Chickens, Gold and Whitehorse

The town of Chicken is 'perched' on the Top of the World Highway - a mostly unpaved road which is only open in summer. The nearest towns are 100 km in one direction and 150 km in the other.  But every year Chicken hosts a bluegrass music festival called “Chicken Stock”! Chicken has a permanent population of 23, but for the music festival this swelled to 1500. Scaling that up it is like 3 million people turning up for Womad in New Plymouth! It all went without a hitch – a great family atmosphere with continuous music from 11 am-2.00 am on a stage that used to be an old chicken coop propped up between two vintage trucks.

We went with no expectations and mainly because of the name. Chicken does not take itself too seriously. Apparently it is called Chicken because the early miners couldn’t spell Ptarmigan (the state bird). Chicken puns abounded, the “chicken dance” was compulsory, the music great, the weather amazing and our campsite neighbours super-friendly. Just as well because the ‘parking Nazi’ sure jammed us all in. Once parked, our ‘patch’ was circled with fluro spray paint, leaving just enough room to open doors at the side and place chairs at the back. On the final morning as we were packing to leave and exchanging addresses with our new ‘close’ friends, a moose momma appeared from the nearby trees with her twin calves. She looked at us as if to say “they said you'd all be gone by now!’ and promptly walked her babies between the vans, scattering chicken stockers in all directions. We all know not to mess with the Mumma!

From Chicken it was onward over the Top of the World highway towards Dawson City in the Yukon. This highway lives up to its name – a good but unpaved road tracking the tops of the hills with uninterrupted views in all directions. We camped the night right alongside the highway. This was in line with our current policy of not driving very far in a day, taking frequent nana naps and going to bed at a ridiculously late hour because the dam sun won’t set. It was remote, wild and beautiful with no traffic as the border post closed at night and didn’t open again until the morning.

Dawson City is on the confluence Yukon and Klondike Rivers. There is no road bridge over the Yukon here, but there is a free 24 hr ferry across the fast- flowing river. The town is full of history as it was the site of the Klondike gold rush. The local first-nation population were displaced by the hordes of gold seekers who arrived, only to find that most of the gold-bearing streams were already staked. Many of the old buildings have been retained and restored and there are strict building codes for new buildings to keep the ‘frontier’ style. It boasts an excellent information centre, great walking tour, museum and numerous cafes and restaurants.

June 14 would have been Kathy’s 32^nd birthday. It was difficult being so far away from home and I was a bit teary.  Definitely not what Kathy would want! So we pulled ourselves together and hit the town to celebrate her birthday. At Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Casino we watched two rounds of the show girls then Dave gambled and lost a $20 fortune on the Blackjack table while I squandered $7 at the bar! Next day we tried to win our lost fortune back by gold panning at local public claim. We even took some panning lessons first, but to no avail and 3 hours later all we had was wet feet, sore backs and no gold! But it was all good fun.

Back on the road our next destination was Whitehorse, 532 km away – and true to our travel style, involved two overnight stops along the way. Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, with a population of about 30,000. It is also on the Yukon River and was the base for the paddle steamers which ferried freight and people up and down from Dawson City. At one time there were dozens of paddle steamers plying the river. RV tourists are the new stampede and we parked ourselves for two nights in a big Walmart parking lot along with at least 40 other vans. We took full advantage of the two beautiful sunny days, hiking and biking along the waterfront and enjoyed a very pleasant Father’s Day meal at a riverside restaurant.

It has suddenly dawned on us that we only have 20 days left before we have to have the van back in Calgary. Time to quit the nana naps and get some kilometers under our belt – 2,300 of them to be exact!

Easy to guess where this is!

Our parking nazi - she takes bribes!

Our Chicken Stock compere - he did a great job

The stage was an old chicken coup

Moose Momma and twins - she looks determined!

Our camp neighbours

New friends from Fairbanks and Anchorage

A couple of old relics

Front Street, Dawson City

Dawson on the Yukon

Whitehorse waterfront

Out biking in Whitehorse

Fine weather again - drifting, Alyeska and Anchorage

A spell of wet weather sure does make you appreciate the sunny days when they return and we made full use of them. Our first stop was at the small settlement of Cooper Landing on the Kenai River. Jenni’s friend Travis is a fishing guide in Cooper Landing, and although the fishing season was not yet under way, he offered us a float down the river in his ‘drift’ boat. No motors allowed on this section of the Kenai so we drifted down this quite fast flowing river with Travis at the oars negotiating the occasional rapids. We brought along a bottle of NZ white and Travis supplied the cheese and crackers and coffee. A beautifully relaxing way to spend an evening.

