Leaving Whitehorse, we turned up the Klondike Highway and headed for Dawson City.
The Klondike Highway was in bad condition, giving us incredibly rough washboard roads for a considerable distance. Even the section that were not washboard had unexpected pot holes, frost heaves and so on.
It made for a miserable drive.
When we got to Dawson City the entire Caravan beathed a sigh of relief and we pulled into a RV park just outside of Dawson. From that RV park, we took the walking tour of Dawson, watched people do a “sourtoe cocktail” and watched the stage show at Diamond Tooth Gerties.
Dawson is a place tha and is worth stopping and spending a few days. It is rife with history and is being preserved by Parks Canada.
Following Dawson, we took the RV on the infamous Dawson Ferry to Top-of-the-World highway.
We traveled up the Top-of-the-world highway, which is a dirt and gravel road for about 50 miles and then decided to stop for the night in a large pullout short of the American Border. We joined a couple of other rigs in our Caravan and had a fine home cooked meal in the middle of the Klondike wilderness.
The next day we re-entered the United States at the USAs most northerly port-of-entry and entered the Alaskan town of Chicken.
Chicken is all but abandoned now, but for a couple of tourist-trap RV oriented businesses that still offer “recreational gold mining”, a small bar, restaurant and the ever present gift shop.
We did try to go to “historic” Chicken but that road was blocked off and the road the Ann Purdys house/grave (author of Tisca – highly recommended book) was quite rough and we turned around too soon.
After Chicken we continued on the Taylor highway to the Alaskan town of Tok.
“All roads lead to Tok” the Alaskans say. And it’s true. In Tok you turn for Anchorage or continue straight to Fairbanks. We took the opportunity in Tok to relieve the RV and Car of an inch or so of fine dust we had picked up on the Taylor and Top of the World dirt road highways – which were still smoother than the Klondike Highway.
From Tok it was an easy drive to Fairbanks.