10JUL15 - Chicken, AK (on top of the world)

Friday morning, 10JUL, we headed to Chicken, AK, & the Top of the World Highway; via Tok, AK.  There is still some forest fire haze in the air, but at least we can see some of the mountains we could not see when entered AK on the AlCan highway.  We stopped in Tok for our forwarded mail & “cheap” diesel.  After leaving Tok we got on the Taylor Highway to Chicken & the Canadian border.  Shortly after getting on the Taylor Highway we were re-introduced to driving on frost heave damaged road surfaces.  Three miles before Chicken the Taylor Highway became a dirt road & apparently will remain this way until twelve miles before the border crossing?

Our RV park (Chicken Gold Camp & Outpost) had limited in facilities - no water at site; if you dump, you pay extra because it must be shipped out; two hours of free satellite internet; no cell phone coverage; outhouses; over half the sites are solar powered & may not have dependable service (luckily we got one tied to the generator); but these limited services are true of the other RV park in Chicken.  Apparently the increase in tourists traveling the Top of the World Highway in the last few years has the few businesses in Chicken scrambling to increase services provided for tourists.

The population of Chicken is about 30 in the tourist season, & maybe 6 in the winter.  The “town” seems to be divided into four “areas” each trying to separate you from your money:

1) historical Chicken is where the actual town was located in its hay-day is privately owned & can only be accessed via tour (ie you pay).

2) our RV park home of the Pedro Dredge (more on this later) & home base of that major music festival “Chickenstock”.

http://chickengold.com/index.html

3) Goldpanner/Town of Chicken (in fact they have painted “Town of Chicken” on their main building roof clearly visible from the road, even though not the historical location); they have most modern facility w/very impressive gift shop.

http://cityofchicken.com/

4) Downtown Chicken across the “street” from our RV park; best bakery & bar in town (bar has thousands of ball caps hanging from ceiling).

http://chickenalaska.com/

After dinner we went to the Post Office (open two days a week); then toured the “Town of Chicken” & beautiful “Downtown Chicken”.  After our tour we returned to our RV park & Dan went on the Pedro Dredge tour ($10/person).  Dan thinks this was a worthwhile tour because the Pedro is intact, including tools & work clothes of the last employees.  Turns out that every fall it was secured for the winter, & in the spring a breakout crew put it back into operation.  One year in the early 60s, the company did not send out a breakout crew, they sent out a crew to literally board it up & walk away.  The gentleman giving the tour & some of his buddies became owners of the Pedro, & in the 90s somehow moved it to its present location!  You can read more details about the Pedro by going to the “chickengold” website above.