Alaska-Canada Adventure Ride
Day 13 - Engineer Creek campground, Yukon to Tok, Alaska (332 miles)
After a scenic morning ride through the lower section of the Dempster Highway, we reconnected with Jon and Vicki in Dawson City. During this southern section of the Dempster, the smoke that we escaped earlier had returned, and seemed even worse.
From Dawson City we took the ferry across the Yukon River and rode the dirt Top-of-the-World Highway (9) over the border into Alaska and the town of Chicken. If it was not for the continued hazy skies, the road would have been quite scenic. Albeit some herds of caribou did present some photographic opportunities using my longer 100-400mm lens, stopping for a bit in order to stalk one particular herd that was grazing closer to the road.
The town of Chicken is more of a tourist trap with the most notable sights being an old gold dredge and a giant sheet metal chicken. The place did not feel nearly as authentic as Dawson City that we left about 3 hours earlier.
From there we continued south on the Taylor Highway (5) to Tetlin Junction and on to the town of Tok. We found a nice jewel of a campground with showers, WiFi, AC power to charge things, and an outdoor common kitchen area, called the Alaskan Stoves Campground. Being next to the airport, the campground was also being used by smokejumpers fighting the fires in the area.
While there, another group of motorcyclists rode in to a campsite next to ours, with one riding on a Royal Enfield Himalayn that they were doing some sort of sponsored ride on. The bike was giving him problems and they spent most of the time working on it, and complained about the difficulty of getting parts for it. I would have to say, from my point of view, the thing looked like a piece of crap and would not want to depend on it for such a long ride and far from any bike shop.
Images (click to select the larger view at bottom)
All content and images are property of Stephen Fischer Photography, copyright 2019 - 2020. Last updated: 1/10/2020