Thunder Road

P-Rock - Rockin' and Rollin' down Thunder Road

Day 18 - Tok, AK to Dawson City, YT






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Well this was certainly an interesting day getting here. Blackie and I departed from Tok around 10am local to head toward the Taylor Highway. The Taylor Highway heads north from the Alaska Highway at Tetlin Junction for about 70 miles up to the town of Chicken, AK. Today's (easy) follower participation is to tell us how the town of Chicken got it's name. Anyway, Chicken is a natural PJ's segway, but for reasons you will soon find out we did not stop for pictures.

When the Taylor gets to Chicken it continues north to the town of Eagle, which was devistated by a flood this spring and is still recovering. However we were going to take the logical right turn to the very aptly named "Top of the World" (TOTW) highway to Dawson City. TOTW is about 130 miles long and crosses the Canada border about halfway between Chicken and Dawson. It is about 80% dirt road, and is a very scenic road running along a series of ridges on its route West. When you get to Dawson City there is no bridge across the Yukon River, so you have to take a ferry (free, mind you) to get to Dawson. Blackie will be telling you more about that and Dawson itself.

As we rode into Chicken we could see a growing storm to our west that was chasing us. Between it's movement and growth, we were losing the race, but decided to soldier on hoping to stay ahead of the storm. You see these dirt roads up here get VERY slippery when wet - locals like to describe it as "driving on snot" - so we really wanted to have nothing to do with that.

We lost.

Now, mind you, the entire time we drove through Canada to get here we had rain every single day. And every day in Alaska was rain free. Well, within a kilometer of crossing the border Blackie and I had to stop to gear up for the now obviously-going-to-hit-us rainstorm. As you can guess between the race to stay ahead and the storm itself we lost out on some incredible picture opportunities, but I still have a few to share. Including one of our storm as we tried to stay ahead.

When the storm hit, it hit with fury - with hail, driving rain, and lightning - and I mean close no-time-between-light-and-sound lightning. Blackie and I pulled off and took what refuge we could until the worst had passed, then tip-toed toward Dawson. Unfortunately for me, Blackie was lead donkey today and about a mile from our refuge point we encountered the next ridge - and no rain. It hadn't even rained a drop. Now think about this - mix one we motorcyclist with one wet motorcycle with road dust from Blackie's tire. You get this:

After that we wandered down to the ferry where Blackie will pick up his story.

Oh, and it takes a real manly man to ride in a full stand on a dirt road. I bow to his prowess.














P-Rock - Just remember I was one-handed taking that picture.