Day 14: Dawson City to Snag Creek CG

Our mission today: to ride the Top of the World Highway, which winds along a ridge and through the mountains over to Alaska from Yukon. Mark and I had been on this road a few years ago, but we couldn’t see a thing because there was so much smoke from forest fires. On this day, the views were great.

Of course, the day started out with a bear sighting about 1 mile up the road (we could have predicted this because of Mark’s earlier statement, “There aren’t any bears to worry about at this camp“). The road is a combination of dirt and abandoned attempts at paving. We crossed the border with no problem.

The guy working there spends his days off trying to strike it rich by panning for gold. A mandatory stop was Chicken, Alaska, which is more of a tourist trap now than anything else. They do make a good sandwich and reindeer sausage soup at the Chicken Gold Camp, so we enjoyed this before moving along. Even dogs participate in gold mining in beautiful Chicken.

At the end of the road, we hooked back up with the Alaska Highway and went into Tok for a fuel stop. Our stay in Alaska was short, as we crossed back into Yukon on our way south. Here, Adam and Loki enjoy a stop at the border.

Despite the abundance of daylight, we decided to call it a day at Snag Creek CG. This was a surprisingly good campground (as are most campgrounds in Yukon, complete with free firewood) and there weren’t any soapberries in sight, which put us at ease, as soapberries are a favorite bear food. Distance for the day: 309 miles