RV ALASKA - Winner! Winner! "Chicken" Dinner!

There are fewer than 1,400 people living in Tok, Alaska, but there are seven private RV parks in town and several state recreation sites with campgrounds outside of it.  Tok is the first town you’ll find along the Alaska Highway after clearing Customs and entering the state of Alaska.  For many Rvers, Tok is just a quick one night stop on the way to the state’s more famous attractions.  Alan and I planned to stay two nights, then move on to Fairbanks to reprovision and catch up on laundry.  It was just after we arrived in Tok that the McDonald fire, burning just south of Fairbanks, became the second wildfire to derail our travel plans.

Shortly after the McDonald fire ignited, the Grapefruit Complex fire north of the city ignited, as well.  In Tok, just over 200 miles to the southeast, we were getting enough smoke from the fires that we were limiting our outdoor activity and keeping our windows closed.  The air quality in Fairbanks was reported to be pretty bad, and we scratched it from our itinerary.

Alan and I had been to Fairbanks twice before.  We had taken the Riverboat Discovery tour and panned for gold at Gold Dredge #8.  Both are exceptionally enjoyable and educational activities that I would consider “don’t miss” if you’re in the Fairbanks area - but neither one of us felt the need to do them again.  The only item on our Fairbanks itinerary, aside from doing some laundry and grocery shopping, was visiting Pioneer Park.  Well, that would have to wait for another time.

Following the “Flexibility” theme of this expedition, we extended our stay in Tok by two nights, got three weeks’ worth of laundry done at the well-worn, but quite serviceable, laundromat right there at Tundra RV Park, and restocked the necessities at the only grocery store in town.  We biked around the campground whenever the air quality allowed, and took a day trip to the charming, quirky and s-m-a-l-l town of Chicken.  Chicken is the first town (and I do use that term loosely) in Alaska that you come to if you enter the state from Yukon Territory in Canada via the Top of the World Highway.  That 77 mile drive from Tok to Chicken made one thing very clear to me – we would not be taking the Top of the World Highway back into Canada.  I don’t know what it is with these people out here.  Nobody believes in guardrails.  Where guardrails do exist, they tend to be the little, short rails made of aluminum foil.  Their only purpose in life is to provide just enough of a “bump” to let you know you’re going over and are going to die.  I am extremely happy we made the drive to Chicken with just the truck and didn’t have the trailer with us.  If we decide to visit Dawson City on the way back through Canada, we’ll drive up from Whitehorse and then back down again to the Alaska Highway.  If Alan wants to drive the Top of the World Highway, he can do it with his second wife.

Date(s) – June 29th – July 1st

Total Miles Traveled to Date – 8,470

Wildlife Sightings to Date – One grizzly sow with two cubs on the side of the road; 1 snowshoe hare; 2 more rabbits, bringing our total to 3 (including one very fast bunny that just managed to cross the road safely); several small herds of bison with at least 2 dozen young calves;1 dead cow moose on the side of the road (just a placeholder until we see a live one!); one back end of a grizzly bear, 1 more black bear, bringing our total to 6; 9 deer (2 of them bucks with their racks covered in velvet); 9 mountain goats (including 3 tiny and adorable kids); 23 bighorn sheep; 62 elk (including 7 calves that hadn’t yet lost their spots and a number of bull elk with full racks covered in velvet); several small herds of pronghorn antelope (including 2 mamas with 3 newborn fawns between them); 7 eagles (including 2 fledglings); 3 great blue herons; dozens of American white pelicans; at least a half dozen families of adult geese with goslings; and several dozen ducks (with lots of little ducklings).

Highlight(s) – On the road to Chicken, we spotted a snowshoe hare – the first Alan and I had ever seen.  Yes, indeed, combine that with the fact that this was the only wildlife we saw during the three full days we spent in Tok, and you can see why we’re considering the little guy a highlight.

Visiting the old Gold Rush “town” of Chicken made for a fun day trip.  This tiny little dot on the map might be small in size, but it has a big and happy attitude.  You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it?”  Yeah, that. 

Lowlight(s) – Going a bit stir crazy in Tok, we decided to give Fast Eddie’s a try – one of only two restaurants we could find in town, and the bigger and busier of the two.  It was a nice place, with friendly staff and a more extensive menu than we expected.  The food, however, was nothing to write home about.  We tried pizza one night and breakfast one morning.  The verdict?  Don’t order the pizza or the hash browns.  The French toast, poached eggs and bacon were excellent; service was on point both times.

The Lowlight Award of this trip (so far, anyway), goes to the Three Bears Alaska grocery story in Tok.  Truthfully, they did carry the necessities, and some of them were even reasonably priced.  (They had great muffins, too.)  Much to my surprise, I found individual containers of yogurt for 3 cents less than I usually pay at Walmart.  But we paid $6.39 for a gallon of drinking water.  That’s more expensive than milk or gas!  Although Alan sanitized our fresh water tank before we left home, we only use that water for washing our hands, taking showers, flushing the toilet and doing dishes.  We never drink from our fresh water tank, opting to not take a chance on the quality of the water or its sources in the places we visit, and having a strong aversion to sulfur water – something we’ve run across quite often on this trip.  So, we start out with six gallons of fresh drinking water from home, and buy it by the gallon at grocery stores after our initial supply is exhausted.  We use that for cooking and making coffee and iced tea, and supplement it with bottled drinking water to pack for picnics.  Yup, $6.39 a gallon – definitely a lowlight.

Campground(s) – We remained at Tundra RV Park (and Bar) for the four nights we stayed in Tok, taking a water and electric site for the first two nights and a site with full hookups for the last two.  From what I’ve read, I think the Tok RV Village is the most popular choice among travelers, but Tundra was a good choice for us.  We’ll be back.

Pic(s) of the Day

The last photo in this series is the tiny Post Office in the tiny town of Chicken.  I don’t know if that’s the Postmaster or just some guy reading his mail, but I didn’t want to photograph him directly.  He didn’t look like he was leaving anytime soon, so I took the shot in the truck’s sideview mirror as we left.

Our full hookups site at Tundra RV Park (and Bar)

Welcome to Chicken!

Chicken's main business district - yup, that's it!

Sign posts and mileage to Chicken's "sister" cities

The adorable Post Office in Chicken, Alaska

Bonus Pic of the Day

I forgot to include this photo in an earlier post.  Here’s an example of the gravel lot RV parks that you’ll find in small towns along the way.  In this case, the “park” was a very small one and part of a highway services complex in Haines Junction, Yukon.  As I mentioned previously, many RV parks in western Canada and Alaska are not what we’re used to in the lower 48.

 

This "RV Park" even had narrow strips of grass between the sites.

Up Next – Wanting to ensure that we had a place to stay over the Fourth of July holiday, I had booked three nights at Denali State Park, followed by four nights at Denali National Park.  With one night open prior to the start of our reservations at the State Park, we looked for a halfway point from Tok and came up with the town of Palmer, home of Alaska’s State Fair.