Traveling the USA

We take our time packing up this morning and finally head out to the Delta Junction visitor center around 11am. We take some pictures of their “End of the Alcan Highway” sign, look at their exhibits, and buy some Alaska hats.

Then we walk across the street to look at the Roadhouse museum. It’s free and one of the most interesting small museums that we’ve seen on the trip. Lots of photographs on the wall from when the roadhouse was used in the early 1900s.

Then we take off down the Richardson Highway, making lots of stops along the way. It’s raining again (it has rained 6 out of the 7 days that we’ve been in Alaska-it rained 3 out of 4 days in Skagway).

Today we get our first look at the Alaskan pipeline today. We see it several times today and stop to read the informational signs about it.

The rain finally stops and the sun starts peaking out occasionally. The mountains are beautiful with the sun shining on them.

We stop at a state park that offers free camping, Fielding Lake. No facilities, but the price is right and the mountain scenery is beautiful. The lake is still frozen! It’s been cool today, high in the 50s, but we didn’t expect to see a frozen lake. The ice on the lake is starting to break up and large chunks are floating on the stream behind our campsite. Joe enjoys playing with the ice chunks as they float by us.

We have a very late lunch and relax around the campsite. As more and more blue sky appears, the surrounding mountains become more and more beautiful.

We walk around the campground and see moose droppings everywhere (including our campsite), so we’re hoping to see a moose here sometime. We see several arctic terns here and enjoy watching their aerial acrobatics.

After dinner I read the bulletin board about the campground and see pictures of the 2002 earthquake here (7.9 magnitude). There’s a picture of a crack in ground less than 20 feet from our campsite—hmmm…not sure that I wanted to know about that. I may stop reading the bulletin boards at campsites.

It’s 10pm and it is still super-sunny out!!! I think sunset is 12:45am tonight. View from our RV:

We pack up again, get some diesel, buy an “I Love Potholes. Chicken, Alaska” bumper sticker (Joe’s choice) & some “Made in Alaska” silver earrings (my choice), and take off for Delta Junction. As we’re leaving town, we stop by the Chicken, Alaska Post Office and take a picture. Mail is flown in on Tuesday and Fridays. The post office is small, but not as small as the Ochopee post office on the Tamiami Trail, Florida.

Soon after leaving Chicken we get to paved road--we all smile, especially Jere.

The scenery is interesting, but not as spectacular as some places. We see no wildlife, and again we see a lot of forest fire damaged forests.

There is very little traffic on the Taylor Highway; however, when we get to the Alaska Highway, lots of RVers again.

We make occasional stops when there is something interesting to see. Our first stop at Delta Junction is at the Delta Sausage Store to buy some reindeer breakfast links, frozen buffalo burgers, and buffalo summer sausage. We have tomorrow’s meals all planned :-)

We get to Green Acres RV Park in Delta Junction and before setting up we wash the truck and 5ver. They are filthy with mud from the Taylor Highway. The mud was caked so high yesterday that we were knocking the big chunks off the truck with our feet, but there is still a lot of mud remaining today. The washing gets rid of most of the mud, but the rig is still nowhere near clean. By the time we finish washing, it begins to rain so maybe the rain will help.

I'm getting tired of cooking, so we go to the Delta Junction Diner for dinner, and then back to the RV to relax.

After spending about two weeks in the Yukon Territory we are finally leaving the Yukon and moving onto Alaska. We have really enjoyed the Yukon, especially Keno and Dawson City, and are glad we took the time to ‘enjoy our journey’ to Alaska, instead of just driving to Alaska as quickly as possible. We’re lucky to have the opportunity to take our time traveling.

We are taking the Top of the World Highway to the U.S. border and then the Taylor Highway to Chicken, Alaska today. In order to get to the Top of the World Hwy we need to take a ferry across the Yukon River. We make a short stop at the Dawson City Museum before getting to the ferry crossing and waiting 30-45 minutes for our turn to cross on the ferry. As we wait we watch a large oil tanker come across on the ferry – the tanker must be full and it is the only vehicle on the ferry. As the ferry travels with the oil tanker, it appears to be carried fairly far downstream (the river is high and running swiftly). I start to wonder if the ferry is going to be able to make it over to our side. But eventually the ferry regains control and gets to our side. After seeing this, Joe appears nervous about us going on the ferry. The ferry ride is uneventful (but interesting) and we start our trip on the Top of the World Highway.

The road follows the top of a mountain ridge for about 90 miles. Parts of it are paved, but many parts are gravel, so we take it slow. It’s an overcast day, so the views are nice, but not as incredible as some of the views we’ve seen the last few weeks.

