On Top of the World!

Day 46 – Sunday, July 28

We’re on the Top of the World Highway today! What an unbelievable experience to drive this road.  The 108 mile drive took us 5 hours!  In some places, we were going 10-15 miles an hour to keep from bumping off the road. Spot had his picture taken at the highest point on the road—so he was on top of the world too!  It is right before the border, and In the background, you may be able to see the customs station.

The beginning of the trip was a ferry ride across the Yukon River.  Seeing the ferry, you’d think there’s no way an RV would fit on there….but they loaded TWO rv’s at a time, and filled in with cars!  It took 7 minutes to get across the river.  It was a very efficient process, and very exciting too for the Lundcruiser to get a boat ride! 

The ferry runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until the river freezes—sometime in October/November.  Then, people just drive across the frozen river to get to the other side!

The ferry is mile marker zero at the beginning of the Top of the World Highway, and the road lived up to it’s billing!  The road on the Canadian side was much better than the US side, although each stretch provided a variety of excitement.

 

There were beautiful views all along the way….along with a lot of potholes and washboard roads which kept Jim busy the entire trip.   There were dirt roads and rock roads and everything in between!

 

This picture shows the condition of the road we travelled on.  In front of us  are caravan friends from Michigan.

 

 

 

We made it across the border, and finally made it to Alaska, 12 days after beginning the journey on the Alaska Highway!  We are now 1/4 the way through our 48 day Alaska trip! And, we are now on Pacific Time…we gained an hour, so are now 4 hours different than Indianapolis time. 

We arrived at our destination:  Chicken Alaska.  The city was originally named Ptarmigan (a bird) but too many people had trouble spelling it, so they changed the name to Chicken!  I think the population here is 37 during the summer, but only 3 of those people stay around for the winter.  When caravans like ours come to town, the population doubles!

 

In anticipation of our travels here today, our wagon masters prepared dinner for us last night…chicken noodle soup and chicken salad!! (pretty clever menu, huh?) We were entertained by a few guys from the group, then had an “after dinner” party to talk about the upcoming drive across the Top of the World Highway.

After we arrived in Chicken, we had time to do a little gold panning, and took a tour of the old Pedro mine dredge to understand the old-time process of gold mining.

We ended our day with a dessert party (fresh blueberry crisp and ice cream—yummy!) compliments of the campground owners who actually picked the blueberries, made the dessert and then and served us!  Blueberries are in season here now.

It was an action-packed day—I think we will all sleep well tonight!