Month: June 2017

This morning we got up to a sunny morning to head out to what we expect to be a highlight – the “Top of the World” Highway. It will be a slow drive over – it’s gravel a lot of the way and up and down mountain roads. It’s a road that is only open for a few months of the year – sometime late April to the end of September or early October. However, we also expect some nice scenery and the weather is cooperating nicely. We saw some nice mountain ranges in the distance – still too far off for our liking though. We both figure we’ll have to wait until closer to Denali or the St. Elias Range to see the “real” mountains up close.

It was a disappointing day for wildlife again. Our net summary of wildlife is pretty low at this stage of the trip. Paul keeps joking that the guy in charge of opening the cages in the morning must be slacking on the job! However, the day was uneventful for travelling and we reached the “Top of the World” at an elevation of just over 4500′.

Just past the peak of the highway, we crossed the border into the US, leaving the Yukon behind. We are now officially in ALASKA, nearly 4 weeks after leaving New Hamburg. It is such a small border crossing, the most northerly land border crossing in the US.

We drove a short bit and then pulled into a state run park just before the town of Chicken. We decided to make the stop here since tomorrow is a trip to Eagle, AK and we’ll have a wee bit of back-tracking to do. However, once again, we are in mosquito-ville and no campfire tonight.

Next a side trip to Eagle….

 

Today we spent a lazy afternoon driving up Bonanza Creek Rd. First stop was at Dredge No. 4 where we viewed the outside of the dredge used for mining gold in Dawson beginning in the 1910s. It was the largest wooden-hulled dredge in North America and was in production on the Klondike River for 30 years before being moved to Bonanza Creek where it spent another 18 years before sinking to its current location. The dredge’s function was to dig out and sift through the dirt and rock to free up the placer (loose) gold that was found in many of the hills throughout the Klondike. It needed both water and electricity to operate so location was critical.

As we drove further up the road, we saw many examples of current day gold mining. Huge sides of hills have been dug out and are being put through a tumbler looking for placer gold. It certainly leaves behind an eyesore. We met a modern-day miner in the laundromat. He has been working his mine for 5 years, having been told he was getting “too old” to drive truck any more. So he headed north to Dawson, bought himself a gold mine and spends his day mining. I don’t know if he is getting rich, but he is enjoying himself.

Tomorrow the “Top of the World”!