Tok to Dawson City

I took off from the campground at around 8:30 this morning. It was a quick ride to the community of Chicken. Topped up the gas tank and headed out on the dirt and gravel. It took a bit but eventually I got re-familiarized with the handling of the rig on loose gravel. No issues and the Ural hummed right along. Interesting that I was going with the flow of traffic and even passed vehicles. From Chicken to the Eagle turnoff is all gravel then the road changes to wonderfully smooth pavement until you get to the border.

This was in near/in the community of Chicken. I don’t think the place is actually incorporated or has any form of government. There must’ve been twenty or so bikes there. A couple of people commented that they were impressed with the Ural’s performance and handling through the windy road. I think they’ve heard that the performance and handling was dismal. That’s not what they observed. I think I was in third gear for most of the trip.

The first picture is while I was waiting for the ferry to cross the Yukon River. Dawson City is on the opposite shore. The border crossing was a none issue. A couple of questions, show them the passport and got waved on. The buildings just to the right of the top of the windscreen is the border crossing. The road in the background is the Top of the World Highway. At the border, the road changes to a much wider, mostly gravel road. Some potholes and a lot of washboard. The temperatures dropped to the low 60s (°F) but when you got within 15 miles of Dawson, you drop into a valley and the temperature shot up into the 80s(°F)! I’m glad I’m in a room with air conditioning.

Upon arrival, I picked up a t-shirt, a pin, a dinner ticket and a raffle ticket. I had stopped at an atm and picked up some Canadian currency. I had some from our road trip but I forgot it at home. BTW, this trip is on Spotwalla. I’m using SWConnect on the iPhone for tracking. If you don’t have data service, the data is buffered on the phone until the Internet is available. The gap was from not turning tracking on within the iPhone app.