Day 17 July 6 – Top of the World Highway onto …

In the morning we pack up and head out. Today we tackle the Top of the World Highway that travels along a mountain ridge line between Dawson City and the Alaskan/Yukon Border. The unpaved road is open only in the summer months. We’re not sure when it opens for the season or closes in the Fall. Guess is it’s dependent on weather. Dawson is roughly at 1,000 feet above sea level and the road climbs to over 4,200 feet at one point while most of it is at 2,900 to 3,500 feet. It travels through remote landscapes above the treeline with no services. Oh yea, it’s not paved. We’ve traveled on other remote North American roads including the Dempster Highway going to Prudhoe Bay on the north coast of Alaska and the Trans Labrador Highway transecting the Labrador section of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The last one has since been fully paved. These three highways are adventures onto themselves.

There are absolutely no guard rails with plenty of 1,000-foot drop-offs. The mechanic we saw yesterday warned us of soft shoulders and that he would be the one to tow us out if we went off the highway. He did not wish to have to do that.

Surprisingly, the road was mostly in outstanding condition with not much dust. We stopped along the way and even found snow still on the side of the road. This was not plowed snow, simply snow that fell or drifted there.

In approaching the border, we remembered when we last crossed at this crossing. The US Customs Officer was rude and gave us a hard time about having a bag of oranges. We declared them, but he needed to lecture us on the evils of oranges coming into the US from Canada. We handed him the bag and he saw they were grown in the USA so he handed them back and still scolded us. As we talked about this, we wondered what the crossing would be like this time. It was the opposite. A person doing his job and being friendly. WE ARE IN ALASKA! We made it but there is nothing for 40 miles other than the border station. The first 13 miles are on silky smooth pavement but then the road turns to hell. Narrower, steeper, curvier, slower, and certainly more dangerous we crawl along the 30 miles to Chicken. We are staying here for the night.