Dawson City, Yukon Territory

We approached the Canadian Border at a place called Poker Creek, Alaska. There were only a couple buildings at the crossing check point and a small house for the border agents.

We continued on, into the Canadian Yukon Territory, across a luxurious paved road on to Dawson City. Along the side of the road, we found this abandoned cabin that was being used as an emergency shelter if you broke down in the winter going across on your snowmobile. It was cute and cozy and would do until someone rescued you.

Below is our view of Dawson City before we descended a switchback section of road leading down to the Yukon River ferry crossing.

Dawson City sits on the east side of the mighty Yukon River. There is a small ferry boat that takes traffic back and forth across the river. It is free of charge and the ferry held about 5 vehicles plus one large truck or RV rig at a time.

The road was again gravel by the river. The ferry boat came up to the loading area on the side of the river, made only of gravel, and rammed its loading ramp into the gravel. It held the boat in place by gunning its engine against the current to keep the ramp firmly stuck into the gravel bank. Vehicles heading west exited the ferry then 3 or 4 ferry loading people carefully guided the east-bound vehicles onto the ferry in an orderly fashion until it was full. You bounce roughly over the area where the ramp sticks into the gravel and you stay in your vehicle for the actual river crossing which takes 4 minutes.

The loading/unloading process took about 3 minutes each, plus the 4 minute crossing, plus another 3 minutes to unload on the other side for a total of about 15 minutes per crossing cycle. As we came down the mountain and arrived at the river crossing, there were many vehicles in line ahead of us. Simple math told us that we would be there for about 1 and ½ hour before our turn to cross. We fiddled around with the radio and found one station for Dawson City. It played a mixture of Smashing Pumpkins, old REM songs, and the Rolling Stones.

It was fun to watch the little ferry load and unload its vehicles and passengers as it made its trip back and forth across the river. It gave us a chance to get some close-up photos of the operation. The ferry ran 24 hours per day in the summers.

On the west side of the river where we were waiting in line for the ferry, there was a ‘tent city’ for all the summer employees for the gift shops, musical reviews, restaurants, museums, theaters, etc. in Dawson City. Scads of young people take the ferry back and forth, all hours of the day, depending on their shifts. It looks like it would be a fun way to spend a summer, and not as grueling as the work in the fish canneries.

Earlier in the day when Paul was there to get the new leaf spring, he wisely stopped into the RV park that was actually in the town and paid for a reservation for us. He found out that they completely fill by about 1 PM every day, and we wanted to be in town so we could walk to all the sites and activities. That way, it didn’t matter how late we got in, we knew we’d have a space.

We got set up in our reserved space and had dinner then set out on the town to see the sights. Each space came with a picnic table, and a pallet for a porch as it was very wet and muddy a good deal of the time.

We went into town and stopped into a place called Klondike Kate’s and an old-time gambling hall called Diamond Tooth Gerties. They had slot machines, poker, roulette, can-can dancers and piano players. Everyone was dressed in period costumes and it was a lively place.

I got a $20.00 roll of quarters and played the slot machines for a while. I won and lost enough to break even and as we were headed out the door, I dropped two quarters in one last poker slot machine. Up came 5 deuces! My machine started beeping and bells rang and out clinked 400 quarters into my little tray! I had won $100.00! How lucky is that??? When I cashed out, my original $20.00 roll of quarters had morphed into $126.00!

We bought tickets to the Gaslight Follies for the next night. It was an old time vaudeville review in the restored Grand Palace Opera House. We got one of those cute little box seats overlooking the stage with cool little lace curtains – using some of our new-found wealth from my luck at Diamond Tooth Gerties. The follies were pure silliness with singing, dancing, dumb jokes, etc. It was lots of fun.

The town was restored just like it was back in the gold rush days with people dressed up in costumes. There was a real Royal Canadian Mountie riding his horse around town dressed in a red coat and tall black leather boots. ‘A good-looking young fellow – and I half expected him to be belting out “Oh Rose Marie, I love you” or Indian Love Call, ala the old Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movie called Rose Marie. It’s setting was in the Canadian gold rush days.

