Sunday, July 5, 2015

North To Alaska. Or Rather, South.

Travel Day

  • Dawson City, YT to Tok, AK via YT 9 and AK 5, (Top of the World Highway and Taylor Highway)
On leaving Dawson to head for Alaska via the Top of the World Highway, the first thing you have to do is cross the Yukon River by ferry.

As you head up the hill past West Dawson, you get this terrific view back over Dawson City.

You also get a great view of the Klondike where it joins the Yukon.

Bye, bye Dawson City!

It's called the Top of the World Highway. Like the Dempster, it runs along the ridges and high up the mountain sides. You get some terrific views from here.

Another look from the view at the Top of the World.

If you can read this, it gives you an idea about the highway itself.

Yep, that is one dirty truck. The roads up here are dirty, dusty, and rough. At least some of them are.

The border crossing between Yukon and Alaska.

I think both the US and Canada work out of this building. It's a small border crossing, the most northerly highway crossing between the two countries.

As you come past the border crossing, you head down into the valley of the Chicken. Yep, that's the name of the river, or creek, depending on your point of view.

The town takes good advantage of its name. The biggest business is the souvenir shop at the RV park.

The town itself is just this one string of tourist buildings.

But it continues to make good use of the name. There are chickens everywhere.

What a lot of people forget is that this is the location of the Chicken River gold strike. There are still people mining the area, searching for gold. This is one of the old dredges, left behind when the big strike petered out.

Yep, that's a big chicken.

As you move south from Chicken, you move through a large number of burned areas. They are pretty large.

Finally, the Taylor Highway joins the Alaska Highway. We headed further west.

About 10 miles west of Tetlin Junction, where the Taylor Highway joins the Alaska Highway, you cross the Tok River.

Our destination for the day. Tok, Alaska.

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