Dawson City, YT to Chicken, AK Via The Top of the World Highway

After over a week spent in Dawson City, YT the Top of the World Highway border crossing finally opened at 9:00am on Friday, 5/20/11.  We got everything ready to travel and headed down to the ferry launch.  Our ferry is on it’s way to our side of the Yukon River.

We’re loaded onto the ferry and ready to cross the river.

We’re almost to the other side.

The ferry has landed on the other side of the river and we wait for cars to unload before we can move.

Unlike the tractor with the crawler hoe we watched the other day, we off loaded without any problems and they didn’t need to place any boards beneath our tires at all.  We’re off the ferry and headed on over the Top of the World Highway.

Here are a couple of photos as we travel the Top of the World Highway.  This one shows how good the road can be.

And this one shows a rougher patch of road.

The green buildings are the Canadian/US border buildings.  We passed through without any problems.

After a little over three hours on the road, we arrived at Chicken, Alaska for the night.  Here are a couple of photos from the town of Chicken.

 

 

In our travels today, we only saw one snowshoe rabbit.  We didn’t have enough fuel to comfortably get to Tok, so we did take on some diesel at town of Chicken and that gave us a free boondocking campsite for the night.  Chicken is just gearing up for the tourist season and we helped them initiate their credit card processing equipment.  We spent some time in the afternoon to collect some diamond willow, had a beer at the Chicken Saloon, and are now back at camp for the evening.  Tomorrow we plan to drive to Tok where we will probably stay for 2-3 nights.

Jack London Cabin and Museum

We decided to have lunch in Dawson City today and tried the Jack London Grill.  It was a very good meal, and it must have inspired us to visit the Jack London Cabin and Museum which we didn’t see while here in 2009.  We had an Alaska Toursaver coupon that admitted us on a two for the price of one deal saving us $5.00.  This photo is of the inside of the cabin which you can actually get to without going inside the museum.

The museum was inside an adjacent cabin and included many photos of life in the gold rush era when Jack London lived in Dawson City.  It was interesting, but I don’t think we would have wanted to pay more than the discounted price.

It was still early in the day so we drove out by the Dawson City Airport and saw this unusual plane.  Ron…what kind of plane is this?

We waited around for a while to watch a Yukon Airlines plane take off.  It started down the runway, aborted for some reason, and returned to a location near the terminal building.  We took another short drive up Hunker Creek and returned to the airport in time to see another plane take off.

 

We’re obviously finding some strange things to occupy our time as we wait for the Top of the World Highway to open.  They are now predicting that it will open on Friday, but we’ll check tomorrow at the visitor’s center.  We’re ready to get to Alaska!  We did see 1 black bear today.

 

Finally…a Beautiful and Warm Day in Dawson City

 

It was a beautiful and warm day in Dawson City today with temperatures reaching into the mid 60’s.  What a pleasant change in weather and we sure hope it’s a continuing trend.  We decided to have lunch in town today for a change of pace and drove to check on the status of the ferry first.  We had heard that they planned to launch it today, so we fully expected to get there and see it already in the river.  It would have been, but they found a crack in the hull that required welding before the launching.  We arrived there just as the welding work was getting completed and were able to witness the launch.  The first three photos show the progress of the launch from Ken’s viewpoint down close to the river at one end of the ferry.  The fourth photo was taken after the ferry already made one trip across the water with a backhoe that keeps the landing area in good condition.  It is taking the road grader across to complete work on the Top of the World Highway to get it ready for traffic.  We did make a stop at the visitor center and the highway is still tentatively scheduled to open on 5/22.  However, they did say that officials in Tok, AK said the Alaska border agents would be there on 5/19…so we’ll see what happens.

 

 

 

 

This is a video I made from above the ferry launch site that shows the bulldozers pushing it down the ramp and into the Yukon River. It’s a little shaky at times, but the video is something new to me.

 

After watching the launch of the George Black Ferry, we went to Sourdough Joe’s for lunch.  We both ordered the cod fish and chips and we had differing opinions.  Ken really liked his and I found them okay but I wouldn’t order them again.  The fish had a really unusual batter that I have never seen at other restaurants.  Now I have something to really look forward to in Alaska…much better fish and chips!

After lunch, we drove up Bonanza Creek since it was still early and the weather was nice.  Here is a photo of Dredge #4:

 

We also stopped at the Bonanza Creek Discovery Claim.  Since we were here in 2009, this site has been developed with an interpretive trail with signs and mining exhibits.  Parks Canada did a fantastic job and we highly recommend it as a stop if you’re in Dawson City.

 

A Slow Day in Dawson City

Our planned trip on Sunday up the Dempster Highway is going to be a long day, so we decided to just hang out at the RV today.  We did some catch up work in the RV and some relaxing.  After watching the NASCAR race, we decided to go for a drive into town and up to Midnight Dome.  In town, we found the “drydock” location for the Klondike Spirit which is a paddle wheeler style that cruises the Yukon River during the tourist season.

