For the past couple of days, the weather has been quite grey and rainy. Ive had a good run of weather so I dont really mind...Its just that the view gets rather restricted by the clouds and my concentration needs to be 100% on the road in front of me.
Anyway, Ive headed north again to ride "the Top of the World Highway" which heads North from the "Alkan Highway" in Alaska and then curves over to the East and into Canada to an old gold mining town called Dawson City.
On the way, I went through a tiny little American outpost town of "Chicken" which is kind of the Eastern limit of Alaska where it boarders Yukon.
I was surprised to see that there were absolute "throngs" of vehicles there... and they were all pickups with ATV trailers. I swear I counted at least a hundred vehicles and they all had trailers for at least two ATVs.... Whats going on?
I stopped and asked if it was a convention, and was told that tomorrow was the opening season for hunting Caribou (but only in Alaska USA, not the Yukon in Canada..... Ah, That explains it.
If I was a Caribou, Id take a walk for a few kilometers to the East tonight!
And I certainly wont go rummaging around in the bushes when I camp tonight! More itchy trigger fingers here than I can poke my trusty stick at :)))
I also came across another motorbike traveler from Slovenia with more "crap" on his big BMW than I have ever seen before...Wow, Thats just nuts!
Each to their own I guess :)))
Alaska was basically pretty empty (as far as European people goes) apart from a few fur traders and prospectors till the turn of the twentieth century. Then, gold was discovered and places like Fairbanks, Nome, Dawson City, Klondike, Yukon, Skagway, and Chilcoot became known throughout the world as gold rush fever took hold. Huge numbers of people came and cities sprang up virtually over night. There were hundreds of ferries moving people from the Californian coast, up to Skagway and then hundreds of paddle-wheelers taking them up the shallow rivers to the gold fields.
Anyway, lots and lots of them came, but few of them made much money and very few of them stayed...but theres lots of history and remnants of that time up here.
So, Dawson City is one of those quintessential gold mining towns.
Its in Canada's Yukon territory and was very much in decline for a long time, but modern roads have made the area more accessible and the town has been revived a great deal by tourism...
And as far as "tourist traps" go, I have to say that I find this one is unusually, quite to my liking. Many of the old buildings have been restored, and any new ones are built in the same old style. They also have kept the outrageously wide streets (from the huge amount of traffic the towns were built around) and they are still dirt (rather than paved). If they paved them, they'd need to do it again every year though due to frost heave and melting perma-frost...so it makes sense to leave it as it is.
The thing I really liked about the place is that its actually still quite tranquil... I think its because it really is in the middle of nowhere and still relatively few people get here. Anyway, the town is nice and far less touristy than places like Tombstone in Arizona where the hordes go every day of the year.
