Saturday 7-21
Yes blog followers, Nancy & Brian did finally find Alaska. 24 days after leaving California we have arrived! The trusty Admiral has logged just short of 3,000 miles to reach this point. That means we’ve averaged about 125 miles per day—almost 3 times as many miles per day as a Conestoga Wagon Train!
Early today by N&B time (noonish), we rolled the Admiral and CJ onto the ferry in Dawson City and crossed the mighty Yukon. For the next several hours we drove the “Top of the World Highway”. This mostly gravel road (the road less-traveled is always our first choice), follows a high ridge line through the western Yukon Province and enters Alaska way north of the conventional route. We have a few thoughts about this road. First, we were appalled by the traffic. Having been on the much less traveled Dempster, where we could go miles without seeing another vehicle, this road was jammed (1 or 2 vehicles per mile!)—some times we felt a little like we had jumped onto the 405 Freeway. Second, we saw SO MANY big RVs. Big RVers are supposed to be timid and avoid gravel, but most of the traffic on the Top of the World Highway was class “A” RVs—felt a little like the RV version of Sturgis. Third, the road reminded us of the Blue Ridge Parkway—winding as it does along the ridgeline—the Blue Ridge on steroids! You’re MUCH higher than on the Blue Ridge, and the views are much more expansive. Fourth and finally, there are a couple of really scary sections where the drop off to one side or the other is extremely precipitous, the road is narrow, there’s NO guard rail, and the bottom is w…a…y down there. Those of us who love physics can just imagine how the old Admiral would tumble and roll down that mountain side and how badly it would damage our fresh fruit and vegetables.
Early afternoon we passed through US Customs at Poker Creek, AK and re-entered the good old US of A. It’s good to be home. The Customs station at Poker Creek is the northern most in the USA and I’m guessing one of the least traveled. Most of us have been through customs at least a few times and are familiar with the questions about drugs, cash, and luxury things you bought when you were out of the country. Poker Creek may be the only place that asks you to declare your Canadian Bacon. We’re also wondering if the Poker Creek assignment is a plum or a punishment. There are only two border agents working there. Traffic is light. Smuggling is rare. And the surroundings are beautiful. On the other hand; you’re 60 tough miles from the nearest anything (250 miles to the nearest Wendy’s), and if you don’t get along with the other border agent you’re in for a long tour duty.
When you leave Canada you leave the Top of the World Highway and are on the US version known as “The Taylor”. We believe it was named for President Zachery Taylor who was the last person to authorize any repairs or maintenance on the road. To say this road is “BAD” is a gross understatement bigger than Rhode Island (have you ever noticed that when people want to express how big something is they say “bigger than the state of Rhode Island!”). This is embarrassing to we Americans who leave the much better Canadian road and find ourselves on this narrow, bumpy, dusty American lemming track. Seems to me we should divert some money from some other silly government program (we can all vote on which one to scrap), show the world that we’re a real super-power and build a Taylor Highway to be proud of…one that James, Elizabeth, and even ol’ Zach would feel good about. I can see it now, you pass over that international border, leaving the serviceable gravel Canadian road and (a few trumpets and timpani would be appropriate here) you merge into a paved, 4-lane divided highway complete with a McDonalds, Starbucks, and KFC! Now that’s the America to which I want to return.
I’ll admit that we were feeling a little “third-world” as we worked our way down the Taylor, but we rekindled that good old American spirit when we arrived at the first US city, Chicken, AK. Chicken is a perfect example of what makes our country great. Way back when in the Gold Rush days, they were going to name this fair city “Ptarmigan”, but people couldn’t spell it or pronounce it. Some miners figured out that the “p” was silent, but most thought the “t” was silent and couldn’t understand why they were naming the city after a cheese—heck, they weren’t even IN Wisconsin. So cooler heads prevailed and they named the city after America’s most popular bird, the chicken. While we’re talking about chickens, it occurs to me that the chicken ought to be our national bird rather than the Bald Eagle. Sure eagles are majestic and all, but there are no restaurant chains named after an eagle, no eagle potpies, or even eagle Parmesan, and nobody says rattlesnake tastes a little like “eagle”…but again, I digress…back to what makes Chicken, AK great. First, the name is cute…everybody wants to stop in Chicken so they can tell their friends and neighbors about it (nobody’s stopping in Toronto because it has a cute name). Second, Chicken has a real convenience store with snacks, candy, soft drinks, beer, food staples like Haagen Dazs, and neat souvenirs—you can even get a hat that says “I Got Laid In Chicken, AK”. Third, gas is only $3.50 a gallon—almost ½ the Canadian price! Fourth, they’ve got free WiFi. We were so impressed, that we fired off an email to Lee Greenwood suggesting he add a verse to his song about America that includes Chicken: “I’m PROUD to be an American, ‘cause Chicken brings us luck…They got a cutesy name and they’ve got a lot of pluck.”
Not far out of Chicken, the road becomes mostly paved. This is a big improvement, but there are still challenges. In our research for the trip, we heard a lot about “permafrost heaves”. Most of the roads up here are built on permafrost some of which is highly unstable (the stuff in the very far north stays frozen all year long, but in the south, some of it melts as some doesn’t). When in melts and refreezes it creates humps and these humps show up in the roads. Think of pavement that looks like rolling ocean swells—UP and down…UP and down…Up and down…almost makes you seasick, and it’s really tough on RVs because of their longer wheelbase and kind of spongy suspension—the net effect? You’ve got to drive much slower.
The highway folks try to mark the worst permafrost humps with orange or red flags. These remind us of the highway shrines that we see along some lower-48 roads, except they’re much more profuse. I’m thinking that maybe they ARE shrines and that the highway department only puts them in places where a transmission or axel has died.
Most of the day today, we were in prime wilderness areas, but no mammals. We did see a ptarmigan (ironically, near Chicken), and we added a new duck, the Bufflehead.
We’re camped tonight at a roadside pullout next to a burned out area—part of the “Taylor Complex Fire” of 2004. This fire burned about 1.3 million acres. As you drive through this area you get a sense of the immensity of this fire. Fire is part of the ecology here and typically they just let them burn until they self-extinguish. In some parts of the state the forest regenerates and burns every 50 or 60 years and almost all of the state has burned at least once in the last 200 years (the preponderant majority of fires are caused by lightning). The consequence is huge burned out areas in various stages of natural reclamation. 2004 and 2005 were big fire years during which over 10 million acres burned—roughly the size of Rhode Island, plus Delaware, plus Connecticut, plus New Jersey!
