Bill and Kev's Excellent Alaskan Adventure: To the Edge of the World

We woke this morning to the howls of wolves outside the camper. Where in the heck are we? I guess that’s part of the adventure when you camp on the side of the road.

Headed through Tok with Chicken and Eagle as our final destination for the night (google it). The road to Tok was great except for the frost heave bumps, aka window busters. Once again snow covered mountains all around. A few miles out of Tok you turn north to the quaint mining stop of Chicken. We met a guy in Tok named Spike who gave us info on road conditions. Turns out Spike’s son owns the Gold Panner in Chicken and gave us some good advice on where to fish and pan along the way. Chicken is an old time, semi commercialized gold mining town located at the point where paved road turns to gravel. It is remote, so remote that any normal tourist would not drive 90 miles off of the beaten path to see this outpost of civilization. It is seriously intimidating when you first pull in. It feels like you have just crashed a strangers family reunion where everybody knows everybody, but you don’t know anybody.

Frost Heave in Road/Big Mountain in Back

It had recently rained, and the parking area was muddy, people were walking around with gold pans and Panacea Nikees. According to legend, the original 1886 miners wanted to name the town Ptarmigan (silent P), after the local bird that helped them survive through the long winters. However since they could not spell Ptarmigan, they just named it Chicken.

Our final destination today was to travel an additional 65 miles to Eagle on winding twisting dirt roads. Well, we thought 65 miles, but it turned out that it was in fact 85. We had been using “The Idiot’s Guide to Alaska” (no comments please) as a guide book for our trip. It seemed appropriate, and the author had been hitting 100% on his recommendations of places to see, do, and eat. We had misread his directions so ended up on a long ride. We traveled on this dirt road with 1000 feet vertical drops, single lane traffic, rock slides, cracks in the freaking road, with no car or human being in sight, but the most awesome picturesque vistas of mountains, tundra, and streams. This town was 85 miles further out in the boonies than the second most desolate place in Alaska that we have been yet, which is Chicken.

Chicken, AK

Gold Panner, Chicken, AK

About 45 miles into this adventure we crossed 40 mile creek bridge and the road turned to mud. As we were trying to decide whether or not to go mud bogging, we met a local homesteader couple named David and Leslie, who had lived here for 32 years (one of about 4 homesteads we saw along this whole road). David looked like miner 49er and worked a placer mine on 40 mile. They were a super nice couple and told us that they went into “town” about twice a year, which was a 750 mile round trip to Fairbanks to pick up supplies. They thought we would have no problem getting to Eagle, so we trudged on.

Our new best friends

Kevin was driving, so as he would squeeze around a curve, I would lean out the window and look for cracks in the road that indicated a potential landslide. Kevin was literally white knuckled and bone tired when we finally arrived.

Nice road

Whoever left the track was about 2 feet from death

Tight Squeeze

You never know what to expect when you enter one of these remote towns. Where Chicken was semi commercialized with food and lodging, Eagle was more like an old west town that time forgot. Population 130, it was located on the Yukon river about one mile from the Canadian Border. We got into town about 9:30 p.m. and thought we had entered the twilight zone, or at least a Stephen King novel. There were no visible people. NONE. There were buildings, houses, a museum, but no signs of any living creature (human or animal). As we made sure our doors were locked and hung crucifixes and garlic all around the Moho, we settled in at a very lonely campground. If you have ever seen the Twightlight movies, this place would have been an optimum place to spot either Edward hunting or the Wolvies on patrol.