Fairbanks to Dawson City

The 'adventurous' part of the trip is over, more or less. The majority of the rest of the trip is on paved roads.

This morning when we left out it was raining. That was a bummer because I'd wanted to visit North Pole, Alaska, which is right outside of Fairbanks. For obvious reasons, this town has a Christmas theme. But since it was raining, we didn't stop. We did see a bit of the town from the main road and all the light poles were painted red and white to look like candy canes. I'm sure it would have been a neat little tourist trap.

We saw these mountains from a distance. We made it up the Dalton and back with no real fear of running out of gas. Our first day off the Dalton and we had some gas worries. We were cruising along and then I realized that Mike had slowed down considerably and I knew what that meant. He was trying to conserve gas. I always have a fear of running out of gas so I tried to stay calm. Just when we thought all hope was lost, we see a gas oasis ahead. Our problem wasn't the miles between gas stations, it was the headwind we were riding against that day. That really hurt the gas mileage. Anyway, we got gas and a mental breakdown was avoided!



There were many sandy hills with lots of little rocks and stones along the road. People had taken the rocks and written messages on the hills. There were tons and tons along the roads.

The road did turn to dirt for the rest of the day. On the way to Dawson City, we went through Chicken, Alaska. This town was originally a mining town. There are maybe 4 year round residents. They have no running water and the mail is delivered via plane twice a week. Chicken is a bit of a must see if you're in that area. They have made the most of their unique name and had a restaurant, salon and tourist shop. It is also an RV Camp and had many campers. It was a neat place and we were looking forward to seeing it.

Downtown Chicken

One guess what this is...

After we left Chicken we eventually made it to the Canada border. This was a very remote crossing. Even though it was remote, the Border Guard was very serious. Anyway, we crossed the border while on the Top of the World road. Even though it was a bit overcast, it was still very scenic. This road did seem to go along the top of the mountain range forever and ever.



We knew we had to take a ferry to get to Dawson City and were getting worried because the road never seemed to go down the mountain. It did finally descend just before you got to the river. The ferry is the only way to get to the town from this side. I guess you just don't get there from this side during the winter. The ferry ride was only like seven minutes.

Dawson City is also an old mining town. The city is an historic site and all the buildings are still pretty much original. It looks like an old town you'd see in a western movie. We didn't have any reservations but found a like hotel. It rained a bit that night too so we didn't get to look around the town too much that night. We got up the next morning and walked around and found a bakery to get some breakfast.