Road Woes and Chicken Redux

Chicken Gold Camp, Chicken, Alaska – June 9, 2010

At the Fifth Avenue B & B we have a great 3 egg omelet with toast to start our day. Our first adventure is the 9AM walking tour of Dawson City offered by the Canada Park Services.

We get a good guide who is a transplant, but has been in the Yukon so long she’s considered a local. In addition to the tour spiel she tells us a little about her life and living off the grid. Propane, she says, doesn’t flow at –40 degrees. So you have to use wood to heat your house at those temps. She’s also a snow mobile adventuress, having ridden a snow mobile from Anchorage to Nome. Brrrr!

We ask her how many folks stay over the winter, she starts counting down remembering who stays and who goes “outside”, meaning to a warmer climate.

Along the way we meet up with another Parks person who will portray many roles in the next one and half hours.

Here she is on the other side of the mosquito netting (chicken wire) re-enacting the part of a bank teller.

Then next she’s a saloon keeper who drinks her profits.

She also tells us stories about how the bar’s customers used to pay in gold dust and how the bartenders would wet their hands when handling the gold then wipe their hands inside their pockets. By the end of the shift they would have a nice little cache of extra gold to supplement their wages.

As we continued the tour, our guide pointed out various buildings.

The original Dawson Bank.

Diamond Tooth Gertie’s dance hall.

The old Masonic Lodge, once a Carnegie Library.

A government boondoggle, a post office so large it was impossibly expensive to heat in the winter time.

And one that I’ve forgotten.

And a couple more colorful structures.

After the tour, we thought we had better start back across the Top of the World (TOW) highway.

As we were waiting on the ferry to pick us up to transport us across the river this big semi pulls up next to us. We’re wondering if this guy is going to share the barge with us. When we pull onto the ferry, they direct us way over into one corner, trying to make room for the semi. Pretty soon the ferry captain tells them to forget it, they’ll pick him up next time over.

Then the journey back begins.

And once again you can see forever.

Approaching the US border checkpoint.

The most northern land border port in the US.

Back to the USA, again.

The TOW closely follows the mountain ridges.

Uh oh! The TOW wins and the tire loses.

We got out the air compressor and hooked it up. The air was coming out of the tire as fast as it was being pumped in. It had a tear in the tread that was not reparable. So we unload the back end to uncover the spare.

So much for my tire repair kit. I thought I was prepared. The “convenience” tire gets pressed into service.

We safely limp back to Chicken and Big Guy. Or as EJ put it, we limped back on “three and half tires”. No moose tonight, but this hare was hanging out by our picnic table hoping for scraps.

Tomorrow we deal with driving another seventy eight miles on the “half a tire” back to Tok where hopefully we can find a replacement.