Still keeping an eye on the weather forecast we headed towards Anchorage stopping overnight (in the RV) at the Alyeska Resort. We took ourselves up the tramway to the top of Mt Alyeska at 2,300 ft. and enjoyed an early birthday dinner in the posh restaurant at the top. Fantastic views for miles in all directions – a great night. More bear sightings too – a mother and two cubs as we went up the tramway and a very guilty looking black bear scavenging in a dumpster in town.

The beautiful views and fine weather continued as we drove back to Anchorage along Cook Inlet and settled ourselves once again at Cabela’s store parking lot. This time in Anchorage we were able to take down the bikes and pedal the long coastal trail into town, explore a weekend market and visit Earthquake Park. The 1964 earthquake in Anchorage must have been truly terrifying. It was magnitude 9.2 (Kaikoura was 7.8), the second most powerful ever recorded, and generated huge tsunamis which wiped out several coastal towns and were responsible for most of the deaths. In Seward, where we stayed earlier, the first tsunami ruptured oil tanks on the waterfront setting the water ablaze. The next even bigger wave carried in a huge tide of fire ashore.

We have now moved on from Anchorage on our way north to Chicken and the music festival. It is not going to be a fast trip as it is only 636 km and we have 5 days to get there. At the moment we are sitting in a café in Palmer with good wifi. Our day's travelling plans are slowed down as we have just been joined by a nine-piece bluegrass band and we will sit and enjoy the music! For the first time, the blog is up-to-date and in real time!!

Beautiful Cooper Landing 

Our boat barister

The second mate

Russian River Ducks (taken by Travis)

Birthday bar view

View from  Mt Alyeska up Cook Inlet

Dumpster diver!

A change in the weather

In Fairbanks the weather was so mild it became obvious we had under-catered for summer, so splashed out in Walmart and bought teeshirts and mosquito repellent. Balmy days in Talkeetna meant we got to wear the teeshirts and use the repellent on the giant-sized mozzies. But that all changed once we headed to Anchorage and the Kenai Penninsular.

Only 3 fine days in the last 10 – and even they were cold with a bitter wind, necessitating stowing the teeshirts and hauling out puffer jackets, raincoats and umbrellas. It meant that in Anchorage we stayed indoors exploring the museums and indoor malls, and lunched at The Hard Rock Café (baby boomers aye!). Anchorage’s spacious parks will have to wait until we return next week. Overnight parking was free at an amazing hunting, fishing and sports store called Cabela’s. Their amazing décor included two full-sized bull moose at battle, a piper cub aeroplane suspended from the ceiling, numerous other stuffed animals and a huge fireplace with leather armchairs to relax in. Very impressive. If you live in Alaska you fish! And hunt. It’s what everyone does – and in season they stock their freezers with salmon, halibut, trout and moose meat. Canned salmon in the supermarket is hard to come by and is expensive – everyone here catches their own or knows someone who does.

The weather forecast was better in Homer at the southernmost tip of the Kenai Penninsular so we headed south. Homer is a cute little fishing town with a long spit that extends out into Katchemak Bay in Captain Cook Inlets. Shops and restaurants are dotted along the spit on piles over the water – and dozens of small boats. All very cute and not too touristy. Most memorable thing was the excellent fish chowder on a wet and windy day.

The road back up the peninsular to Kenai follows the coast and gave us beautiful views across the inlet to four recently active volcanoes in the Aleutian Chain – all of them around 3000 m. At our beach side camping spot enroute we hung out with 30 or so bald eagles fishing in the river and waiting with the seagulls on the beach for low tide. Mt Illiama looks a bit like Mt Taranaki and the huge rocks of coal on the beach was a novelty!

Moose are making up the majority of our wildlife count. We no longer stop and photograph the ones on the side of the road as we drive by. But the one that wandered into the middle of the path as we were out walking stopped us in our tracks. We felt a lot less brave without our trusty vehicle to shelter in. The pregnant cows are big are bad-tempered at this time of year. We did get up close and personal with brown bears at another wildlife refuge just out of Anchorage, but at our present campsite in Seward, it is the very cute sea otters in the harbour that are entertaining us.

It is Memorial Weekend this weekend and Seward has a cruise ship- visiting as well as LOTS of RVs. Unfortunately the constant rain has meant that people are mostly confined to indoors. Our RV is small and we have decamped to the laundromat and a coffee shop to avoid hut fever – but pity the family parked next to us with two (wet) children two (wetter) dogs in their RV!

Next stops are a trip up the Kenai River in a drift boat, a birthday dinner atop the lift at Alyeska Ski Resort, and a music festival in a town called Chicken.  Guess what the festival is called – why Chicken Stock of course!

Cabela's interior

Homer boat harbour

Looks like Mt Taranaki - bald eagles on the beach and the black rock is coal

Fine, but really cold wind at our camp in Deep Creek

Halibut catch in Seward - huge flatfish

Very laid back and cute sea otter - Seward harbour