Top of the World

Day 26 – Tuesday, August 18th

We slept nearly ten hours and were still up and on the road before 8:00am. This would be our last day in Alaska and we were driving over the Top of the World Highway. We left Tok and immediately had the sense of driving into the wilderness. There were virtually no side roads or homes for 60 miles. We drove through alternating periods of showers and sunlight. Occasionally there would be other cars, but not many. The views were gorgeous, with lots of rolling mountains as our road climbed.

Even though we were expecting it, we gulped when we saw the sign “Pavement Ends” and we knew we had another 45 miles before we would see payment again. Almost immediately we had to dodge a grader trying to smooth out some of the potholes, ruts, and corduroy waves. It was helping but once were in front of it we had to fend for ourselves.

There is only one town on the road, the town of Chicken. It became a highlight for the day. This town purportedly got its name because they liked to eat the little ptarmigan birds, but no one knew how to spell it, so they used the alternate name for the creatures: Chicken. It was 75 miles out in the middle of nowhere, with a year-round population of maybe 9, in the summer 25 or so.

Chicken has three small business, who do most of their trading with tour busses and tourist who are on the adventurous Top of the World Highway. One especially interesting woman we met owns a little area called Beautiful Downtown Chicken: a store, bar and café. Her name is Susan Wiren, and part of what was interesting to us was that she moved here 21 years ago from the Philadelphia area where she ran a bookstore. She and her boyfriend at the time, decided to go on an adventure and move to Alaska. She found herself truly bored and jumped at the chance to buy the local café and bar. She then used all of her store owning and marketing background to create really a high quality tourist destination, including an amazing bookstore. We got to meet Susan and eat some of her still warm from the oven homemade pie. She talked about the difficulties in the current economic climate of keeping her business going, but she is doing it. Tired, by this point in the tourist season, but making it. She was pleased at Patti’s compliment on her book selection, but said she was sad that she had so much less book inventory than last year, just trying to cut back.

Although we had been warned by many people about the shape of the road, Dick felt like it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been portrayed. You just had to drive carefully. And we got a surprise that one we crossed the border into Canada, the road was mostly paved again.

Just over the border, now back in the Yukon, we stopped for lunch at the highest point of the Highway. It was a beautiful area, filled tiny flowers and berries, lichens, and many of the cairns that Canadians like to leave at special places. Patti climbed to the top of the highest hill with a large cairn. The view was splendid! We both took a lot of photos. It was clear that Fall is definitely in the air.

Dick commented that when he first imagined taking the trip to Alaska as a boy, that the alternating pavement and gravel road was what the Alaska Highway must have looked like, so this drive through the wild gave him the feeling he had hoped for as a young person. It was a very satisfying experience.

At the end of Top of the World Highway was another place we had wanted to visit: Dawson City. This had been a tiny sleepy town until in 1897 gold was discovered. Then, in two years it went from having 25 people to nearly 40,000! Gold Fever hit hard!

As we came off the Highway, we got glimpses of Dawson city and the mighty Yukon River. In order to get to the town, we got to ride on the ferry. We drove right on to our delight. At times, people have to wait up to 2 or 3 hours for their turn. Dawson City now has a population of around 1000 people, but they have worked hard at preserving the town as it was over a hundred years ago. Including none of the streets were paved and the sidewalks are all wood. It looks like a western movie set. What a lot of dust and mud! Since it was raining while we were there, we got the mud.

We spent several hours doing a quick tour of the area’s attractions. We enjoyed visiting the Jack London cabin. London lived here while looking for gold during the stampede. He didn’t find any but did find the settings for many of his most famous stories, such as White Fang and Call of the Wild. It was in the center next to the cabin where we met Dawne, a local woman with passion for Jack London and his writing. She had worked at his cabin and visitor’s center for the past 14 years, 12 years working closely with Dick North, the man who had rescued this cabin and gathered so many things together about Jack London’s life. We were sorry that had we missed her interpretive lecture earlier in the day. We always enjoy meeting people passionate about their work.

Dawson City is also the home of Robert Service who wrote The Cremation of Sam Magee. We drove by his cabin, but it had already closed for the night. So much history is in this land!

We also took in the Dawson City Museum, which focused, of course, heavily on Gold Rush artifacts, and also on First Nation culture. Patti also enjoyed a display of an old time trapper meeting a modern day dogsledder both carrying the same type of equipment. It was quite amusing. The equipment had changed dramatically in a hundred years. A lot more plastic and aluminum now. We kept trying to think about this sleepy town growing from 25 to 40,000 people in one year only to drop back again in a couple of years when the major gold dried up and they moved on.

We learned at dinner, at Sourdough Joe’s, that during the height of Gold Rush times, dinner of beans, bread, a stewed apple and coffee could cost $5. And, that a dinner that might cost $5 in Dawson City cost just $.30 in Seattle in 1899! Talk about prices being hiked up!

Even though there was more to see, we had miles and miles to go and so drove on to Moose Crossing and our campground of the evening. We are now officially headed home, The trip south will take us another 11 days of pretty steady traveling. We drove the evening through a rainstorm, our being led by a rainbow for miles and miles.

It wasn’t a very good night sleep. Not that cold, but VERY damp!