Unlike most touristy towns you visit, there were not just endless fudge shops and gift shops full of cheap souvenirs from Taiwan. There were interesting gold rush trinkets and native art and historical things. It was a fun place I’d like to visit again some day.

We visited the cabins of both Jack London and Robert Service – famous authors who each spent time there while writing their stories and poetry. Their cabins had been lovingly preserved by their fans.

Above is Jack London’s little house. Too cute. It was furnished with the same pieces he lived with when he was living and writing there.

Here is Robert Service’s cabin. Every afternoon, an actor dressed like Robert service would come out and sit in that wicker chair and give a recitation of his poetry. His most famous poem is the Cremation of Sam McGee. Its a long story-poem that is very entertaining and captures life in the gold rush days completely.

Before we left Dawson City, we re-provisioned with groceries, did loads of laundry, and various other tasks getting ready for our next big trek up to Inuvik on the Arctic Ocean – way up in the Northwest Territories. It was more than another 500 miles further north of where we were in Dawson City. We were looking forward to getting back into the Arctic again – to the incredible vastness and remoteness. We would be arriving in Inuvik just in time for their annual native arts festival where artists from all over the Arctic come to show their works. They also featured native dancing, music and foods.

Our campground neighbor at the Gold Rush Campground left that same morning to turn back to British Columbia where he and his family lived. Their family had come up there with the intention of going all the way to Inuvik, but they had heard scare stories from some people coming back from Inuvik about how arduous the trek was. They chickened out and were going back to Whitehorse then on home.

It was sad because the people telling those stories were people who went up there with marginal tires and rigs which there was plenty of warning not to do. Besides, what is the worst thing that could happen? You might break down and be delayed or inconvenienced for a while. You’d survive, and it would become just another part of your adventure. We were not scared off by the thought of a flat tire or two, or a bad road. We didn’t go all the way up there from Michigan only to turn back. So we were off again on our next leg of our exploring!

The ‘Top of the World’ Highway

This journal entry was written while sitting on top of the world in a pull-out along the Top of the World Highway. We were about at Milepost 12 after turning onto this highway on our way across to visit the towns of Chicken and Eagle Alaska. Eagle is at the end of a 65-mile long side road and we would turn around in Eagle and backtrack to continue on to Dawson City, Yukon. We had views seemingly forever in all directions from where we were parked.

When we first turned onto this highway at Tetlin Junction, a few miles east of Tok just across the Tanana River, we drove through areas where forest fires were burning – thus creating the yellowish, smokey haze in Tok. We asked at the Visitor’s Center in Tok about where the fire fighting was happening and they told us that they didn’t put forest fires out in the northern climes because it would be impossible to do so. They explained that there were almost no roads into the interior, and even if they rounded up every living person is the area, it wouldn’t be enough people to put out a forest fire. They just let them burn until rain puts them out, or winter arrives. They said they always get extinguished in the winter. They do work fires along major roads and near towns, though, of which there are not many. Most of the work along roads is traffic management – keeping vehicles away while a fire crosses a road.

The fires were drifting across from where we were headed, so once we got past them, we wouldn’t have to worry about them catching up to us.

The Top of the World Highway, also known as the Taylor Highway on the Alaska section, is a 230-mile long mostly gravel road, that is only open to vehicular traffic from May until September 15th. It winds and climbs through gorgeous mountains and gold-filled rivers and streams. It was 66 miles across to Chicken from Tetlin Junction. It is located a few miles shy of the road that goes to Eagle.

Calling Chicken a ‘town’ is not something a person would ordinarily think of doing. However, a ‘town’ in these parts may contain only 2 or 3 people and any kind of permanent building or cabin. Chicken had a population of about 10 people, which probably qualified it as a ‘city’ by Alaska standards. It contain a fueling station, a liquor store, a saloon, and a combination cafe and gift shop.

It also had a U.S. Post Office. The post office was open sometimes – when the mail came in or needed to go out.

We decided to have our lunch in our RV but I did buy a purple T-Shirt in the gift shop that said “I got Laid in Chicken Alaska.”

