Day 15

Am running behind on the blog posts. Internet is hard to come by around here.

It was a real nice morning at the Tok campground. A few more motorcycles had pulled in overnight.

Risto wanted to see an American 4th of July parade so we decided to wait til the parade started at 11am before we left for Dawson City. Graham wasn't interested in the parade so he headed out on his own.

The parade was very small. The town paraded everything that made noise at the front of the lineup - all the fire trucks, ambulances, forest service vehicles, which were followed by a few old cars and then little kids on their three wheelers and bicycles. I had met Hugh Neff - a local Tok resident and Yukon Quest 1000 dog sled race veteran and winner at the Tok RV campground store, and he brought up the rear.

Then we headed out of Tok on the "Top of the World Highway" to Dawson City.

Risto stopped to see if there were any fish in one of the rivers we crossed but there were none. While he fished a couple from Germany stopped by and they talked about their trip. They were spending a couple weeks in Alaska but almost the entire time on the road.

We stopped at Chicken Alaska for a bite to eat. The axes nailed to the wall above the door at the café was interesting. Hope they check the nails often. There were a few tourist shops and lot of dust. A few people were trying their hands at panning for gold.

 

 

Before we left Chicken I drove back to take a picture of the airport that we had passed on the way in. The strip had the proverbial 50 foot trees at both ends.

The Taylor highway is mostly dirt road, full of switchbacks and drop offs with no guard rails. A beautiful drive on a motorcycle on a nice day.

We left Alaska. The US Canada border is a lonely post up here.

Risto and I took the bikes up a two rut gravel road that wound around a mountain and ended up at a high gravel pit/mine a few miles in. We stopped there and enjoyed a snack and the view before heading down to Dawson City to try find Graham.

 

 

After we found Graham we had a discussion whether or not to continue to Inuvik, or whether we should find a spot to pitch a tent. It was getting late but because the weather was good we thought we should push for Inuvik if possible because Risto was on a street bike and tires. Bad weather would make it dangerous so we started up the Dempster Highway while the weather was good.

The Dempster starts out about 25 miles east of Dawson City and extends to Inuvik - about 457 miles to the north. The road is completely dirt and very remote. The only services along the whole stretch are at Eagle Plains which is roughly half way to Inuvik, and Fort Macpherson which is closer to Inuvik.

 

The scenery along the Dempster is magnificent.

We got tired after a few hours and pulled off in a gravel pit and setup our tents behind a pile of dirt for the night. It was still light out after midnight.