The night at Tutshi Lake was one of very little sleep and began with a chilly early morning wakeup. The wind that was blowing off the lake kept flapping the rain cover and shaking our whole tent which caused us to wake up more often than not. We woke up, skipped breakfast and headed to Whitehorse. Along the way we stopped again at the Cariboo Crossing, this time we stopped for coffee and a small bag of freshly made homemade doughnuts (very nutritional breakfast), this was followed by a top notch lunch that consisted of a cinnamon bun that has been world famous for 50 years… they were delicious and the size of my head.
After meeting with Dylan in Whitehorse for an hour or so we headed north towards Dawson City. While the drive was spectacular, travelling through the vast wilderness with nothing but trees we didn’t end up taking many pictures. We did stop at the Five Finger Rapids which created a quick break from driving and a chance to pull out the cameras. After we took some shots we decided to check out the bottom of the stairs, along the way there were signs informing us of all the bears and animals that lived in the woods at the bottom of the stairs. Not having our bear spray, air horn, or bear bangers we decided hit the road again. Running up the 219 stairs, we pathetically huffed and puffed our way past some tourists in a frantic race to get back to our car.
We arrived in Dawson City to bask in a beautiful summer day, the sky was blue and the temperatures were some of the highest yet on this trip. Entering the city we passed by mountains and mountains of river rock that had been piled up after the dredging of the Yukon River. The dredging was of course done to find gold and was run by 4 men on a completely electrical circuit. Unfortunately, the times did not line up and we were unable to tour the dredge. After some dinner shopping in town we took the ferry across the river to the local campground. We were told the ferry wait could be up to 3 hrs but we ended up being the only car onboard. The ferry is small and can only take a few cars or one or two large campers at one time. After finding our campsite we made dinner that consisted of chicken cordon blue, spring herb salad with roasted nuts, zucchini and apples. Later on that evening after finding a Shi-Tzu that Ricki could man handle (since she dearly misses her little Oscar) we also ran into an 80-series diesel Land cruiser. After chatting with the owners and exchanging stories about how awesome Land cruisers are, I of course got cruiser envy when they mentioned they had the long ranger auxiliary fuel tank (we will find out the next day that this would have been very handy, but more about that later). We exchanged contact info and were going to head into town to photograph Dawson City by night, since it was still very light outside we guessed that it was about 9 or 10 pm. Turned out it was actually midnight… we decided to go to bed instead.
The next day we parked our truck at the ferry and walked on to get back into Dawson City to do more exploring. The reason we didn’t drive across was because on the other side we could see a lot of campers and this would have caused for us to wait for hours before we could continue north. We ate breakfast at a small café and then wandered the streets of downtown admiring the old buildings and history of the city. As the rain began to fall we decided to head back across the river and start our journey into Alaska.
While on the ferry we began looking for the truck, but were unable to see it. We suddenly were hit with the realization that our truck might actually have been stolen. We stared at each other with blank looks on our faces, not sure what we should do. Once the ferry landed we quickly walked up the hill where we could finally see our car parked close to some trees which hid it from sight. With a sigh of relief, we headed up The Top of The World Highway. Since we did not take the car across the ferry we did not get a chance to fill up with gas. We realized this as we began climbing the first hill and clued in that we only had 1/4 tank left. 10 minutes into the climb we realized we would not have enough fuel but we thankfully had some in the Jerry cans. Filling up the tank with the two reserve tanks we barely were able to fill it past the ¼ mark. The next gas station was over 90 miles away. Traveling along the Top of the World Highway, we ran into low lying clouds and rain which reduced visibility but still allowed us to get a view of the awesome high altitude landscape.
Our view stretched for hundreds of kilometers in either direction and all you could see was a highway perched upon these rolling hills in the distance. It was spectacular. Shortly before we crossed the border into Alaska, we pulled over on the side of the road and decided to hike up a small mountain. We figured this would take us higher than any surrounding peaks, and were disappointed when we reached the top and noticed the road we were on actually passed right by the peak of the hill we climbed. Reaching the top we saw a mother and baby caribou quickly canter off out of sight before we could take any good pictures. After some shots from the top we started heading back down, we were about halfway down the mountain when Ricki noticed some more caribou on a distant hill, all you could see against the clouds was their giant antlers. We reached the car and were able to watch the two male caribou come down the hillside towards us. Their massive antlers and swift motions were truly a spectacular sight. They walked a short distance from the car and disappeared down the hill towards where the mother and baby ran out of our sight.
We decided to continue driving with our steadily decreasing fuel level, when we reached the border we were informed that the next fuel station was 43 miles away. We now had less the ¼ tank left… The road down was one of the roughest gravel roads we have driven on yet, we tried to coast as much as we could in neutral to save gas. To our relief we saw a sign that said gas 1 mile, thinking the border guard must not have known what he was talking about we pulled up to the pump. After running inside it turned out that they actually didn’t sell gas but were a small shop and the pumps outside were all dry. We finally concluded that the signs had been put up by the government and the owners of the shop never actually sold gas and had no idea why they were there. Nevertheless we made a contribution to what had become a nowhere land billboard in this silly store.
Continuing our coasting downhill we tried to save as much gas as we could. Towards the bottom of the decent we began to follow the Yukon River again. Along the route you could see men and women in the creek panning for gold. Each had their own claim and each had their own methods. Some were using metal detectors, some were using gold pans, others used excavators, bulldozers, and massive screening machines. The sights were awesome. Since we were trying to reduce the fuel sucking starting and stopping we rolled past and took mental pictures only.
Before running out of gas (thankfully) we rolled into the town of Chicken, the town was called Chicken because of the Alaska State bird which is known as a Ptarmigan. When the town originated they apparently didn’t know how to spell it and since the bird resembled a Chicken, they just called it Chicken. We filled our tank and jerry cans, which resulted in taking on a total of 27 gallons of fuel, this came with a free coffee and campsite. Since it was still early in the day we skipped the free campsite and after taking pictures of all the old machinery we continued towards Tok, Alaska. (Which rhymes with Poke..Ricki found this quite amusing)
Along the way, the road began winding through an old forest that had been demolished by a 1.3 million acre forest fire in summer of 2004. The landscape was speckled with millions and millions of black tree trunks which was all that was left to remind us of the devastation. Along the road I had a quick lunch, which consisted of a piece of stale bread and a block of cheese. I thought I was going to die of starvation out there in those desolate mountains.
We met up with the Alaska Highway which was a complete change of road conditions. The road had gone from an extremely bumpy, frost heaved stretch that was tossing us around inside the truck to a nicely paved smooth road. Searching for campsites we came across the Sourdough Campground. Advertised in the trusty MilePost, was a free pancake breakfast, pancake throwing competition, showers, laundry, WiFi and Karaoke. We were sold. While finding our spots we were informed that the only way to get a free breakfast was if we could throw the pancake into a bucket. While the theory sounds easy enough, it was very difficult. Ricki and I both missed our two shots (it must have been the uneven weight distribution of the sourdough because we are so used to tossing Aunt Jemima’s fluffy buttermilk pancakes and clearly weren’t ready for this change.)…we will be making our own damn pancakes for breakfast.
After finally doing our first and only load of laundry we are looking forward to our first night in Alaska and an easy and scenic drive to Fairbanks in the morning.