Paul put a lot of energy into trying to convince me that I couldn’t wear the T-Shirt in good conscience unless the “deed were actually done.” Silly Paul.

The first residents of Chicken wanted to name their town ‘Ptarmigan’ but no one knew how to spell it, so they just called it Chicken. As you can see in my earlier photo, gas was $1.79 per liter (we were in Canada remember), which was $7.16 per gallon – outrageous in 1999 – but maybe an incredible bargain now. We had a giant, 100 gallon diesel fuel tank in the bed of our truck, and with two large tanks that came with our heavy-duty truck, we had 175 gallons of diesel when we were fueled up. We could go about 1000 miles between fill ups, so it would be a while before we needed to buy fuel again.

The cafe had the usual hamburgers and fries, but the burgers started at $11.95. There was a separate charge added on for condiments, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cheese, etc. It was like a pizza – you chose what you wanted on it and paid extra for each item. A six-pack of cheap beer in the liquor store was $13.00.

We left Chicken and headed on up the road to the turn-off to Eagle.

This road is 65 miles of two-track dirt (mud!) road. It winds its way up mountains and down into valleys and across rivers and streams. It took the entire day to drive it. At one point, the road was one-lane only and hugged the edge of a precipice dropping down into O’Brian Creek, and it would be impossible for 2 vehicles to pass each other. The unwritten rule for situations like this, is that the vehicle that backs up to a wide spot is the one on the inside and uphill part of the road. We managed to get past this 1 ½ – mile stretch without incident.

However, just a couple miles further along, we passed a huge Princess Cruise bus coming from the other direction. We inched past each other but there would have been no way we could have passed each other on the same road a couple miles back. We were very glad we didn’t have that problem. In fact, the cruise bus was traveling with a pilot car that would go ahead and stop oncoming traffic in the narrow parts of the road until the bus got past. We could have used one of those pilot cars on a lot of the roads we traveled up there.

A few miles outside of Eagle, we came to a stretch of road that was listed in our gold panning guide as a free, claim-less area open to the public where we could recreationally pan for gold. It was a 5-mile section of American Creek that ran close enough to the road to be within the legal right-of-way and people couldn’t stake claims on it. It was one of the primo bonanza creeks back in the gold rush days in 1898. Most all of the creek is still locked up in registered gold claims that are being actively mined by people. We parked as far to the side of the road as we could get, gathered up our buckets, gold pans, our shovel, insulated gold panning gloves and a coarse grave strainer.

As you can see here, the American Creek is very actively mined along flat stretches in the bottoms of the valleys. We could look down from the main road and see that this area below us was accessible by a steep hair-pin switchback road that would not be suitable for our RV rig. Besides, we had heard that miners were serious about mining and didn’t want to be interrupted by tourists taking up their mining time. You could only mine about 3 – 4 months of the year between thaw out and freeze up, so they didn’t waste any time. They’d mine 24 hours per day in shifts during the summer months because it was always light out.

We used our newly-acquired gold panning knowledge we learned at our prospecting seminar in Fairbanks. We dug out some gravel from beneath a large rock in the middle of the stream, which created a natural riffle which collects gold, (the theory) and dumped it into our gravel strainer and washed through it with creek water. We found a chunk of quartz about an inch in diameter and two inches long with a glop of gold stuck in it on the very first strainer sifting!!! Boy were we excited!! We panned out the rest of the sand that fell through the strainer into our bucket, but we didn’t find anymore gold. We played around digging under rocks in the creek but that one lucky nugget was all we found. We had a lot of fun gold panning there, but we’d hate to be dependent on finding enough gold to make a living at prospecting.

Here is a photo of our fantastic gold nugget surrounded by quartz rock. We keep it in a little velvet-lined rosewood box. It is a treasure of a souvenir from our gold panning success in the American Creek in Alaska.

We finally got into Eagle and decided to get a campsite and tour around Eagle the next day.

The Eagle Bureau of Land Management Campground was gorgeous – deep in some mossy, Sitka spruce woods. There were fire rings and picnic tables at each site. The charge was $8.00 per night.

