Alaskan Chicken (Day 16)

Paul and I packed up and had some breakfast at the Hillside truckstop, about 60 miles south of the Dalton Highway near where we camped.

We ran across a rider, Vin, the night before at this truckstop while topping off the tank.  Vin is going to ride the Dalton Highway on a Sym Symba.  It's a moped that has a one gallon tank and gets 100 mpg.  He has two other one gallon containers with him as well as a couple spare tires.  The tread pattern on the tires are at least decent for dirt.  Since the forecast was calling for rain over the next couple days, he said he would only attempt to go as far as the Arctic Circle.  Good Luck!

First thing on the agenda was to wash all the mud off my bike. Once that was done, we were headed for Dawson City, Yukon Territory but planned to camp somewhere along the way.

It was raining when we were leaving the car wash so we put on the rain gear.  We've been warned of a 75 mile stretch of road that could get ugly if it is wet, but after the Dalton experience, we figured we would just figure out what to do when we got there.

Luckily, we rode past the rain and on to sunny skies with big puffy clouds. It wasn't a long ride because of all the errands in the morning and the marathon ride yesterday.

Chicken Alaska is a lot more intersting than I thought it was going to be.  The first thing I saw was a "Chicken Community" sign, and I wasn't sure if there was going to be much else, so I got a picture.  Then, we rode up on the Chicken Post Office, again a picture not knowing if there was going to be anything else.

Then around the corner was a bunch of old fashion buildings... with 2 tour busses and a lot of people all over the place standing in the middle of the road like sheep that had no clue I was trying to get through them to park.

Turns out these people had reason to be in a daze.  Their first tour bus went off the road in Eagle AK.  They got transferred to another bus, which was the one out front here, and it was stuck in a hole.  They finally teathered one bus to the other, and the front tour bus, filled with its passengers, towed the other bus out of the hole.  The crowed was pleased and the town emptied quickly.  This must have been a big day for Chicken.

In the little town there's a lot of mining equipment on display, a small row of shops (saloon, restaurant, gift store), an RV/camping park with a big general store with lots of Chicken AK apparel, and a do it yourself gold panning area.

Once we rolled around town a couple times to make sure we didn't miss anything, Paul wanted to go back about 3 miles to another camping spot by the river we passed and I decided to go check out a campground ont he map about 15 miles up the road.  We'll meet up in the morning.

Since Steve took an alternate route, he's ahead of us now.  He is going to explore Haynes and another city I can't think of right now.  After Paul and I are done checking out Dawson City (did I mention that was the next stop?), we will all meetup in Whitehorse to continue the trip south east through Yukon, B.C. and Alberta.