Thursday-July 6-Day 16- Top of the World!!

At 7 AM we said good bye to Dawson City

 as we boarded the ferry to cross the Yukon River.

It wasn't long until we were high up on the top of the mountain, looking down at God's beautiful creation!!

About an hour into our drive we stopped at a rest area to cook breakfast.....

....do some daily cleaning....

...and have our devotional time together before we hit the road again.  We take turns leading devotions...M.E.B.S. In that order.

This road we meandered along is called
 "Top of the World" Highway. Can you see why?
The mountain ranges seemed to go on forever!

It brought to mind that old song
♫ I'm. on. the. Top of the World  looking down on Creation....♫

Again the roadsides were beautified by the lovely flowers,
planted there by no one else but our Amazing Creator!

The roads were obviously going over the top of the world!
Most of the way the roads were gravel, but every once in a while there was a stone and chip section.

These tall slender pines stood like sentinels as guardians of the forest.

We passed miles and miles of distant mountain ranges, every scene seemingly more beautiful that the last one.

and then we came to this pile of roadside snow and just had to take a picture of it!  Snow still around in July!

The roads snaked across the mountains and down into the valleys.

And then! We got to the highest point on the Top of the World Highway .....4515 feet!  As we peaked that highest mountaintop, we looked across the way and saw good old USA!!
That is the custom buildings in the distance.

♫ It's so good to be back home again! ♫

Yup! Poker Creek, Alaska!
Most northerly land border in the USA.
And yes, the Custom Official lives here during the summer.

Notice the elevation !

We were welcomed "home" by beautifully paved roads!
What an improvement from what we had been traveling on for the past 66 miles!

However, our euphoria about the improved road conditions was short-lived, as after 13 miles we were back to dirt roads again.

But the scenery was breathtaking a lot of the day, and the beauty made up for the pot-holey, wash-boardy roads!
Here we noticed the creek water had a reddish-brown hue to it.
 Perhaps high in iron?

And then we arrived in Chicken, Alaska!  The story behind the name is that the people who founded Chicken wanted to call it ptarmigan, because these quail-like birds were very abundant and had kept them from starving the previous winter.  However, no one knew for sure how to spell ptarmigan, so they settled on the name of "Chicken".

I think this place needs no explanation. 😉

This is original "Chicken", just the way it was 20 years ago when John and I were here. Just quaint and unique!

We thought it would be fun to buy something "chicken" to eat, but the prices were outrageous so we decided against it.

But when we got to a gift shop in the new section of Chicken, the ice cream looked pretty tempting, as it was a HOT day in the 80's!
Those are Marie's and my look-alike tee's, with fireweed, the flower of the Yukon.

On the south side of Chicken they were re-building the road, and the conditions of the road were terrible. We needed to be escorted out about a mile, to show us where it was safe to drive.
 Even so, it was a very bumpy ride!

But we soon were enjoying scenic views again!

The Milepost gave us some rather grave warnings about some of the sections of the road:
"Expect sections of narrow, winding rough road, with no road shoulder and no guardrails. This is a very dangerous area to be driving big rigs and passing. DO NOT pull over too far or the soft shoulder may give way. Prevent a roll-over." 

The Milepost warning for this section said ,
"Approximately 1000 foot drop-offs with no guard-rails and soft shoulders. Limited passing room".

We also passed large sections of burn-out forest. It takes a long time to re-grow a forest.  This section burned in 2004.

By the time we had driven the 190 miles, we were ready for a nice campsite, and a relaxing evening.  We found that in Tok, the Sourdough Campground. It was only 3 PM so we decided to wash the RV.  It was VERY dirty from the dusty, gravelly roads.

We settled in among the pines and had a delightful outdoor supper of baked beans, bbq, and salad.

We were tired, but it was still rather early, so we decided to do laundry! Don't you like our mode of transportation to get our piles of dirty clothes to the laundromat?😁

At this campground they have a pancake toss each night in the pavilion.  Everyone had two turns. The first throw was practice, and the second throw was for the competition.  If you got the pancake into the five gallon bucket on the second throw, you earned a free  breakfast.  Two people won that evening!  And I was not one of them!😐  It was a fun evening  and created a lot of comradery among the campers.