Well there was an overnight along the way at Pelly Crossing.  You could look it up someplace I guess, but there isn’t much there, there.  The Pelly is a river that is tributary to the Yukon  and the crossing is a bridge and a small community consisting of a roadhouse and a Heritage Museum to record the local First Nation tribe’s lifestyle and culture.  There is/was a campground across the way.  The reason for the lack of positive description is that this appears to have been a government campground recently, but is currently listed in the guide books as free.  The campsites are “indistinct” and there are no services offered.  This is a better deal than some similar campgrounds that collect $12 C for the privilege.

I have not recorded the long drive we took to get to this halfway point on the road to Dawson City.  It is “miles and miles of miles and miles” to quote an unknown source.  Every turn brings another vista and another ooh and ah and the hope of seeing some wildlife, mostly forlorn.   Rising in the morning to the sound of construction on the bridge we prepared breakfast and rolled on down the road leaving Marty and Nancy, Alaskans who got to the park shortly before us on their trek south, as we continued north.  Sunday was another day of miles and miles bringing us into Dawson City early afternoon.  We decided to stay at Bonanza Gold RV Park just out of town and across the street from Bonanza Gold Service area.  Is there a theme there?  We had rolled up 5400 miles since leaving El Paso, TX !! and it was time for an oil change and other routine maintenance as we prepare for the worst roads of the trip.   Already in the last stretch the road was deteriorating the closer we got to Dawson.

Some highlights of the visit to Dawson include a visit to Diamond Tooth Gerties Casino with three shows a night.  I broke even at the black jack table and got to take a garter off a dancer (you will have to ask Carol to tell you the story).  After the 10:30 show we drove up to Dome which is a five mile drive to a high point above Dawson where the sun barely sets on the solstice.  We did not stay long enough to see it set on June 6.  As I write it is 10:10 PM and the sun streaming in the windshield is almost blinding me.  Our second day, we started out at Dredge #4, the largest surviving dredge from the gold era here.   It last produced gold in 1959.  It is amazing to see the size of this machine.  Each bucket picked up 16 cubic yards of rock to process through the screens.  The most amazing part of the story is that the entire operation was  electric.  They ran hydro power from the Klondike river over more than thirty miles of wilderness to run the dredge.  Since the dredge moved itself up the creek bed they had to continually extend the lines.  It only moved 10 feet every few days so they could keep up with it.  Following the dredge we toured several homes (Jack London’s and Robert Service’s) and then came back for lunch so we could move Gee2 to the service station while we went to town for a walking tour with weird stories about people and places. 

We have had a quiet dinner on the coach and got to talk with Ron and Aiko and Brian and Ruth who we met back in Whitehorse.  Not so early to bed and up sort of early tomorrow to take the ferry to the beginning of the Top Of the World Highway which leads to Chicken and on to Tok.  I hope to post this soon, but even if I get connected in Dawson I will not be able to post pictures.  The band width reminds me of the 300 baud days.  There is only one circuit for the population and it is not fiber.  Anyone uploading video will take down the entire town.

Wednesday Night – it is hard to call it night when you never see dark.

We set out early, for us, at 8:30 AM to board the Black Ferry for a 15 minute ride across the Yukon to drive the road that causes more talk among RVers in Alaska then any other.  It is paved part of the way, it is chip sealed and that has washed away in parts, it is dirt or it is gravel and there is 180 miles of it climbing and descending to live up to its name, Top Of the World Highway affectionately known as TOW.  Carol was at the wheel for the first two hours bringing us to the most northerly land entry into the US at Poker Creek, AK.  By then we had stone chips in the windshield of the RAV4 which was new in LA and there were stones all over the car.  The coach was filled with dust and we still had 120 miles to go.  We covered the windshield with a tarp in an attempt to prevent further damage and I took the wheel just 5 miles before the border.  According to reports we were entering on the worst of the worst road.  Fortunately it had not rained for a couple of days and the road was dry and merely dirt.  An aside to those who know the road to Dan and Malena’s house back in the woods of Virginia, just like that for 60 miles!  And just as narrow with trucks and tour buses (well only one tour bus and no big trucks while we were out there) going both ways.  The one tour bus we encountered had a pilot vehicle out ahead and he radioed back to the bus to wait at a wide spot while we proceeded through the well packed dual track road. 

Naturally we stopped at Chicken.  Think of a bad chicken joke, any bad chicken joke, you will find it there on a T shirt, mug etc.  Susan Wiren, who has been in National Geographic and is featured in the Church book Camping in Alaska, is a true Alaska character.  I will get pictures up on the website when I have some time.  Carol has a new T shirt as do I and I finally got to add a hat to my collection. 

About 30 miles out of Chicken the road improved enough for us to pick up the speed to 40 and even 50 for a mile or two.  180 miles is a really long day when the overall moving average is 30.9 MPH. 

Shortly before Chicken we noted that the sky was misty, then we noticed the smell of fire.  For long stretches our view of the  mountains was obscured by smoke from fires burning a couple of hundred miles to our north outside of Fairbanks.  When we got to the Tok visitor center, they confirmed the presence of many fires between Tok and Fairbanks.  Although no roads are closed, we are thinking that we will head south first before going to Fairbanks.  So as of this writing we are going to head down to Valdez and then over to Anchorage.  It does not change our mileage at all.  If you look at an Alaska road map, you will see that to get from Fairbanks to Anchorage and to get in and out of Alaska by road you WILL pass through Tok.  Tok is Alaska Main Street.  We are comfortably camped behind the Chevron Station which provides free dry camping on their lot for the price of a fill up which we needed anyhow.