July 23 – 24: Chicken — Top of the World — Dawson City, Yukon

We left the rig at a campground in Tok to take the Top of the World Highway to Dawson City, Yukon and passed through the quirky town of Chicken. In theory, we could take this road and make it part of a round trip returning to Whitehorse, but it is a rough road that we didn’t want to haul the rig across. We crossed the Yukon River on a free ferry that lead us straight into Dawson City, the capital of the Yukon gold rush in the late 1800’s. We spent the night in a hotel in Dawson City and returned to Tok and our rig the next day.

Drive to Valdez via Thompson Pass

July 27 – 29: Valdez

We left Tok and visited Wrangell – St. Elias National Park, then dropped down to Valdez over Thomson Pass for a few days. Valdez has an interesting recent history as most of the town fell into the Prince William Sound with the 1964 earthquake and was completely moved and rebuilt over 3 years following the earthquake to it’s current location.

Valdez is also home to the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline, bringing oil from Prudoe Bay across the state to Valdez. This was the epicenter of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in 1989. We went to the local museum that presented a thurough explanation of both the impact of the earthquake and the oil spill.

Valdez is a beautiful harbor town with plenty of fishing and sightseeing. There’s a fascinating fish hatchery in town that sees a lot of wildlife activity in addition to the fish attempting to jump up the fish ladders. We didn’t see bears at the fish hatchery, but a couple of huge sea lions were feasting on the fish.