We drove by the cabins of world famous writers.  The first one was the home of Robert Service.

 

And next was the cabin of Jack London.

This high cache for food storage is also on the property of Jack London’s cabin.

Tourists and locals in the area drive to the top of Midnight Dome to celebrate the midnight sun and a fantastic view of the Klondike.

Here’s a view of our campground from the Dome.  Our motorhome is just a small white speck to the right of a power pole and backed up to the highway above the lower large blue building.

This bench sits at the highest point on the dome.

This is just a small portion of Dawson City as seen from the top.

And here is a spectacular view of the Yukon River.

 

And that’s the end of another great day of our Alaska adventure.

Dawson City, YT–Checking on the Ferry

 

Today was a kind of quiet day for us.  We just hung out at the RV all morning and then this afternoon we drove into Dawson City to check out the visitor’s center and find out when the Top of the World Highway might be opened for traffic.  The visitor’s center had 3 short (15 minute) films that we watched:  “Dawson During the Gold Rush”, “Frozen Gold of the Klondike”, and “Days of the Riverboats”.  Here are a couple of photos from the downtown area.  The streets are all dirt and the town has an old mining town appearance.

 

 

Here’s the ferry we will be taking to cross the Yukon River.  Workers are busy getting it ready for the season, and they are hoping to have it in the river on Monday.  It will take equipment across the river to clear the road, and then the customs people are expected to cross a couple of days later.  The visitor’s center had a tentative opening date for the ferry of May 22nd.  It could be earlier than that, and we are hoping that will be the case.

 

 

This is where the ferry will actually land on the Dawson City side.

Heavy equipment is continually busy when the ferry is running, keeping the landing area built up.

 

Looking across the river is the landing on the opposite shore.  The entrance to the provincial campground can be seen there also.

 

After the short visit to town, we returned to our campground backed up to the highway.  It’s actually pretty quiet and we don’t hear much traffic noise.

 

It’s looking like Sunday will have nicer weather, so we’re tentatively planning on a long day touring the Dempster Highway.  That will probably make Saturday another lazy day.

Late breaking information…a bear has been sighted on the hillside across the highway from the campground.

The Silver Trail and on to Dawson City, YT

 

Our plan for today was to pack our lunch and continue the remaining distance of the Silver Trail.  We started on the trail when we turned off the Klondike Highway at Stewart Crossing yesterday afternoon and stopping in Mayo for the night.  It was below freezing overnight and windy this morning, but we got a fairly early start and started driving northeast toward Elsa and Keno City.

 

One of the prominent sights along the road was Mount Haldane, elevation 6,023 feet.

 

Elsa is on the route to Keno City.  It is now an active mining and reclamation site with no visitor access.

 

 

When we arrived at the town of Keno City, it was still below freezing and we weren’t up to a walking tour of the town.  Here are a couple of photos of historic buildings in town.  This one is the All Saints Anglican Church which is now used as a library. 

 

I found this building to be the most unique in Keno City.  It is called the Beer Bottle House.  This house was moved by Geordie Dobson from Calumet, an abandoned mining town nearby in the late 1960s.  He had bought the Keno City Hotel prior to refunds for glass bottles.  He felt that there was some insulation value in the glass since many of the oldtimers used stacked bottles instead of window panes.  So, he began to layer the bottles around his house.  His project began in 1966 and it took him 4 years and 32,000 “stubby” beer bottles to finish his job.  The house is very warm which is probably helped by 60cm (2 feet) of mortar.

 

Once again, we found that we here to early and the museum and other places of interest were not open yet.  There seems to be a magic date of May 15th before things open in the north, and they’re sticking to that date.  We were back to the motorhome by noon, ate our picnic lunch, packed up and were on the road north.  We were headed for the junction of the Dempster Highway to spend a couple of nights and to be able to explore that road.

 

Once again, our plans changed and we headed for Dawson City figuring that we would just add the extra mileage from there to explore the Dempster Highway.  When we were in Dawson City in 2009, we stayed at Bonanza Gold RV Park and decided that would be a good stop this time.  When we checked in, we asked about when the Top of the World Highway might open and they thought it would be the 17th or possibly the 19th.  Usually it is open by May 15th (that magical date).  We’ll plan on going into town tomorrow and see what we can find out at the visitor center.  We traveled a little over 141 miles today from Mayo to Dawson City in the RV and from Mayo to Keno City and back in the truck was about 65 miles.  We did see some wildlife today, but they were quicker than my camera:  1 moose, 1 bear, and 1 porcupine.

 

6/9 - 6/11/09 - Dawson City, Yukon Territory

Here are some of things we did while in Dawson City, YT:

Free gold panning at Claim #6 - no luck for us!

We took the tour of Dredge #4.

The next 5 photos are of a few of the 30 cars taking part in the 2009 Bentley Canada Alaska Tour http://www.bentleyalaska.com/Home

The ferry crossing on the Yukon River in Dawson City.