July 2, 2008: 185 miles, from Dawson City, Yukon, Canada to Tok, Alaska, USA
We woke up this morning, to NO RAIN!!! Can you believe it? Anyway, it was no too late for the Dempster, so as we’ve settled on the Alaska loop, we were looking forward to the Chicken, Tok, Haines Junction loop that we’d not originally planned. I’d heard so much of the tiny town called Chicken, that I really wanted to see it for myself, and have a bite to eat at the original store/restaurant/pub up on the hill.
But before heading out, I had to try to find a pharmacy or drug store to fix my butt! I asked the young guy at the Bunkhouse office, if there was a pharmacy or drug store in town, but with him being French, and my South African accent, he clearly had no CLUE what I was asking, and said “No, sorry!”, but when I walked 20 yards around the corner, there was a little drug store, right on on the street! I went inside, and asked for some butt-fixxer 
(well, I explained I had some saddle-sores and needed some ointment or something, and the very friendly lady gave me some Neosporin to try. Oh well, it’s about as best as I’m going to get, I guess, so after a nice hot shower, I dried off and smeared myself full of the stinky ointment to try to ward off the bloomin’ butt bubbles!
After packing the bikes, we rode down to the river front, to be greeted by a line of RVs and a truck waiting to cross the river with the ferry. I’d read that the ferry operators don;t mind the bikers moving to near the front of the line, as they can generally squeeze us in somewhere between the bigger vehicles, so we moved down the line, half-expecting to hear the horns and shouts from the waiting RVs drivers, but they’d obviously experienced this little favoritism before, and realized that it really doesn’t affect their own assignment number on the ferry sequence, so all was quiet from the cagers.
The next ferry arrived on our side of the bank, and we were summoned to embark by the operator immediately after an RV and a truck had loaded.
The ferry ride across the Yukon. (The river was flowing surprisingly fast!)
After riding off the short and steep ferry vehicle gangplank onto the rough gravel floor, we rode up the hill to start our ride on the “Top of the World Highway”, the dirt road that links Dawson City with the junction of the Taylor Highway that ends at Eagle in the north, and also heads West to Chicken and then on to the junction with the Alcan/Alaska Highway near Tok, further south.
The Top of the World highway was MAGNIFICENT fun for Jaryd and I, and we thoroughly enjoyed riding a nice gravel road with the good dirt tires we had on the bikes. We had a BLAST! This might have been our best day of the trip so far, together with our other favorites – the sheer beauty of the scenery on the Watson Lake day and the Lake Superior day!
Some pics from the “Top of the World” highway.
Mike mentioned later today, that he felt this ride was the most isolated he’d felt from civilization the entire trip. It’s funny how different people can feel about a similar experience, but I’d never given this a thought until he’d mentioned it. It’s true that we say very few cars/vehicles on this ride, with perhaps another vehicle very 30 minutes or so, but we even came across cyclists battling the rough roads with all their gear! Those guys (and gals) are very tough! I personally felt much more remote in parts of British Columbia, further south, then up here…perhaps it was the feeling of claustrophobia from the dense bush up close to the narrow road, and the constant thought that if a large moose or elk runs across the road and any of us hit it, we’d be in a spot of bother, with so little emergency response available?
Anyway, it wasn’t long before we arrived at the Canada-USA land border post of Poker Creek. This must be one of the tiniest (if not THE tiniest) US border post in existence! With a population of 2 or 3 people, all border guards, it must be in the running! It certainly is the furthest North USA border post….
We had no trouble at all here…the easiest crossing that I’ve ever experienced, so we were very soon on the road to Chicken.
We crossed the junction to Eagle, which is a dead-end offshoot of the Taylor Highway, and so we followed the other end of the Taylor into Chicken.
Arriving at Chicken, one is greeted with the relatively new store and gas pumps, at the bottom of the hill. We filled up here, but wanted to find the original, older restaurant/store/pub up on the hill, so headed up the hill and turned left and suddenly came upon the ramshackle old place. Lots of character, although the female owner seemed real irritated with something or other.
We ordered our lunch and settled down on the rustic furniture outside on the balcony to await our food.
Mike and Your’s Truly, outside the restaurant.