The next day, we toured Eagle. It was a major transportation hub for miners in the gold rush in the late 1800s as it could be accessed via the Yukon River which flows past it. Supplies could be brought in on boats in the summer months. The U.S Army also maintained a base there with a communications facility in 1903 but they abandoned it in 1911 with the invention of wireless communications. They left behind their buildings which were still intact and being maintained as museums.

Here is one of the old Army barracks that soldiers lived in in the early 1900s. This place has significance for us since it is the place where we had stopped briefly to take a look at when our little dog, Tink, accidentally hit the ‘lock’ button on the inside of the truck and locked us out. Uh-oh. We were a couple of wilderness miles from our campsite and this place wasn’t exactly a thoroughfare. We had not even seen any other vehicle traffic.

So, Paul said he’d walk back to the campground, braving bears, to get our spare keys. Ish. I was to stay with the truck with the dog locked inside. He started walking and met up with a couple in a pick-up truck coming from the campground. They stopped to ask him why he was on foot in the grizzly-infested woods. He told them what happened, so they turned their truck around and gave him a ride back to our RV and then brought him back to the Army barracks building to meet up with me. Alaska travelers look out for each other and never fail to stop and help a fellow traveler. So very nice.

We went on into the tiny town of Eagle on the Yukon River. In this photo, you can see the Yukon River with Eagle Bluff rising up 1000 feet high right next to it.

There was a dock on the river as people came in on the Yukon Queen from Dawson City, Yukon Territory to visit Eagle then go back to Dawson City as a day trip. The boat ride on the Yukon River was gorgeous. The town had a small cafe that was open in the summers only. They had a gift shop, a small store, a National Park Visitor Center, and a post office. Groceries, mail, packages, etc. all come in to Eagle via float planes that land on the river and tie up to the ferry dock to load and unload. There is a Fred Meyer grocery and supply catalog that the residents all have that shows everything that can be flown in by them. So people ordered their food and household supplies and other things they needed using a satellite phone in town, and then it would get delivered by float plane later in the week. You’d go down to the dock and pick up your order from the plane.

The post office was tiny and had a large photo on their bulletin board of all of the residents of the town taken the previous winter with their snowmobiles. Snowmobiles or sleds with dog teams were the only mode of transportation during winters.

We met a man who was walking along a dirt road with his two children and large dog, just outside of Eagle. He said he had walked from his cabin into town to visit the store and the post office and was on his way back to his cabin. He was carrying a high-powered hunting rifle. We asked him if he was hunting, and he replied that he needed the rifle in case of grizzly bears. He said the week before, he had been menaced by a large grizzly on his walk into town, and the sound of his gun scared the bear away. He said if you lived around there, you’d never go anywhere without a powerful gun, because the bears would kill and eat you if they got a chance. They could be very dangerous. We immediately thought of Paul walking alone through the woods to go back to our RV to get the extra keys. Too scary.

On our way back to our campsite, we stopped to walk Tink at a beautiful hillside covered with wild flowers. When we were wandering around on it, we noticed that it was carpeted by patches of wild strawberries. These were tiny little ruby-colored jewels – only the size of peas or maybe chick peas at the largest – but to say they were spectacular in flavor would be an understatement. I got some bags out of the truck and Paul and I picked for 30 minutes, collecting enough for about ½ of a recipe of freezer jam. I always had Sure-Jell with me for just such a serendipitous occasion. It turned out great and we enjoyed it on our toast in the morning for a long time.

Wild strawberries have a taste and texture nothing like the berries you buy in the supermarkets. I don’t know what growers have done to change those store-bought berries into the tasteless monstrosities that they are now. We were excited that the wild strawberries, blueberries, and huckleberries would all be getting ripe across the areas we would be traveling over the next month, or so. We watched for more opportunities to gather some of this wonderful wild fruit.

We left Eagle the next morning and made our way back up to the main road and on to Dawson City, Yukon Territory. Once we got to the turn-off junction, we were only 9 miles from the Canadian border. We decided to stop at a large turn-out parking area and have a late lunch before we continued on into Canada. As we pulled off the main road and into the parking area, we broke a spring on the trailer. Oh no! We were going no further until repairs could be made which meant having to come up with another leaf spring.

