Chicken, AK

Last weekend was time for another Alaska adventure. I had been on call for two weeks in a row and in one week saw nearly 100 patients. R&R was much needed. This summer's to do list included Chicken, AK and Valdez, AK. Chicken was the most inexpensive of these options so Chicken it was. Ruby and I left Fairbanks at 2:00 Friday afternoon.

Chicken, AK is 276 miles down the road from Fairbanks, north of the AlCan Highway. It is a former mining town home to around 400 people at it's peak. It was made famous in the book "Tisha" about a school teacher who went to work doing her best with the miner's children. Her school house still stands. The rest of the area is now a tourist attraction on the Taylor Highway as one heads north to Dawson Creek, Yukon Territory, Canada, home of the Klondike Gold Rush and tales by Jack London.


If one lives in a town called Chicken, one must have a sense of humor. The community was named as such after locals wished to name the community after the main food source, "Ptarmigan". Ptarmigan are a small grouse like bird which cooks up similar to grouse or pheasant. However, the locals could not come to agreement on how to spell Ptarmigan and settled for "Chicken". Chicken it has remained.

I have a new backcountry tent and a friend helped me find the perfect riverbank camp site.The river noise drowned out anything else and I was below the main bank so no one could see me. The morning view out the door was gorgeous.

































On Saturday morning I began a side trip to Boundary, AK which continued on to the Canadian border. It was only an additional 45 miles. The landscape was awe inspiring. I had no clue this mountain range existed. The area is home to the Yukon-Charley River National Preserve. The entire area around Chicken is crisscrossed by rivers feeding into the Yukon. In fact, for the last several weeks most of this gravel highway has been closed to travel secondary to severe flooding and washed out roads.



The area doesn't have a lot of trees once you get high up but the wild plants are still abundant.






















This is the gas station at Boundary. Sometimes there is gas and sometimes there isn't. George, a "local" originally from New Jersey operates a catch me all store that includes a cafe, a few spare parts, gas, and coffee.

This is one of the old original cabins of the area.

George directed me to Davis Dome. In former years thousands of caribou called this area home. It is miles and miles of rolling hills covered in tundra brush, cranberries, blueberries, and forget-me-nots. Ruby and I called it a good spot for lunch. The absolute quiet is mind boggling. It reaches a spot in your soul that doesn't get touched very often.

After a day of exploring along the road, Ruby and I tried our hand at gold panning. I sat along the river swishing and draining for an hour and a half without much luck. It was nice to sit and do a mostly mindless task while sitting in the sun along a bubbling stream though.

This is downtown Chicken. Local Sue runs the Emporium, Liquor Store, Saloon, and Cafe. If you are looking for a wide selection of Alaska books, this is where to stop. She has a wonderful collection and she is featured on her own post card too! Signs of the gold rush remain. An old gold dredge sits along one of the rivers. Many come in the summer to pan and there are even a few fully operational dredges elsewhere along the river.

Mosquito Fork was home for the weekend but camping elsewhere would have done nothing to decrease the level of bugs. I think the locals should have named the community "Fly" when they failed to spell "Mosquito".


































Before a nice lunch Ruby and I went to the Post Office to mail a few postcards. Robyn is the local post mistress and while I heard a lot about here I didn't get to meet her since I stopped in on Sunday.

This was great weekend and I have more to share. I got to see migrating caribou and have more amazing pictures of rolling mountains. Ruby had just as big of an adventure. Ten miles before getting to Chicken she jumped out of the window at 35 mph and got herself a bit of road rash. She played hardcore though and ten miles out of town on the way home I could hear her snoring from the back seat. That's one tuckered woofer!