After filling ourselves with the rough and ready but quite tasty meal, we headed out to our next overnight at Tok, Alaska, but soon realized that we’d taken the wrong road, so had to turn around and come back past the old restaurant and out of town.
We stopped a couple of times to take some pics on the Taylor Highway, which really was much like the Top of the World Highway, in scenery.
We finally hit asphalt again, or should I say asphalt under lots of repair, on our way from Chicken to Tok.
This was where we started to come across the infamous frost heaves, where the asphalt road surface has huge heaves and dips in the road, of such magnitude that it can launch a bike up into the air, if taken at an inappropriate speed, or cause the suspension to “bottom out” (Fully compress). Our dual-purpose bikes, with their long-travel offroad type suspension are theoretically well able to handle this road surface. I say “theoretically” because my own bike, being an older 2002 model, with very weak and soft rear suspension from the factory, and with my considerable heft together with all that gear we were carrying, caused the suspension to be very over-taxed, and I was bottoming it out regularly on the high bumps and dips, when taken at a steady 65 MPH or so.
It was quite funny, after I got used the the geriatric gyrations of the bike on these bumps!
Finally, I took to standing upright on the pegs as I hot a large bump, to absorb some of the shock with my bent knees, and avoid breaking something on the bike. The bike felt a bit like it was doing the rumba, or maybe the cha-cha, with the soft tires, soft suspension, fat person, large load, high speed and large bumps.
I resolved then and there, that I would afford myself the luxury of ordering one of my friend Rick’s very nice “Moab” shock-absorbers and a much stiffer spring, for the old bike one day, after our return to Michigan. No more of the cha-cha for me!
We arrived in Tok, and being in Alaska, Mike had cell service for the first time since we left Michigan 10 or so days previous! More on this later – there’s a funny story here!
For whatever reason, none of us took any pics in Tok, just as we didn’t in Whitehorse. We are clearly starting to get a little weary, and we are wishing that we had another 4-5 days to complete the ride home without as much rush. For such an inexperienced bunch as us, the schedule of 400-500 mile days, and 7-11 hours on the road every day, is starting to hurt the old bones!
We stopped to look up a campground in my now well-worn book, and located one off the main drag, just out of town. We paid the lady and found a decent camp site for the 3 tents, and pitched camp. By now, we were real expert at setting up camp!
It went something like this….
Find clean, level spot for the tents, near the showers, toilets and laundry (where available)
- Park bikes off to side
- Unhook bungy straps and load net, remove sandles, water canteen, cup, both tires, large storm bag and tarp.
- Pitch tent and fly
- Extract electric air pump from left hand pannier on my bike, and install power plug into the rear power socket on the bike (accessory that I’d added for this purpose)
- Open air mattress on tarp and fill with air from pump. Do same for air pillow.
- Install mattress and pillow into tent
- Extract bear spray from left tank pannier and keep on table, or in tent
- Extract tripod flashlight and mini stove and coffee/Splenda/Coffee powder from storm bag and place on table
- Throw Storm bag into tent, along with the tank bag from the bike
- Open towel and drape over bike to air dry )if it got wet on route, or is still damp from previous use.
- Cover bike with tarp.
We could do all this in about 10 minutes . Mike could do the reverse the next morning, in nearly the same time. Jaryd and I took much longer, being less organized by nature/habit, I guess.
After making camp, we did a full load of laundry each, which kept the old guy from locking down the laundry at the normal time, but he was pleasant and obliging, so we managed to get all our stuff washed and dried and we folded them into their individual little zip-lock bags (one T-short, one pair socks, one pair underwear in each little zip-lock bag, with larger bags for our towel and for fleece jackets and thermal underwear, etc)
After the laundry, we rode the bikes into town for a bite to eat at the restaurant recommended by the lady in the office.
We found “Fast Eddy’s” easily enough off the main road through town, and were served by a pleasant young waitress trainee. The meal was quite good, although just about anything was going to taste good at that point!
After the meal, we headed back to camp, and as we were still very much in bear country and the campground was quite remote with few people, we decided it was prudent to haul our toiletries up a tree about 100 yards away from us, with the rope I’d brought for that purpose (and for if we broke down and had to tow one of the bikes).
Jaryd and I kept our bear spray in the tent, but we had no incidents the entire night.