We ate a small late lunch and admired the beautiful view while we assessed our situation.

One-half mile back, we had passed through a tiny place called Boundary, Alaska, population 5. They had a gas pump and a sign saying they did tire repair. So Paul unhitched the truck from the trailer and drove back to Boundary to see if perchance they had a leaf spring. Not a chance. They did tell him that Dawson City was only 68 miles away and they were a big enough place that they would surely have such a thing. They said that after the border, the road was even paved.

However, the border crossing was only open from 8 AM to 8 PM so there was no way for Paul to get all the way to Dawson City, find a leaf spring somewhere, and get back before the border closed. So we decided to relax, hike around, and climb the mountain next to us, and spend the night right where we were. Paul would set out the next morning, cross the border at 8 AM and have the whole day to get to Dawson City, locate a new spring, and get back before the border closed at 8 PM.

The hike up the mountain was gorgeous. Views in all directions! Wild flowers covered the hillside. That far north we were above the treeline except for these 2 beautiful, lone trees. The rest of the hill was covered by arctic tundra. Gorgeous miniature wildflowers were everywhere.

Yellow ones!

Blue ones!

White ones!

These looked just like any wildflowers you’d see in the ‘lower 48 states’ but they were in miniature – only about 6 inches tall – in the tundra because of the short and tough growing season in the far north. We saw a marmot sitting on a rock whistling his marmot song to us. We saw a mother ptarmigan with three little baby ptarmigans following her. We saw a beautiful fox near our RV in the parking area.

We played cards until late, then I read the first section of John McPhee’s book “Coming Into the Country” to Paul before we went to sleep in the utter silence of the northern wilderness. There was actually a moonrise in the dusky evening sky which was incredibly beautiful.

The next morning at 8 AM, Paul headed out for Dawson City while Tink and I held down the fort. I got in a lot of quiet reading, crossword puzzles, and writing in my journal. I was so hoping that Paul would be successful in hunting down a new leaf spring and he’d get back early and make the repair so we could be on our way. Of all the places to have a mechanical break down, this one topped the list in beauty.

Paul returned in the early afternoon, a new leaf spring in hand.

He used our hydraulic jack and leveling blocks to get the trailer up high enough where he could work on the underside.

He crawled underneath and began the arduous task of removing the broken spring and replacing it with the new one.

The spring project took over 2 hours – which seemed amazing to me since it looked far more complex than a 2-hour project. Paul had to use 2 hydraulic jacks and many of our stocked Lego-like leveling blocks. Akin to the telescope repair I spoke of in an earlier segment, traveling in this rough country requires someone along with incredible mechanical repair skills.

In the process of all the jacking up and around of the trailer, the ‘shackles’ on the opposite side ‘flipped over.’ Whereas when you look at springs from the sides, they should be in a position that resembles a smile, ours now looked like a frown. This is bad. So when he got the broken spring replaced on the one side of the trailer, he had to go around and jack up the opposite side until those frowning springs flipped back so they smiled again. Ta-dah!!

It was 3 PM with plenty of time to get across the border and on to Dawson City, since the road from the border on was actually paved – a rarity to see in this back country. So, we were back on our way traveling again.

Fairbanks to Tok, Alaska

We were getting back to quasi-civilization.We spent the night at the Yukon River Crossing. Alaska”s only bridge over the Yukon River is located there. The next time we crossed the Yukon River, later in the month on our way to Dawson City, Yukon Territories, it was by ferry boat.

We met a young man there that was headed north to Prudhoe Bay. He stopped us to ask how the trip was going. He told us about a place we could wash our truck and trailer before getting back into Fairbanks. It was at an unmarked turnout kind of place with an artesian well and a long garden hose. It was back off the main road – down a long gravel drive at exactly milepost 60.6. He said to watch carefully or we’d miss it.

