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Published: July 17th 2011
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July 12th Moon Lake State Park Starting mileage 11682. Left about 11:00 after watching the ducks and birds and working on the blog.
Drove into the town of Tok and got gas where we had gotten it before. $4.169 a gal and took 13.6 gals for total of $56.67. Mileage 11699. With a fill up you got a free car wash so pulled around back and both of us scrubbed Rosie down, even knowing we were heading up a dirt and gravel highway right out of Tok.
Went by the library and it was closing and Valerie couldn’t get a good connection. I used the library’s computer to check e-mail. Went to visitor’s Center to check road conditions for the drive up to the town of Chicken on the Taylor Highway and then at the border into Canada, The Top of the World Highway.
Also went into a shop to get our free ¼ pound of fudge that we had missed getting when we were here before. Valerie was able to get a good signal from this shop’s wifi so she stayed in the car and sent off some blog entries.
Went across the road to
the Post Office and found it closed for lunch hour. So, went back to Visitor’s Center and bought some more books. Their library here is completely a volunteer endeavor and so book sale proceeds go to its support. With the PO now open, Valerie could mail her package of T-shirts to her London friends.
We turned north at Tetlin Junction and started climbing right away as we drove up the Taylor Highway. The road was paved and fairly good at the start. We continued to climb toward and then onto Mount Fairplay at 5,541 feet. This area is home to a large herd of caribou that migrate across this road in both Spring and Fall. All the Alaskan caribou herds are named and all caribou belong to one herd or another even if they are spotted alone or in small groups. The mountains we are crossing and can see in the distance are basically rounded on top as they were never covered in ice and glaciated as was the Alaskan Range.
We travelled through an area that in 2004 fire destroyed 1.3 million acres of and closed the road for several days. There were 707 fires, mostly caused
by lightening, in 2004 which apparently is not an unusual number. What was unusual was the amount of acres burned that year; a total of 6,385,496 making it a record season.
Dropped down into the town of Chicken that looked as if the fire came right to their doors. Legend has it that the residents of this gold mining town that was started in 1898, wanted to name it after the abundant ptarmigan found in this area, but couldn’t decide on how it was spelled, so name it Chicken. It has 3 business and 23 residents in the summer and 6 residents in the winter. We stopped to look around and topped off the gas tank here as knew gas prices would be more expensive in Canada. Saw several dredges and evidence of old and current gold mining activity. Between 1959 and 1965, at its peak, an average run of a local dredge, operating 24 hours a day for 2 weeks, brought in about $40,000 in gold.
The road is now dirt and gravel as we travel north toward the Canadian Border. After traveling 82 miles on this
road we stopped to camp at the Walker Fork Campground operated by the BLM. With our senior discount it only cost us $5.00 for the night. In the 30’s and 40’s this flat area was an airstrip used to bring in goods to the mining camps. This replaced winter-only sleds.
Noticed the bright blue flowers within the grasses and other wildflowers near where we parked our RT. We think these are the monk’s hood instead of the blue flowers we previously labeled with that name. Now we have no clue what the other flowers are called even with two wildflower books---one we purchased here so it would give the flowers to be found along the highways we are traveling.
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