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Published: August 16th 2010
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Another month!
It rained most of the night in Valdez. The power was out for two hours. We know this because Rich's oxygen machine beeps when the power goes off so he can use an alternate source (a bottle). Nancy looked out the window to see if it was just the campground, but the whole town was dark! In the morning, there was more rain and fog, but as we drove up over the mountain, we could see white ribbons of waterfalls hundreds feet high in every cleft of the mountainside.
We took a turnoff to go to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park visitor center. We couldn't see the mountains because of the clouds (rats, because one of the mountains is a steaming volcano!), but the center itself had some interesting information. For example, permafrost can be anywhere from 100 to 200 feet deep! This park is the largest national park, over 13 million acres- the size of 6 Yellowstones. It became a park in 1980. It's mostly mountains, glaciers, and rivers. There are few roads or trails, mostly wilderness!
It stopped raining and was just cloudy until we got to Tok. The people in the Visitor's Center told us
that the Taylor Highway to Dawson City had opened two days ago. We asked if it was a good enough road to take a trailer on and they said yes. A motorcycle rider cautioned us to go slowly because there were lots of bumps and holes. The first 75 miles of the road are paved, with gravel breaks where the road was washed out in several places. The road to Eagle, north of where we turn off, is still closed due to washouts. We had some lunch and set off in the sunshine and the 70 degree weather. The Milepost had some interesting warnings :"Road surface ranges from good to poor. Avoid driving on the shoulder. Be prepared to go all the way to Dawson City in case there is no gas available in Chicken. Keep in mind that some businesses along this route are cash only and do not accept credit cards (because there is no internet or phone service). Tire repair is not available. Snow closes the road for the winter. Customs hours at the border are from 8 to 8. the border is closed at night."
Keeping all this in mind, we set off over bumpy roads,
up steep winding roads over mountaintops, with sharp turns. We saw several places where the road had been washed out and was newly repaired. Some of the road equipment was still there. NOW we feel like this is wild and wooly wilderness. No buildings, no side roads, no power lines anywhere. After a few miles, there were burned trees from a forest fire in 2004 that burned 1.3 million acres and closed the highway for several days. These are Janet's favorite black spruce trees, but now burned black. The Milepost said to keep an eye out for Northern hawk owls at the tops of the trees in the burn areas. They and a couple of other owls such as the Snowy owl, hunt in the day. Well, when you think about it, if they didn't, they'd be pretty hungry by fall, wouldn't they! We'd never considered that before. We never did see any, though. Now the Milepost says "watch for severe frost heaves, dips, and broken pavement next five miles." We drove slowly, believe me. After several more miles, we were in the Forty-Mile River drainage system. Many gold prospectors were searching for gold (and finding some) in the area before the Klondike gold rush. When word got to them about the find near the Klondike, they hurried up there and staked claims. That's why most of the claims were staked before many of the stampeders even left home! The Forty-Mile river flows north into the Yukon.
After 66 miles, we arrived in the town of Chicken, population 21 in summer, 6 in winter. It is really just three businesses, an old gold dredge, and the Post Office. Chicken was named by miners to honor the ptarmigan, a small grouse that provided food for many a miner during long, cold, hungry winters. The miners wanted to name their town Ptarmigan, but nobody was really sure how to spell it, and they didn't want to be embarrassed, so they named it Chicken, instead. One of the businesses is a campground, so we set up. Oh boy, was our camper a mess from jouncing around on that road! Things in the refrigerator jumped shelves, things fell out of closed cupboards, etc. After we went to bed, we heard a strange noise. We thought it was from a nearby camper, but after we got up to investigate, we found out it was Rich's oxygen concentrator. It was making a weird sound, so we knew it was broken. Even though it had been safely padded in Daisy's dog bed and tightly tied down, the road was too much for it. Luckily, Rich can plug in the portable concentrator that he uses while we're driving. He'll have to use that at night for the rest of the trip! Incredible day!
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