Chicken and Top of the World Hwy

Our journey now took us north from Tok along Alaska Hwy 5 to the town of Chicken, and then across the Canadian border into the Yukon Territory onto the “Top of the World Highway”—YT Hwy 9 to Dawson City.   This took us through a vast, vast landscape called the “Fortymile” area which is home range for the Fortymile caribou herd.   This was once a massive herd of 500,000 animals which, during spring and fall migrations to and from their breeding grounds, took days to cross the highway.  The herd declined to a low of just 6,000 in the 1970s, but recovery efforts have brought it back up to about 40,000 at the present time.   It is hunting season here for both caribou and moose, and we saw growing numbers of men, primarily, in camo, driving around with horns sticking out of the bed of their trucks, and occasionally hiking the trails with us, rifles slung over their shoulders.   We also saw some “unusual” goods for sale at the grocery store!

Lily hits the road

A very, very curvy road!

Home of the Fortymile caribou herd

Road sign caption

Items we've never seen in Wisconsin grocery stores....

We camped for the night on the West Fork of the Dennison River, one of the innumerable river arteries which eventually feed the mighty Yukon.   It was a lovely campground with splendid fall color!   Also, because of the recent spate of very cold nights, we found the very abundant wild cranberries such as first encountered in Denali Park had sweetened-up and flavored-up considerably!   We picked a large container in minutes and made a cranberry-apple crisp and cranberry sauce and shared it with a charming couple from Germany who were camped beside us.   They had inquired earlier what we were doing crouched down on the ground picking the berries!

Johna's Lake at our campground

A lovely place to spend the night

"Low bush" Alaskan cranberries

Freshly picked container of berries...

...turned into cranberry-apple crisp--YUM!

Next came CHICKEN, a fun, whimsical, but historic place in Alaskan history!   So Chicken is not very big—population 23 in summer, 7 in winter—but has the distinction of being Alaska’s second oldest community.  Gold was found here several years before the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896, and the town was supposedly named by miners who wanted to name it Ptarmigan, a common bird of the North, but had such difficulty spelling it they settled for “Chicken” instead.   Silly name and tourist attractions aside, there is still felt to be a lot of gold in the surrounding country and one of Alaska’s largest nuggets, a 57 ounce piece, was found here as recently as 1983.

Roadside "Welcome Chick" beckons us to town

Store that sells all things "chicken"

Schmaltzy cuteness everywhere!

Ahem!

One can't miss the huge chicken on the hillside overlooking Chicken--made by Haines, AK students
out of old school lockers and transported here, very slowly, back in the 1980s

The big chicken shares his hilltop throne with roadsigns from towns all over
the world with "chicken" in their name!

More...

The public outhouse...

...also known as the "chicken poop"

Annual event each spring in Chicken, AK

Gosh, it looks like it'd be some kinda fun to attend that!!

 

Chicken, AK post office.   Mail service is just twice weekly, by airplane

All right!   It's obvious!   I loved Chicken!

Following our fun in Chicken, we headed out on Yukon Territory Hwy 9 towards Dawson City.    The name of this 79 mile stretch—Top of the World Highway—says all!   Even though at this point we were saying good-bye to Alaska for the last time and officially heading for home, we were so WOW-ed by the view that is was hard to feel sad!   Once again the weather couldn’t have been more cooperative and we drove the beautifully maintained gravel road with 360 degrees of breathtaking views.

Mile No. 1 of the "Top of the World Highway"

Road was dusty gravel in places with a few potholes, but hardly worth mentioning

We even chose to just pull off the road and camp at one of the highest points on the road.   And why not??  The international border closes at 8:00 p.m. Alaska time, 9:00 p.m. Yukon time, so traffic simply stops!   The quiet was absolute as was the darkness at night—what a treat!    We took a hike to a nearby hilltop, bushwacking our way through the tundra to get there, and standing there, felt like we really were on top of the world…and grateful to be there!

View of "camp" from our dining table

Bernie does a mountain pose--how appropriate was that??!!

From here we could see forever!

...and the mountains beyond!