The Longest Drive.....Ever.....

The day started out on an awesome foot! We had to go on the ferry with the motorhome and Jeep. We didn't know if there was enough room to tow the Jeep while on the ferry, so we disconnected it just to be sure. It was kind of interesting feeling the ferry tilt a tad off kilter when Sean got the motorhome all the way on the ferry, haha! I bet that was the first ferry the motorhome has ever been on.

Once to the other side of the river, the Top of the World Highway begins, and the pavement soon ends...we meander down the gravel road at 15 mph. From Dawson City, YT, Canada to Chicken, AK is 107 miles of gravel with a few paved sections that total in my estimation 4 miles. The road looks similar to this all the way to the Canadian Border.

The views are reported to be very good on this road, but we could hardly see any due to thick smoke from a forest fire and occasional thick patches of fog. Sean could not look anyway due to dodging the potholes and ruts at 15 mph. Along this route before the border we saw 2 Moose and 3 Caribou off the right side of the road.

At the US Customs Building we noticed there was a small dog or something following one of the agents that walked across the road if front of us. It turned out to be a fox! Our best guess is that the little fox bums food scraps from the border agents, or digs it out of the trash bins. Smart little fox! He got too close to the door of the building and the agent shooed him off, as seen in the picture below.

 Finally, the motorhome made it to Alaska........

After we went through customs (it was funny seeing a customs building in the middle of a dirt road), the road started deteriorating to the point of almost being impassable without a 4x4 vehicle. We had seen vehicles passing us with mud clumps on the hood and roofs of vehicles. Little did we know what we were in for.

Here is some of the "easier" parts. The Really Scary part was a section about 1/4 long that seriously looked like a mud bog. The ruts in this section were extremely deep. We were sliding sideways, the motorhome was beeping at us that it was spinning wheels, and we were both praying we could make it out. There are no pictures of this section as we were in shock that this was the condition of a state maintained highway

End of the scary spot.

 Did we mention that we were running out of Diesel in the motorhome? Diesel in Dawson City was $6.37 a gallon and we did not want to pay that, in fact, we have NEVER payed $6/gallon. We did not count on getting 4.5 MPG due to all the hills and potholes. We made it to Chicken with the needle having been on empty for a while (it was interesting going uphill because the needle stayed at 'E', and downhill it showed a bit less than 1/2 a tank). Here we are at the Chicken, AK gas station and here is the condition of the motorhome and Jeep. There is mud all underneath the motorhome were you cannot see. Keep in mind we were only going 15 MPH max and it is this dirty.

We had not planned on stopping in Chicken, Alaska, but after covering 107 miles in 7.5 hours, Sean's nerves were a bit frayed and we were both tired. We were glad we stopped.  The town of Chicken has no paved roads, no landline or cellphone service, and no electricity beyond generators, no city water, and no sewer. There are 4 people that live here in the winter and 20 or so in the summer. In the first picture you can see the main "highway" through Chicken, which is the road on the right. While in Chicken, we panned for "wild gold" (Not at a tourist shop, but actually out of the ground) and actually got 5-6 dollars worth for about an hour of work. Even, Molly helped!