He was lamenting that he thought he maybe should turn back because the road was so terribly rough. He was driving a small SUV. He said it was his lifelong dream to drive the Haul Road all the way to the end. We told him to not give up. If we could make it pulling our big rig all the way, he certainly could, too, driving an SUV. We told him he would always be glad he did it and not have any regrets about not turning back. We showed him a photo of the road in the rain with a big oil company truck passing by. We told him that we made it through this kind of stuff and it wasn’t so bad. The next few days were supposed to be sunny and dry so his trip wouldn’t be so bad at all.

He said he was hoping to try some gold panning but he left his gold pan back in Fairbanks. We gave him one of ours and told him we’d buy another one at the Fred Meyer store in Fairbanks where we were headed. They only cost $5.00 there, and he was welcome to accept ours along with our good wishes. We wouldn’t take any money from him. He was just the age of our own sons and we were happy to see him off on a adventure of a lifetime.

We found the artesian well vehicle washing station right where he said it was located and we thought we would just rinse the major mud off our rig. TWO HOURS later, we gave up and decided we’d have to pay for a wash at a truck wash in Fairbanks. The water from the well was just above the freezing level and Paul had to wear his insulated gold panning gloves in order to operate the hose nozzle, it was so cold.

We stopped in to the BLM Visitor Center for a few minutes to tell them we made it back safely from our trek north. The lady showed us where a large grizzly bear had pushed in their window screen the night before and warned us to be careful if we camped near there. I was sad to say we hadn’t seen any bears since we left Denali a few weeks back.

We got into Fairbanks and got our RV rig professionally washed at a truck wash. It cost $40.00. Yikes. Also after it was all cleaned up, Paul inspected the underside of our frame and found many cracked welds that clearly needed to be repaired. So we then found ourselves over at the Peger Road Industrial Park.

We located a heavy equipment welding business in this industrial park area. Hutch’s Welding did heavy equipment welding for the oil, mining and lumber industries.

Hutch said he could fix us up where we’d never break down. He showed us where to park our rig for a couple of days and he said he’d run an electrical line to our RV and we could just camp at his place.

It was just as grim as it looks in this photo. We were backed into a space between enormous, broken down, ghostly-looking equipment waiting its turn to be repaired. He told us to just tour around the Fairbanks area during the daytime for a couple of days, but we HAD to be back before 6 PM at night because that is when he closed down, locked up, and let the dogs out! He said for us to NOT go outside our RV, for any reason, after he let the dogs out or we’d be killed by them. No problem. We were not going to challenge some Cujo, junkyard dogs. We took his advice seriously – especially after seeing the dogs.

He fabricated and welded long, angle-iron braces down both sides of our trailer frame which he assured us would make it impervious to the off-road stresses from driving on unimproved roads. We needed to get the work done here, as Fairbanks was the largest town we’d be in for the next 6 weeks. So we unhitched the truck and took it into the Ford dealer and got it completely serviced while Hutch welded away on our trailer.

We spent one afternoon at a Musk Ox raising farm. It was so much fun seeing real Musk Oxen after not seeing any in the wild on our trip to Prudhoe Bay. We just didn’t get lucky with that.

The little ones were so cute, too. They are totally a herd animal and always want to have other musk ox close by. They are protective of their young and when they are threatened by bears or wolves, they will form a circle putting all the babies in the center, then chase and butt the predators away. They can be viscous and actually drive away grizzlies and wolves by working together.

The farm also had a large number of Sandhill Cranes that spent the summers there. They had a fenced off feeding station area to attract the cranes and the same ones came back year after year bringing their off-spring with them.

These birds stand about 4-5 feet tall. We used to see them in the spring in Michigan and we were surprised to see that they migrated so far north in the summers.

The next morning we stopped in again at the Alaska Prospectors Store to get more information on gold panning.

We signed up for an afternoon gold panning seminar offered by the owner. Our instructor was a man named Jim Madonna, a weird-as-hell PhD Geologist from the University of Alaska who spends all his spare time prospecting for gold. He also does consulting for mining companies. He taught us where to look for gold, the geology of gold deposits, and how to pan for it. We practiced panning for gold with piles of gravel that miners would drop off at his parking lot. It was super fun and we actually panned out some gold dust. We are excited to do some more panning as we drive through the Yukon over the next month or so.

