2010 - July 2 (Day 17) Dawson City, YT to Chicken, AK to Tok, AK

7e left Dawson City at 9:15 and drove about half a mile to sit in line and wait for an hour and twenty minutes to get on the ferry across the Yukon River. Once on the other side of the road, we only had 80 miles of dirt/gravel road ahead of us before getting to Chicken. We stopped to have lunch beside a mountain stream along the way. Just after I took the picture, the clouds opened up and turned the dirt/gravel to mud/gravel. It wasn't too bad though. They have a carwash at the campground where we're staying tonight. For ten bucks, I can wash the car and the camper, no matter how long it takes. A real deal around these parts!

We stopped in what we thought was Chicken, only to find out that downtown Chicken, where the tavern is, is down the road a bit. Turns out we stopped in the new "suburb." We walked around down town for a few minutes and then went back to the suburb to buy a couple of T-shirts. Marsha liked them better than the downtown models. The road from Dawson to Chicken is called the Top of the World Highway. Beautiful, but 40mph was about tops on the unpaved road.

Then it was on for about 70 miles of mostly paved roads to get into Tok and to the Tundra RV Park. We ate dinner and loaded up three washers (at $3.00 per load) in the laundry. Marsha is down there and I'm in the car outside the campground office using their WiFi.

The plan for tomorrow is to get up, eat breakfast, wash the car and camper, look at a map and decide where to go next. I think we'll head toward Fairbanks and stop at North Pole so Marsha can send the grandkids a card from there.

It's good to be back in the USA where you can buy cheap gasoline ($3.64 per gallon).

See you on down the road!