This is July 12, our ride from Tok to Chicken, Alaska. (It was supposed to be called Ptarmigan, the state bird, which looks a bit like a quail, but no one knew how to spell it) Chicken is a quaint little roadside town that is owned by only one person. The guys went panning for gold in the creek - the miners get the gold from the mountains in the area and haul some of the rocks down to the creek for the tourists to try their hand at gold panning. Gary actually got some...a few flakes in his pan...the gift shop workers take it out of the pan and put it in a vial for you for a dollar.
The ride to Chicken was a 66 mile trip on a road that was under repair for 90% of the way.
This is a milder version of the construction. Many of the roadside shoulders were steep dropoffs.
The post office...
The regular post office employee was off this day, so the employee's friend was filling in for a while. Guess they can do that in Chicken...
The bulletin board had the usual FBI's most wanted posters, but the interesting thing was the Sunday picnic food list. Seems the whole town gets together and brings dishes and the post office was the place to sign up and put your contribution on the list.
The best fun of the day was going to the restaurant/gift shop/saloon.
At the saloon they had a pool table and a bar. The main attraction to this bar was the cannon.
What's the big deal about the cannon, you say? Well, anyone who was so inclined could get free drinks just by handing their panties over to the bartender to be shot out of the cannon!
No, you won't find MY panties up there!
We drove past a forest fire while going to Chicken. It was interesting to learn that sometimes they don't rush to put the fires out. They watch them from a safe distance to make sure they don't threaten any homes or life, but for the most part they burn freely. One of the first plants to grow after a fire is a beautiful red/pink flower called fireweed. It grows abundantly here, and you really can see where fires were just by spotting these flowers.
Most of the ground here is on "permafrost". The dominant tree that grows there is black spruce. You can tell where the permafrost is by spotting spruce bogs, where the ground seems to be blackened by fire. It's actually just wet, thawed and frozen over and over again. These trees are very hardy and have survived the weather for hundreds of years. The soil layer that the roots take hold in is only a few inches deep. Even though the trees may look small and scraggly they could actually be over a hundred years old!
Joe and Gary decided to see just what this permafrost is all about. They walked through a bog and got a very short distance before their feet started sloshing in the muck. The top layer is very spongy and wet...and yes it is very cold.
...So...
That was our day in Chicken, Alaska.
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