an old Alaskan roadhouse. The eleven structures here are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We stopped again at the Nebesna Ranger Station, Wrangell-St. Elias NP. We had intended to drive out the Nebesna road for some excellent views of the mountains. However, it was again drizzling and cloudy, and we expected the mountain views would be obscured. After much heeing and hawing we decided to drive on out the road, and, miraculously, it began to clear and the sun began to shine. We drove about 30 miles out the road. At that point there are three fords that must be negotiated to continue. Each is somewhat worse than the next one, and passage depends on your vehicle clearance and the amount of recent rain. Much to Dorcas' dismay, we forded the first creek, Trail Creek. Piece of cake. I think we could have negotiated the second one, Lost Creek, but Dorcas talked me out of it. Just as well. The third ford was less than a mile further and would probably not have been passable in our vehicle. We turned back to pick up the coach at the ranger station. We continued a bit further up the Tok Cut-off and parked for the night at a pull-out near the Slana River.

.

Photo of the Week - Chitina AK, an RV Friendly Community???

.
At Chitina, we didn't stay at the local RV park.  We camped for two nights at a pull-off next to a gorgeous lake.  Is it any wonder?

This post is a little tongue-in-cheek.  Neither photo is from a real RV park.  Note price painted on bulldozer blade (it's hard to see: $200/night

Chitina AK

.

Chitina AK, located at the confluence of the Copper and Chitina Rivers, has two reasons for being. First, it is a gateway to McCarthy, the Kennecott copper mines and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Second, it provides access to the Copper River and the famous "Copper River Red" salmon. Downtown Chitina is very quaint and scenic, with several beautiful historical structures.

We arrived at Chitina after driving about 35 miles down the Edgerton Highway. We stopped at the Golden Spruce Lodge on the way in, where the proprietors were holding a few un-skinned diamond willow sticks for us. Our friend Bob had asked us to bring some un-skinned diamond willow sticks back to NC, and we have had a very difficult time finding any. We then parked for two nights at a paved pull-out on the shore of Three-mile Lake, three miles out the Edgerton Highway from Chitina. It is a wonderful place to park. The fish were jumping and moose visited the lake to check us out. While walking Matilda at camp, I discovered a path that led up the hill to a grove of diamond willows in a small clearing. I managed to poach a few more sticks before we left.

We drove out to the Copper River and watched the fish wheels and watched folks dip netting for Copper River reds. We drove about 6 miles out the McCarthy Road, but dared venture no further. The McCarthy Road lies on the road bed of the former Copper River and North Western (CR&NW) railroad and continues about 60 miles to the town of McCarthy and Kennecott, in the Wrangell-St-Elias National Park. The railroad was built in 1908 to haul copper ore out from the Kennecott mines. Locals were skeptical the railroad would ever be completed and called the CR&NW "Can't Run & Never Will". Today the road is pretty rough, even by Alaskan standards. It is severally wash-boarded and occasionally spikes and nails will rise to the surface of the road and destroy tires. We really wanted to visit the Kennecott Mills, but were reluctant to venture too far down the road. Today the Kennecott Mills are owned by the National Park Service and many of the historical structures can be toured. The Kennecott mine had extremely rich ore, over 70% pure copper. Over $200 million worth of ore was hauled down the CR&NW to Cordova on the coast before the ore ran out and the mines closed in 1938.

Photo of the Week - Moose on the Run

.

Obviously, this guy can't read very well, or he would be headed in the opposite direction ... FAST!

Valdez AK

.


OK, I am again hopelessly behind in this journal. The combination of too much fun and near continuous daylight continue to confound my efforts to update the blog. Alright, I also do procrastinate a bit too. In any case I will give a thumbnail sketch of our travels during the last month, and then get on with our current adventures. Maybe, just maybe, I can go back and flesh in the details and post some pictures.



By the way. Google maps has made a change such that when I post our location ("Where the Heck Are We???"), the current location is no longer at the top of the list. Now it can be found only at the bottom of the list on the left side of the list of locations. I will continue to place our current location near the center of the maps. All of our locations, current and past, can be found somewhere in the list and are dated.



OK the 60 second update and some photos: We left Talkeetna and drove to Eagle River, a suburb about 10 miles north of Anchorage. A friend from high school in North Carolina has a house on a mountainside outside Eagle River, and we parked in a paved level spot on his driveway. From his house we can see Mt. McKinley, over 170 miles away and volcanoes Mt. Redoubt, Mt. Iliamna and Mt. Spurr. He wined and dined us for the next six nights while we made tourist trips into Anchorage and points nearby. Upon leaving Eagle River we headed down to the Kenai Peninsula and Seward. We hit Seward for the 4th of July weekend, probably not the smartest thing to do. Seward hosts the Mount Marathon race each 4th, and it's the biggest event in Seward all year. Seward has about 800 campsites in about a dozen city-owned campgrounds around town. All were full. We camped for five nights at a paved pullout on the side of the Resurrection River, a wonderful spot. The highlight of our stay in Seward was a wildlife and glacier tour where we saw a ton of wildlife. Actually many specimens were over a ton. We left Seward and drove to Homer. There we camped on the "Spit" for 5 mights. We watched the tide come in and out from our front window while the harbor seals munched on salmon. Homer claims to be the Halibut capitol of the world, and we watched the big fish come off the boats each evening. We then headed to Cooper Landing at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers. There we camped with Safari TREK friends from back east who are traveling throughout Alaska in a caravan. While there we paddled a 13-mile section of the Kenai River. We then headed back to Eagle River and my friend's house on the mountain, where we stayed for nine more nights of cushy camping and good companionship with an old friend and his family. As we were preparing to leave a moose cow and two calves came through the driveway and ambled over between our coach and our car. Unfortunately, all our cameras were in the coach and momma wouldn't let us anyway near there. Finally we left and headed for Valdez for another rendezvous with our TREK friends. Whew!



We are now camped at Bayside RV Park in Valdez. Valdez is an extraordinarily scenic town. We are within walking distance of the downtown and the harbor. Valdez was founded as an "All American" route to the Klondike gold fields. The Valdez Glacier turned out to be a formidable obstacle, and few miners completed the journey. On Good Friday 1964 Alaska suffered a 9.2 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in North America. 30 people were killed in Valdez when a section of the city near the waterfront sloughed off into the harbor. "Old Valdez" had been built on unstable glacial till. The city was relocated to a town site built on bedrock shortly after the disaster. Ironically, another tragedy occurred here on Good Friday when the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in 1989, causing the largest human-caused environmental disaster of its time.



Valdez is now known principally as the southern terminal of the Alaska oil pipeline. Other main activities are fishing and tourism. We haven't been fishing, but our TREK friends have. Their freezers are full and we have benefited from their lack of cold storage capacity. Fresh grilled wild salmon is pretty good! Each evening we have gone over to the Solomon Gulch hatchery on the far side of the bay to watch the salmon run and the bears come down to feed on them. Big fun.



We have been here for 4 nights and it is time to move again. We might head over on the Edgerton Highway towards Chitina and McCarthy near the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.