Ferry Dust to the North Pole

The free ferry at Dawson City

We left Dawson on Tuesday, June 16th. Our first challenge was crossing the Yukon River on the free ferry provided by the Yukon Government. This little ferry takes about 4 minutes to make a crossing, making wide swings and applying lots of power to compensate for the swift current in the river at this time of year. The capacity is about 2 RVs of our size. And there was a line to cross, we arrived at about 11:00 in the morning, so we waited almost an hour to board.

I was concerned about getting on and off the boat, since our Alfa has pretty low clearance. But the ferry masters had the landings worked out on both sides so that the ramps were pretty level, so that was not a problem. We ended up waiting an extra turn in line, because the partial load that queued up in front of us didn't have space for us, but did have space for 3 smaller RVs behind us.

Once we crossed, we started our trip to the US/Canadian Border on the "Top of the World Highway". I found the name to be particularly appropriate, because the road climbed up nearly 2000 feet from the river and traveled near the hilltops at 3500 feet for most of the 65 miles in Canada. It was gorgeous. I'd love to share the pictures of the hilltop where we stopped for lunch, but I failed to check my camera, and found a bunch of over exposed photos later. All part of my training.

We crossed the border with little fuss. I had our passports ready, the agent checked them, asked the usual questions, then told us to have a nice day.

Flags and outhouses in Chicken

Whereas the Top of the World Highway was partially paved with dirt road sections that were in great shape, the so called "Taylor Highway" on the US side of the border was little better than an old country road that got no attention. Average speed before the border was probably 45 mph, but on the US side, that dropped to 20-25 mph. And dusty, dusty, dusty. There was some beautiful scenery to see along this stretch of road, wonderful Alaskan streams. But there were also winding hairpin turns, steep up and down stretches, and lots of narrow sections.

A few miles before we got to Chicken, I noticed that our engine was losing power. The last few uphills were tenuous, and we parked at the store/gas station/campground in Chicken to shop for a few minutes. As we tried to leave town, I could barely get up the first little hill in 1st gear, so we turned around and got a campsite for the night. They had no phone service there, but they did have wifi. Go figure.

Dust collected on our bug from the Taylor Highway

I pulled the air cleaner out and dumped about 5 pounds of Taylor Highway dust out of it, and put it all back together. The next morning, we tried to go to Tok again, but we still had no power. We decided that there was no help in Chicken, so we kept going, crawling up the first hill at a speed so low that nothing registered on the speedometer. About 2/3 the way up the 2 mile hill, the engine popped, issued a thick cloud of black smoke, and then we had power again. Still concerned, we drove another 5 miles, then hooked up our car and made the trip to Tok, about 70 miles, without incident.

We stayed one night in Tok, at a nice little campground in the fir trees, with the lupines flowering all around us. The campground had a wash station, so we spent an hour getting all the highway off the RV and car.

The Tanana River Valley

On Thursday, we traveled from Tok to the end of the Alaska highway in Delta Junction, where we stopped for lunch. Then on the Richardson Highway into Fairbanks. There were apparently some mountains to see south of our travels, but rain and clouds kept them invisible to us. We did get some nice views of the Tanana River along the way.

We decided to stay at Riverview Campground in North Pole, Alaska, just a few miles before Fairbanks. The days are now nearly 22 hours long, since we're just a couple days before the summer solstice. Fairbanks has a big celebration for the solstice, so we'll be downtown checking it all out on Sunday. And the golf courses are open from 6AM to 2AM, so tee times should not be a serious problem if I decide to play golf.