Fairbanks, AK to Chicken, YT

Grant got up early and caught the sunrise in Fairbanks this morning. But, the real treat for the day was that we got a view of Mt. McKinley as we were driving out of Fairbanks. Now we belong to the 30% Club!!!


In Delta Junction, we went to the Sullivan House Roadhouse and Historical Museum. Grant took a lot of pictures of antique equipment. He likes antique vehicles… He was particularly impressed with the 6x6 vehicles that had 3 axles, with the back two axles each having 4 wheels. There are roadhouses all over Alaska. Travelers used them for lodging. Roadhouses were spaced apart so that it wasn’t more than a day’s journey from one Roadhouse to the next. Delta Junction is the northern terminus of the Alcan Highway. It’s southern terminus is at Dawson Creek


From Delta Junction we will travel the Alcan Highway to Tok. From Tok, we are going to head north to Chicken and then try again to cross the Top of the World Highway into Dawson City. We tried to take the Top of the World Highway from Dawson City to Tok on our way to Alaska, but the road was closed due to a massive slide that took out a major portion of the highway.


When we got to Tok, we checked the road conditions and found that they road was open. The vehicles would be driving out of Chicken by caravan with a pilot vehicle. There were two scheduled caravans a day, one at 8am, and one at 2pm. We decided we wanted to be on the 8am crossing and that it would probably be wise to drive to Chicken tonight so that we would be sure to not miss the 8am crossing. The visitor’s center in Tok had some pictures of a couple of washed out areas of the highway. I have included two of them. The first is on Taylor Highway milepost 81. A culvert washed out leaving a hole approximately 20 feet deep and 60 feet wide. The hole extends downhill to the Walker Fork River approximately 150 feet away. The second is on Taylor Highway milepost 115. The "Big" slide is 750 feet long, and the road is totally buried 20 feet thick in debris. This happened because of all the rain in July, while we were in Dawson City, which prevented us from crossing at that time. A man lost his life going off the road, at that time.


The campground we stayed at in Chicken had wifi, but it only had electricity from 7am to 9pm. It had no water or sewer. It was situated right next to a gold dredge. I thought I had the blog done for the day and could post it before bed time, but Grant had a fine time taking pictures of the town of Chicken and the gold dredge…