A Chicken by any other name might be a....

June 22, 2010
Roads, Rivers, Rain

A special note to Ralph Rotten. Greg often pulls numbers out of thin air. So when he said that this trip has been a dream of his for 25 years, he may have meant ten years or even forty.I gave up trying to figure out this aspect of his persona--I'd say about thirty years ago. For an engineer he has no sense of time, BUT somehow remembers that we have been married nearly thirty one years. hmmmm.

I feel as if I need to say a word or two more about Chicken, so I will.

Originally, the miners that lived in the area wanted to name their town ptarmigan. Because no one knew how to spell ptarmigan, they decided on something simpler. And that kids is why that little wide spot in the road is called Chicken. The small community that was there, has all but disappeared and what is left are two RV parks and beautiful downtown Chicken. Beautiful downtown Chicken consists of a saloon, café, and a gift shop. The two RV parks are close by, very close by.

Once we decided where we were going to stay, it was mentioned that showers were available at $3 for a bit less than five minutes of water. I gasped but was then informed that all water is trucked in and there is no well. Oh and their sewage is trucked out. A generator provides power until about 9 or 10 PM when it is shut down for the night. It is fired up again at about 7:30 AM. Our camp was owned by a middle aged couple that came to the area to try their luck at gold mining. Not sure how that went but they have built quite a tourist business and along with the owner of beautiful downtown Chicken have marketed Chicken as a side trip to the cruise ship companies. While we were there a bus load from a Princess Cruise arrived. Mile Post magazine also has quite a bit written about Chicken. As small as it is, you gotta love their guts and kitsch. Where we stayed, offers fresh baked pastries with scones as a specialty. Yes, I bought some and yes they were worth it!

In case you ever want to visit and don't want to make the drive....Chicken has an airport with a runway marked with orange fluorescent road cones. Kind of novel –at least I thought so. So there are options except that all flight plans for mosquitoes were grounded due to bad weather. The cloud layer was quite low and visibility was tough for them. The gnats and no-see-ums didn’t get the memo though and with the mosquitoes not flying I am not sure you should take a chance on the alternatives.

We left Chicken yesterday, I could have stayed a day longer but we needed to get to Fairbanks. The Taylor Hwy was the next leg of the journey. It has some dirt sections but is mostly paved and ends at Tok. I am sure that it is a beautiful drive but the weather prevented us from seeing much of the scenery. What was visible, was a combination of bogs and forests and was lovely. The Taylor Hwy joins up the Alaska Hwy at Tok and officially stops at Delta Junction. There was an obligatory stop at the last Mile Marker for pictures, and then we were on our way to Fairbanks.

The road conditions were less than ideal. Many frost heaves made it pretty rough going but it must be very expensive to maintain roads up here and the fact that there is drivable pavement is something to celebrate. We crossed more rivers and creeks than I can count and one river still had sheets of ice on it. We arrived at our destination, Fairbanks at about 6:30 or so and noticed that we were back in civilization. There was traffic for one. We settled for a campground in a state park right in Fairbanks next to the Chena River. We did some sight seeing today. Hold on to your hats –we went to the antique auto museum. I swear to you Greg must sniff them out or something. This was a very elegant place with an amazing collection of beautifully restored vehicles from 1899-1930’s. The focus was on Alaska and automobiles. It included movies and pictures of Alaskans and their cars trucks and early driving experiences of the locals.

We will head for Denali National Park tomorrow and will be there three full days. I don’t expect to have internet access for several days. The wildlife –not including mosquitoes and gnats- have not been as evident the past few days. I am still waiting to get a picture of a moose and Denali may be just the place to get one.
Over and out.
Mary