As it became clear that we might still have to be in Fairbanks over the Fourth of July due to the welding extravaganza happening on our RV, I asked the lady in the prospectors store where would be a good place to watch the fireworks. She replied “We have great fireworks here in Fairbanks, but you’ll have to come back next January to see them – when it is dark.” Duh. I hadn’t thought about that.

We stopped into Fred Meyer and bought some groceries and another gold pan and hurried back to our abode at Hutch’s before he closed and let his dogs out. We hunkered down inside for the night and had a nice dinner, watched a little satellite TV then went to bed. By the next afternoon, Hutch was done with the welding repairs on our RV and we settled the bill with him. $750.00! Yikes! There was no choice, however, as the places we’d be traveling over the next few weeks were going to be far more rugged than where we’d been so far. We realize how lucky we were to get all that work done in Prudhoe Bay by the pipeline company welders, who did it for free – except for a few dozen cookies.

The next day was the Fourth of July so we left Hutch’s Welding and headed south on Highway 2 – the Richardson Highway – which connects Fairbanks to Delta Junction. Our destination was Quartz Lake, a pristine lake just north of Delta Junction. We got one of the last remaining campsites at the park.

We spent a night on Quartz Lake with our adult children back in 1991. We remembered it as an idyllic little state park, hidden away 3 miles off the Richardson Highway. We were pretty much the only ones there along with a few fly fishermen. At that time, they did not allow power boats of any kind. We fly fished for trout and grayling and arctic char while we kept an eye on a lazy moose grazing along the shore in the shallows. A beautiful fox followed us around in the parking area looking for hand-outs.

We got settled then strolled down to the lake to see about renting a row boat or canoe and getting a fishing license. What a shock!! The lake was carpeted with a flotilla of jet skis and power boats! The parking lot had been enlarged wiping out much of the the lakeside vegetation and it was packed by RVs and campers that were too large to fit into campsites. All the boats were rented out and they didn’t sell fishing licenses there anymore. They had armed park rangers going around checking people to make sure they had fishing licenses. We walked back to our campsite and put our fly fishing gear away as it was clear we weren’t going to be fishing.

Developers had struck with a vengeance since 1991 and the lake was ringed by cottages and cabins. Power boats were now allowed on the water. The moose and foxes were gone along with any other hope of seeing wildlife. It was like a big spring break beach party. It was our fault for going back to a place almost 10 years later and expecting it to be unchanged. Such a disappointment, but just the way life is. We did walk back to the shore late in the evening and got a spectacular photo of the sun partially setting.

This is how we remembered it from before when you didn’t see a ton of power boats. I’ll always think of it this way.

The next morning we got back on the Richardson Highway and continued south to Delta Junction. We stopped and got our Alcan Highway certificate from the visitor’s center located there. The Alcan Highway starts in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and ends at Delta Junction, Alaska, stretching a total of 1422 miles.

We drove around the little town looking at all the sled dog kennels and training areas, and while doing this, we saw a man mowing his roof using a power lawn mower!

He had an adorable little log cabin with a sod roof. We saw many of those up in the far north. There were even some pretty wildflowers growing in the sod. I want a roof like that!!

We took a neat photo of ourselves at the historic point at the end of the Alcan Highway.

We also took a photo of their high and low temperature sign. As you can see, you wouldn’t want to be living there in the winter unless you were seriously into sled dogs, animal skin parkas, boots, and snowshoes.

Here’s another sign with some more interesting information on it about the Alcan Highway.

We planned to spend the night in Tok, Alaska, which is where we would cut off onto the famous Taylor Highway which goes East toward the towns of Chicken and Eagle. When we got to Tok, the sky was an eerie, yellowish, smokey color from nearby forest fires burning in the surrounding area. We needed to pay close attention to all the area road closing announcements, as they would close them down periodically when the fires got too close. So far, the road we wanted to take was still open. Our goal was to go to both the towns of Chicken, and Eagle, and then on to Dawson City, Yukon.

You’ll need to read a future post to find out about the Eagle, Chicken, and Dawson City adventures.