View from the highest point on the Top of the World Highway of the U.S. border:

We get to the U.S. border, show our passports and take off on the Taylor Highway.

This ‘highway’ is DIRT. We expected dirt, but this is not the nice dirt roads of the Yukon. This is U.S. ‘full of potholes’ dirt. To make things worse, we have sporadic showers. So now the dirt road is a muddy road with potholes. The road is definitely worse than we expected. We drive 15-25 mph and are glad to get to Chicken, where we will spend the night.

We choose a campground that is back off the road and actually has electric from 8am to 8pm. The town has no electric power or plumbing, so they use generators and supposedly have no flush toilets in the town. I didn’t see any flush toilets, but I find it hard to believe that people live here year-round and have not found a way to have flush toilets.

We have dinner and then walk around Chicken.

The campground we’re at has an old gold mining dredge to look at and then of course there are the requisite gift shops. We visit all 3 gift shops, buy Jack London’s Call of the Wild book (Jere wouldn’t let me buy it in Dawson City – he said it would be cheaper in the U.S.) and then return to the RV for a campfire.

The campground provides free firewood, so I quickly make a campfire and sit by the fireside and read a book. The one great thing about the sun being out til after midnight is that you can easily read a book by the campfire :-) And then of course – S’mores before bed.

Today is gold panning day. We start off by driving out to a restored gold mining dredge, Dredge No. 4, several miles outside of Dawson City. This tour guide is also good, but she’s almost too good – she explains everything anyone would ever want to know about the operation of a gold mining dredge and then more. They also have a 20-minute movie about the dredge to watch after the tour.

Then we drive over to The Goldpanner Gold Mine. It’s back a dirt road, about 30 minutes off the Klondike Highway. We’re a little early for the tour, so the owner tells us to do some gold panning while we wait for the others to join us. We put on our boots, his assistant shows us how it’s done and we give it a try. Joe finds a large flake of gold within 5 minutes, but Jere & I have no luck. When the other couple arrives, we start our tour.

There are just 5 of us on the tour. The owner’s assistant and a tour-guide-in-training leads our tour of their working gold mine. All of the gold mines in this area are placer mining. There are about 150 of these small gold mines in the area. No large gold mine companies. They use a power shovel to dig through the permafrost to the layer of earth that contains the gold flakes.

Then they use a ‘gold mine plant’ to separate the rock/earth from the gold.

They take it through another step or two to purify, so that all that remains is 100% gold ore, which in this area is actually 80% gold/20% silver.

The tour takes about 90 minutes. It includes a ride in an old van through a creek and up a muddy road – Joe really enjoyed that part of the tour :-)

After the tour we try gold panning again. They bring us some fresh ‘dirt’ from the one mining sight we just toured and this time, everyone finds some flakes of gold. My last pan is my best pan and I find 5 flakes of gold. We really enjoyed the tour and the gold panning – lots of fun.

We drive back to the RV, have dinner and enjoy our HBO.

It is a beautiful, sunny morning! We drive up to Dome Hill, which is above Dawson City. The scenery from the Dome is incredible. You can see both the Yukon and Klondike Rivers from up here. A woman we meet up on the Dome tells us that this is where everyone in the area comes June 21 for the summer solstice. They watch the sunset and the sunrise from up here.

There are piles after piles of gold mine tailings around the Dawson City area and they are easily seen from up here. (Tailings are piles of stones. The piles are probably 15-20 feet high, 15-20 feet wide and can stretch for hundreds of yards.) The tailings were deposited by gold dredges in the early 1900s.

Then we drive down to Dawson City, have a snack by the river
and take the historical walking tour of the city. The tour guide is again wonderful, as all of the tour guides have been for our walking tours.

After our 90-minute tour we go see a free movie about the Klondike good time girls. We ask if the movie is appropriate for children and she explains that it is about the dance hall girls during the gold rush, but also admits that she’s never seen the whole thing. Well, they do mention a dance hall girl or two in the movie, but the entire second half of the movie (which the guide admitted that she hadn’t seen) is about prostitution in the gold mine camps. Jere and I both wish we had skipped this movie. However, the 100 year old restored theatre is interesting to see.

After the movie we have a very late lunch at Sourdough Joe’s Restaurant. Food is so-so, but we like the name “Sourdough Joe’s”. I try to talk Joe into getting a Sourdough Joe T-shirt, but he wants nothing to do with it. We walk around the gift shops in towns and then head over to Jack London’s cabin. Jack spent a year in Dawson City during the Klondike gold rush; the year he spent here gave him the experience to write Call of the Wild and White Fang. The cabin was originally outside of town, but someone moved it into town in order to preserve it for history.

We return to the RV, watch some TV, take a walk around the area, and then watch some more TV.