Smoke, Rain, Mountains (Doug)

It's a new variation to rock, scissors, paper ;-) We made it to Dawson City a couple of days ago, the smoke getting worse and worse. Dawson City still has the run-down, old west look...next to the not-so-run-down western look for tourists to be more comfortable in. When the "cheap" hotels went for $160 a night, the $12 campground across the Yukon River sounded even better. This picture is from the ferry you need to take to get across the river. First time the bike went for a boat ride! We had a few beers at the old hotel before getting back to camp for a freeze-dried dinner and crashing. The next day was all gravel road heading toward the Alaska border. Too bad the Top of the World highway was shrouded in smoke. We eventually had lunch in a funky town called Chicken. It's an old mining town, also with it's original buildings for that run-down western look. The original settlers apparently wanted to call the town Ptarmigan...the local bird they had for many a meal...but nobody knew how to spell it so they called it Chicken. We're starting to partake of the fresh salmon that everyone is pushing, and the salmon burger was dynamite! Next, on to the campground/RV park in Tok where we could finally do some laundry. Boring ride from there to Fairbanks. Fairbanks to Talkeetna...awesome views of Denali, but the clouds made it tough to get decent photographs. We had planned on crashing in Talkeetna but opted to move on to Anchorage. Riding in the rain is no fun and it looks like our plans to head south to Homer have been dashed with a forecast of rain for the next week. A leisurely day in Anchorage tomorrow with friends. It's finally getting dark at 11pm...bedtime. Click on the little slideshow to the right to see some more pics of the trip. Cheers!