Fairbanks Alaska Tuesday:   Big day out today...We left Dawson city at around 0900 and drove to the end of the street to await the ferry we had just missed. As its a part of the highway the ferry crossing is free, we were pleased about that..Not too much comes free when travelling.
The current was so strong we were actually crossing sideways . Once on the other side we were on the "Top of the world Highway" all dirt of course but in pretty good nick. 5 years ago in Hyder when we were watching the bears I met a father & son who were on motorbikes and they were heading to the Top of the world Highway and back then I thought..Hmmm sounds like someplace I would love to go..Well today was the day and what a stunning trip. The road follows the top of the mountain range along and we watched the vegetation change from green trees to yellow then red then no trees then snow. Awesome. We even passed old burnt out areas which still looked fantastic. Consequently I ended up with a thousand scenery shot, sorry about that !
After about 2 hours we hit the border crossing. This would have to be the remotest border crossing ever and they must stay out there as there is no town as such. Anyway the bloke we had was very nice, much better than Biggles in Skagway. This guy didn't even check then RV for hidden Mexicans Oh well next time.
The road at the border changed from dirt to beautiful new bitumen and we said to our selves that the Americans knew how to do a road ! 4 miles from the crossing was the so called town of Boundary ..We were not to sure if anyone lived there or not but maybe it used to be a town. We stopped for a few photos. Back onto the lovely road for another couple of miles and BANG ! We were back on dirt and we rattled the crap out of old Rocky we had cupboard doors swinging open, bone jarring pot holes shook everything inside the cupboards and we were only doing about 35 mpr ! From the border crossing exactly and right the way into Chicken which was about an hour, we passed Hunter after hunter all with ATVs and boats and they had set up camps all along beside the road. Amazing. It was like we turned from no cars on the road to hundreds of cars on the road just by crossing the border. We were starting to get a bit worried about all these cowboys with guns riding around shooting up a storm and accidently getting us instead.
Eventually we rumbled into Chicken.
Kaff has been busting her gut to get here after reading her book. It was bigger than I thought. They had 2 RV Campgrounds, an old Gold Mining dredge, the old school house with out buildings, a Post office .. and then The Chicken Roadhouse which consisted of a souvenir shop,a bar and a café. Looked like 3 different stores but inside the lady running the place could make you a burger at one end, serve a beer in the middle then sell you a fridge magnet at the other end. Out the front she had a dog who was harnessed up with a tag that said "Do not feed me I am diabetic". She was gorgeous. A couple of travellers from Oregon in a big 5th Wheeler were there with a small dog like mine, named Dolly, I got excited until she turned and she had these two big fangs on the bottom jaw.. All I could say was "Ohh she has dental issues".. then just nearly wet myself laughing at her...poor pet.
We had lunch in the café, Kaff had the just made Chicken Pot pie, I had a Burger. The Guy cooking had just made fresh Cherry & Blueberry pies which looked so good I bought a roady to have for dinner which I just ate and it was as good as it looked. Everything was king sized, he had Cinnamon Buns the size of a B&B plate, Cookies the same and big chunks of Brownies ..Yummo...Anyway lunch was delicious and quite cheap, so we were back on the road with our bellies touching the dashboard.
The road from Chicken to the Alaska Hwy wasn't as rough thankfully but was still full of ATV Hunters ..I spotted a moose and her calf, but by the time we backed up she had moved behind the first line of trees, when she saw we had stopped she went in deeper so we missed that photo opportunity. So on we went . We hit the highway just out of the town of Tok. we stopped at a layby to look at a bridge and ran into a couple from Wollongong, they said they were with a group of 15 couples all travelling in RVs the same brand, which when we drove on we passed most of them.
We were going to stop at Tok but as we had gained an hour we decided to drive on. We then decided to stop at North Pole...Yes its really the name of the town. Kaff had heard of a big Xmas shop there which we managed to find and also managed to part with money !! So that's 2 shopping bags today, one from Chicken as well.
We saw our 3rd moose of the day inside a works depot, so we turned around and Kaff managed to get some good shots with the good camera. My big camera has decided to playup so it has been shunted to the rear of the cupboard and I am reduced to my little spare..so now I really have Lens envy !
 
We passed by a whole lost of Army vehicles, tanks and the like , there must have been around 25 or so, there is a Fort Wainwright or something in Fairbanks.
We passed by a huge US airbase, but got no pictures there or we could have been shot.
Eventually we landed in Fairbanks and with Kaffs excellent directions we got to the campground by 1900 but alas the office was shut...Thanks to a kindly gentleman he told us to just grab a space and pay tomorrow which we did. We even found the Wifi...Great stop I say !!