We left the campground around 9:30, but didn’t get out of Dawson City until almost 11 because of a clog in our kitchen sink drain and then we were looking for a place to get a leaky valve stem fixed, and Tom ended up doing it himself. We took the ferry across the Yukon River to the Top of the World Highway, and thoroughly enjoyed the views, and the very nice dirt road. We had made sure to use all of our produce and potentially objectionable meat before entering Alaska, but the officer at the border only asked us if we had firearms or firewood, and when we said no to both, he said “safe travels” and waved us through and into Alaska. We stopped at the first view which had way too many people, so we went a mile or so down the road to another pull off for lunch, and had a nice short hike up the hill to get an even better view than we’d had at the first pull off. We were a little distressed that our first view in Alaska was of yet another wildfire.
The views from the Top of the World Highway made it very clear how the highway got its name.
By going into Alaska through this northernmost entry, we have now crossed the border at the southernmost entry and the northernmost entry.
This fire was just starting as we crossed into Alaska. Unfortunately, it got much worse and we were socked in by smoke while we were in Fairbanks.
We stopped at the Mosqito Fork Dredge trailhead and hiked the .75 miles to the view of the abandoned dredge, and then back to the truck. We then stopped in Chicken, where we saw the Chicken Chicken Statue, and more abandoned gold mining equipment at the Pedro Dredge National Historic Site. Just a few miles down the road we found a family whose trailer springs had broken, and they were trying to fit all of their vacation gear into a small car while waiting for the flatbed to come get their trailer. We couldn’t do much to help, and the father was obsessed with cramming four people and all their stuff into a Honda CRV, which was going to be impossible, but he needed to focus on something other than the difficulty of getting the trailer to somewhere where it could be fixed. The mother ended up giving us some chicken and frozen vegetables because she was fretting about spoiled food, which I could totally understand, so I took the food, thanked her profusely, and we got out of the way.
This part of Alaska was all gold mines. This is the ruin of the Mosquito Fork Dredge.
Chicken, Alaska, was a gold mining town, home of the San Pedro Dredge. It’s now better known for this chicken statue.
This is the San Pedro Dredge, which is far bigger than it looks in this photo.
Prior to the modern day roads, machines like this were needed to reach the dredge sites.
We decided to stop at the Westfork BLM campground since we weren’t sure what the boondocking rules were in Alaska, although when we got there and read the sign we realized we could have pulled off just about anywhere that wasn’t marked for no overnight parking. But, for the $6 the campsite cost, we got to read the official rules, and see two moose crossing the road shortly before the campground. With sunset at 10:23pm and sunrise at 4:44am due to the hour we gained when we entered Alaska, we slept almost normally. We hadn’t realized Alaska is on AKDT, which is one hour behind the Pacific Time Zone, but we were glad.
The campground is just across the bridge beyond the moose. We were glad we hadn’t pulled over earlier or we would have missed seeing the moose.
